CANNES: Quentin Tarantino brought his homage to 1970s low-budget flicks to the Cannes Film Festival, hoping the publicity will boost its box office prospects after a poor run in the United States. The maverick director's Death Proof, in the main competition in Cannes, stars Kurt Russell as a scar-faced stunt man who ruthlessly pursues young women in his supercar. The action centres around a white-knuckle ride on board speeding cars, with real stunts as opposed to increasingly popular computer-generated effects.
The movie, which combines slasher, sexploitation and horror genres popular in the 1960s and 1970s, uses trailers, scratched prints and jumps in dialogue to recreate the "grindhouse" experience in run-down theatres. The film was originally shown as part of double bill Grindhouse, the other half being directed by Robert Rodriguez, but the long playing time contributed to a poor commercial run. For Death Proof, Tarantino puts back scenes and dialogue he cut for the double bill, including one with a girl performing a long, erotic lap dance for Stuntman Mike, played by Russell.
"The way the tone changed as far as Stuntman Mike is concerned to me is the greatest difference between the two movies," Tarantino told reporters after a press screening. Harvey Weinstein, financing the film, assured movie goers they would benefit from seeing the two parts separately. "You're going to see Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino do their thing and it will dwarf Grindhouse, trust me.
" He added that Rodriguez may launch his half of the double bill at the Venice Film Festival in September. Tarantino, answering questions in his trademark quick-fire delivery, looked back on his early experiences at the movies. "When I was going to the movies I was going to church as far as I was concerned," he said, recalling how he would have to see favourite films up to four times before being able to move on.
"Those movies were so good it was just like sticking my finger in a light socket." The 44-year-old director of hits such as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, who sticks to tradition with a cameo role in Death Proof, also said film had allowed him to travel. "To me part of the joy of being a film maker is just the fact that before I was a film maker I'd barely left Los Angeles County, I was very broke and I could never travel.
"That's all I wanted to do, so one of the true joys of my life of being a film maker is the fact that it's allowed me to become a citizen of the world." But the man rarely lost for words was briefly stumped when a reporter asked if he was aware that a journalist in Cannes had been asked to pay $US1500 to attend press junket interviews set up to publicise the film. "I didn't know anything about that," he said, looking puzzled.
"Has anybody here paid to be here?" A woman stepped on to the stage to whisper in his ear and he added: "I don't think I'm getting it." What do you think of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End?
It's great!
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