Last Friday I managed to go see KILL BILL with my buddy phil. I enjoyed the movie in a vague sort of way. oh sure it was entertaining, but i felt a sort of lack to it, all of the editing flourishes, the fx, etc… just there because they’re sexy. i expect a bit more from tarantino, some sort of statement. i can read in a critique about decadence, excess, and all that jazz, but i’m pretty sure tarantino isn’t critiquing it. i imagine his thought process was more like — i really like violent movies, and so do lots of people. i’ll make the most violent movie ever, do some cool doobers to make it look sexy and arty and then make a buncha bucks.
far more entertaining, and Ward, i hope you agree, is the tale phil related to me afterward. a student at my school was relating to his teacher the sundry uses that his family makes of opossum, obtained as roadkill or in other ways. [probably best not to ask] this youth was proud of his familial opossum gourmet. several weeks later he reminded his teacher of this and added a bit of a caveat.
the wording apparently was along these lines:
y’know how i said we ate ‘possum? well then we seen a ‘possum crawl out of a dead cow’s ass. we don’t eat ‘possum no more…
word got around lower waterloo [male social studies teachers being awful gossips] and the legend of Opossum Boy was born.
i thought that would piss you off BJ, thats mostly why i wrote it. *malicious grin*
Strangely enough, that’s the second time I’ve heard of an animal crawling out of dead animal’s ass story. Harvey, did you know Wade Laffey in Keough?
nope.
All right, this isn’t personal. Yet. Here goes: [rant] The “fx”? What are these so-called effects of which you speak? And “statement”??? What led you to this expectation? Was it your familiarity with Tarantino’s oeuvre? His Weltanschauung? The socioeconomic factors that inform either? And another thing: Do you honestly, honestly, honestly believe that he was out to make “a buncha bucks”????? If so, you very manifestly lack any semblance of an idea of what motivates Tarantino–both as a person and as an artist, if the two can be separated. Notwithstanding any disconnect between what you wrote and what you meant (I’m gonna go by what you wrote, for now), you’re very, very wrong on this one, Adam. Gimme a few days and I’ll have a few thousand words explaining exactly why. Meanwhile, barring the remote prospect of your having an epiphany vis-a-vis Tarantino, I highly advise refraining from writing about his work.[/rant] Oh yeah: interesting story about Opossum Boy.
yea just picture Ace Venture 2.…only it’s real this time. You see all sorts of weird shit when you are a farm boy.