Rosario Dawson Once Compared Chris Rock’s Directing to Quentin Tarantino’s

Actor Rosario Dawson fulfilled one of her lifelong fantasies when she teamed up with Quentin Tarantino for Death Proof. But having gotten to know the Oscar-winning filmmaker well, she noticed a surprising connection between him and comedian Chris Rock.

Rosario Dawson felt Chris Rock and Quentin Tarantino were both good at this 1 directing technique

Rock had already filmed a couple of movies before shooting Top Five, a movie many might have forgotten about. So Dawson wasn’t working with a rookie director when she agreed to sign onto his project. But despite already having experience, the Sin City actor still had reservations about working alongside Rock. If only because she wasn’t sure if her humor would’ve been up to par with his comedy.

“I felt a lot of pressure, like, oh God, I’m going to have to be funny,” she said in an interview with Vogue. “And there are some really insane, interesting scenes in there that I couldn’t totally wrap my brain around.”

However, Rock was eventually able to convince Dawson to do the film by reassuring her that she’d have total control over he performance.

“When you’re working with someone who is the writer and the director and the actor, you feel like, this person is going to be really overly precious,” she said. “Chris said, ‘Listen, I have no ego about this. Share with me. I want you to be a part of this so that you can bring what you bring. Like the movie says—put your stank on it.’”

As a result, Dawson ended up joining a feature that already had a large ensemble cast. In addition to herself, he’d be collaborating with other notable actors like Kevin Hart, Adam Sandler, Gabrielle Union and others. But the way the comedian handled this large ensemble cast reminded Dawson of Tarantino. Rock may not have been as eccentric as Tarantino when it came to working with actors. It might’ve been had to imagine the Dogma star making Dawson watch 50 movie trailers like Tarantino did, for instance. But Dawson felt both Rock and Tarantino tapped into their actors’ potential in similar ways.

“He just knew what everybody’s sweet spot was, which is something that I really appreciate. Tarantino…I think he’s done that so brilliantly in his career,” Dawson once told Cinemovie. “He would get people we hadn’t seen in a really long time and he would get them to do the exact thing that he wanted them to do. You saw them onscreen and you’d say this is amazing, and it’s still felt fresh and new and original.”

“It wasn’t manipulative. It was just creating the perfect space for people to fill, and I thought that was something that was really remarkable,” she added. “Being there throughout so much of that movie because my character is sort of that fly on the wall. It was so interesting watching how that went and it really felt like he was a conductor. It was really beautiful.”

How Quentin Tarantino inspired Chris Rock

Rock has already taken more than a few cues from Tarantino as a director. In Top Five, the comic borrowed Tarantino’s own penchant for non-linear storytelling for his own work.

“Tarantino has been known to stop a movie in the middle, and cut back to that scene an hour later or whatever,” he said.

But that wasn’t the only time Rock turned to Tarantino for inspiration. The actor was such a fan of Reservoir Dogs, that its iconic opening scene informed Rock’s horror film Spiral. The comedian both starred and executive produced the Saw spin-off, while handing directing duties off to Darren Lynn Bousman. Rock also originally pitched the film’s concept, and continuously offered his own creative input to Spiral‘s writers. He even scripted a few of the movie’s key scenes himself. Rock’s close involvement in the film eventually led to a complete rewrite of his opening scene.

“Originally the script has Chris’ introduction very different,” Bousman said in an interview with IndieWire. “He was introduced busting a weed dispensary. He came to me maybe five days before shooting and said, ‘I gotta do better, it’s the introduction of my character.’”

Rock’s sudden epiphany led to a reintroduction of his character that was very Tarantinoesque.

“Chris is a big fan of Reservoir Dogs,” Bousman added. “This was like his homage. He came to me the next day after we talked about the opening, handed me his pages, and said, ‘It should be something like this.’”