Quentin Tarantino Scared His Actors on the ‘Kill Bill’ Set After Losing It While Making the Film
Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies are seen as some of the filmmaker’s best work. But Tarantino admitted to quickly getting tired of the project while in the midst of shooting it.
Quentin Tarantino ‘had it’ with filming ‘Kill Bill’
Tarantino confided that he lost it a couple of times while making his action flick. The Kill Bill movies took up much of Tarantino’s day-to-day life in the nine months the filmmaker spent working on them. And soon it took its toll.
“It really was a situation like I had it. I was just sick of making the f***ing movie, of getting up so f***ing early, working so damn hard, of not having a life, of answering questions. I was that f***ing grumpy asshole the whole day. It happened twice and eventually I come to my senses,” Tarantino once told Movies.
Tarantino could tell his actors knew he’d reached his boiling point by how they reacted towards him.
“When you are like that, people don’t bug you with a million questions. They’re scared of you because you are being grumpy. They don’t go and talk to you unless they have to and when they do, they keep it short,” he explained. “So I was just pacing around, looking like a tiger in a cage, saying ‘I am an artist and I am doing what I want to do.’”
How Quentin Tarantino snapped out of his bad mood
Tarantino was able to relax himself thanks to Uma Thurman’s stunt double Zoe Bell. Bell has been a frequent collaborator with Tarantino since working with him on Kill Bill. The well-respected stunt woman and actor lent her physicality to movies like Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. But Tarantino didn’t want Bell to take on the mentality of a stunt woman in his movie.
“I had been teaching her to start feeling like an actor, not just to jump through the window but also to know that she is the character; that she isn’t jumping through the window to get money but that she is my actress,” Tarantino said. “I wanted her to know the context so she wasn’t in a void.”
While filming Kill Bill, Bell unknowingly helped Tarantino snap out of his bad mood. She did this by asking to speak with Tarantino personally about a Kill Bill scene.
“And she said, ‘I’m getting ready for the scene acting-wise – is there anything you want me to know, anything you want me to think about?’ And I just knocked it, it just all went away, because now she was starting to act like an actress,” he said.
Quentin Tarantino axed his own onscreen role in the film because shooting ‘Kill Bill’ was so hard
Tarantino was initially supposed to have his own onscreen appearance in Kill Bill. He was gearing up to play one of Thurman’s martial arts mentors in the feature, and had even physically prepared for the part. After training three months, however, Tarantino had a change of heart when it came time to do the scene.
“I was in the fourth week of shooting this epic battle scene and, one, I was having such a good time directing, but two, it was just so difficult, so hard, all of a sudden I was dreading the idea of having to direct and act at the same time,” Tarantino said in a Phase 9 interview.
He decided another actor he already had access to would be a better fit for Thurman’s mentor.
“So it wasn’t going to be any fun, I didn’t want to do it, but then also I had Gordon Liu right there on the set, I had this icon who could play him,” he said. “And not only could he play him, it was great because when he was a young man as a hero, he used to fight against characters like Pei Mai or characters like that. Now he’s older he gets to play the nemesis that he always fought.”
