Reservoir Dogs was a promising debut, but Quentin Tarantino didn’t become QUENTIN TARANTINO, one of the most esteemed writers/directors of his generation, until Pulp Fiction. His second feature (of 10?) won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and he took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay; the film was up for Best Picture, too, but lost to Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump, which made little sense then and makes even less sense now.
Pulp Fiction was also a huge commercial success, making over $213 million at the box office, and there was immediate talk of a sequel. But Tarantino was more interested in making a prequel, Double V Vega, centered around brothers Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Vic Vega (Michael Madsen’s character from Reservoir Dogs), which he discussed in a recent interview with CinemaBlend.
“The only thing I did know was the premise,” the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood filmmaker said. “I had a premise. It would’ve taken place in Amsterdam, during the time Vincent was in Amsterdam,” hence his and Jules Winnfield’s conversation about the Royale with Cheese. Tarantino continued, “He was running some club for Marsellus Wallace in Amsterdam, he was there for a couple years. In some point during his two years spent running that club, Vic shows up to visit him and it would’ve been their weekend. Exactly what happened to them or what trouble they got into I never took it that far.”
That’s for the best. Instead of returning to a familiar world, which would have been the safe route, Tarantino went off and made the risky blaxploitation homage Jackie Brown and the two-part Kill Bill epic. Three great films. It is, however, a shame that QT and Travolta haven’t worked together since.
But at least we’ll always have this photo.
(Via CinemaBlend)
