It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since Michael Madsen sliced off a man’s ear and Quentin Tarantino sliced his way into our hearts. Now, two decades removed from his debut “Reservoir Dogs,” the filmmaker is back with his latest, “Django Unchained.”
As we’ve all come to expect from the former video store clerk, “Django” is ripe with homages to movies past and drenched in grindhouse grit. In 1862, a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) teams up with a freed slave, Django (Jamie Foxx), to hunt and kill a group of wanted brothers. The pair also invade a plantation run by a sadistic Southerner (Leonardo DiCaprio) to free Django’s wife (Kerry Washington).
Those wanting a refresher on Tarantino’s earlier work can pick up the new “Tarantino XX: Celebrating 20 Years of Filmmaking.” The Blu-ray boxed set ($120) contains all seven of Tarantino’s films as a director, as well as 1993’s “True Romance,” which he wrote.
The Post sat down with Tarantino, who was clad in a dark blue warm-up suit and a Kangol hat, and asked him to pick his favorite scene from seven of his films. Think famous bits like “Royale with cheese” from “Pulp Fiction” made the cut? Not so fast.
Reservoir Dogs, 1992
Scene: As Stealers Wheel’s poppy “Stuck in the Middle With You” plays in the background, sadistic robber Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) tortures a cop (Kirk Baltz) tied to a chair, using a straight razor to cut off his ear.
Memorable dialogue: Mr. Blonde: “It’s amusing to me to torture a cop. You can say anything you want because I’ve heard it all before. All you can do is pray for a quick death, which you ain’t gonna get.”
Tarantino says: “That’s the turning point of the movie.”
It was also such a disturbing scene that it became one of the most talked-about of the early 1990s. During one of the first screenings, Tarantino was sitting next to Miramax boss Harvey Weinstein when a woman nearby got up and walked out during the sequence. Turns out, it was Weinstein’s wife, Eve. The movie mogul apologized, but Tarantino didn’t mind and never considered toning down the violence.
PULP FICTION, 1994
Scene: Gangster Vincent Vega (John Travolta) is treating his boss’ wife Mia (Uma Thurman) to dinner at 1950s-style diner Jack Rabbit Slims, when she forces him to enter a dance contest.
Memorable dialogue:
Mia: “I do believe Marsellus, my husband, your boss, told you to take me out and do whatever I wanted, Now, I want to dance. I want to win. I want that trophy.”
Tarantino says: “I don’t think the movie would have had such a pop-culture resonance without that sequence. They both do the Twist, but I wanted John Travolta to do a certain kind of Twist that was more rigid. I wanted Uma Thurman to dance a little more like the Eva Gabor cat in ‘The Aristocats,’ kind of dainty. But John said, ‘You know, Quentin, the Twist is going to be great at the beginning, but it’s kind of a boring dance at a certain point. I want to start with the Twist, then go into other dances from the time period.’ We rehearsed a bunch of dances: The Slim, the Hully Gully, the Batman. When it came time to shoot it on the day, I’d just shout out the dance, and they’d go into it.”
At the time, many assumed the scene was inserted into the film as a way to have Travolta dance; however, the sequence was written before the former “Saturday Night Fever” actor was cast.
Jackie Brown, 1997
Scene: After a botched money drop at a Los Angeles mall, ex-con Louis (Robert De Niro) suddenly shoots friend Melanie (Bridget Fonda) dead after she makes fun of him for forgetting where he parked.
Memorable dialogue:
Melanie: “Jesus, but if you two aren’t the biggest f – – k ups I’ve ever seen in my life. How did you ever rob a bank? When you robbed banks, did you have to look for your car then, too? No wonder you went to jail.”
Tarantino says: “It’s a sequence in the [Elmore Leonard] book [“Rum Punch”], and I just thought we nailed it. It’s a shocker of a scene, but it’s also really funny when it happens, and the reaction from the audience was always really terrific. I felt really gratified. I read an interview with [New Yorker film critic] Pauline Kael where she said that scene was perfect.”
KILL BILL: VOLUME 1, 2003
Scene: After slicing through a teahouse full of criminals, martial-arts
expert The Bride (Uma Thurman) is forced to battle Gogo (Chiaki Kuriyama, right), a deadly assassin in schoolgirl dress who uses a ball-and-chain weapon.
Memorable dialogue:
Gogo: “You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?”
The Bride: “You know, for a second there, yeah, I kind of did.”
Tarantino says: “It was the first of the action scenes we did. That was me teaching myself how to do this stuff. That took a bit of time, because there was a learning curve, but cinematically, it might be my favorite moment I’ve ever done. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen done in live action. It feels like a Japanese anime done in real life.”
KILL BILL: VOLUME 2, 2004
Scene: As she continues to seek vengeance on those who wronged her, The Bride (Uma Thurman) fights and blinds Elle (Daryl Hannah), an eye-patch-wearing blond swordswoman, inside a trailer.
Memorable dialogue:
Elle: “That’s right, I killed your master. And now I’m gonna kill you, too. With your own sword, no less, which in the very immediate future, will become my sword.”
The Bride: “Bitch, you don’t have a future.”
Tarantino says: “This is one of the best fights I’ve ever seen in a movie. I thought it was really clever. After all the big, expansive fights that I had in ‘Volume 1,’ here was one where the two antagonists — you’ve been waiting for them to fight through the whole saga — these two blond Amazons finally get together. And when they get together and they have this fight, it’s not all this pretty Wushu that’s been in the movie before, because they can’t do that. It takes place in this small space inside this trailer. It’s a painful fight. They just keep f – – – ing each other up more and more and more.”
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, 2009
Scene: A Jewish woman, Shosanna, (Mélanie Laurent) takes revenge on Hitler and the Nazi top brass for killing her family by setting fire to a movie theater.
Memorable dialogue:
Shosanna: “My name is Shosanna Dreyfus, and this is the face of Jewish vengeance!”
Tarantino says: “I’d never done anything like that before. I’d never dealt with fire before, and the film had been building to that climax. It was a gas killing all those Nazis. It’s fun to watch. All the many times I’ve watched the movie, I’m waiting for that.”
The scene nearly ended in disaster, as the staged fire burned out of control. The blaze was supposed to burn at 400 degrees Celsius but quickly rose to 1,200. The heat even began melting the steel cables upon which the swastika above the stage hung. Eli Roth, who portrays Allied soldier Donny Donowitz in the scene, claims he nearly died during filming. Although he was covered with fire-retardant gel, the heat from the raging fire caused him to pass out after Tarantino (much safer in a fireproof suit) yelled, “Cut!” Roth spent the next day with ice on his hands and head.
DJANGO UNCHAINED, 2012
Scene: Freed slave Django (Jamie Foxx) is forced to shoot his way out of a plantation house to save his wife (Kerry Washington). He leaps behind furniture, hides behind walls and picks up discarded weapons while blasting a small army of enemies, including house slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson).
Memorable dialogue:
Stephen: (triumphantly thinking Django has run out of bullets): “I count six shots!”
Django: (pulling out another gun): “I count two guns!”
Tarantino says: “I’ve never done a shootout like that before, and it was really exciting. It wasn’t even in the script. I just kind of came up with it at that point and time, and it’s something that needed to happen in the movie. It took about three weeks to shoot. I didn’t have to train Jamie. It was just, ‘Go for it.’ The sequence has this John Woo bullet ballet thing going on, but in a Western. The trick was, we always had to count Jamie’s shots, because it’s not like he has an Uzi. He only has six shots, and maybe not even six shots, depending on the gun he gets. It also takes place in a time before they had shell bullets, so it’s not like I can come up with a way for him to have a pocketful of bullets. It was always just musket balls in the chambers with powder and flint, that has to be prepared in advance. The whole trick was how he had to keep getting more guns to keep the fight going on.”