Another Tarantino & Joe Mankiewicz connection!

For Tarantino I will call it the “Baby Situation”, which also played out in Kill Bill Vol. II and in the the tavern scene in chapter 4. Well if you’ve seen both films and remember both situations you will know that they are very similar predicaments.



And now for Mankiewicz, I will call this the “Forgotten Birthday situation” - this one needs some explaining.


  • In A Letter To Three Wives which is structured more or less in “Flashbacks”, there are three stories with a prologue and epilogue, you can say it’s like a five act structure which is rarely seen in Hollywood. Anyways there’s the first story with Jeanne Craine and her trouble with fitting into high society class - and then there’s the second story with Ann Sothern (yes that’s how you spell it) and Kirk Douglas, well somewhere in that second story Ann Sothern forgets Kirk Douglas’ birthday - and she feels very bad about it. “A Letter To Three Wives” was released in 1949 and it won both Best Director and screenplay Oscars. So there that.


  • Then in 1950, there came “All About Eve” - I dare to say it is the best film ever made. Well the First Lady of the theatuh, Margo Channing forgets Bill Sampson’s birthday, and like “A Letter To Three Wives” this film is also structured in five acts: prologue, Karen Richards, Margo Channing, Addison DeWitt, epilogue - five segments.



    So you see both filmmakers had such a situation in consecutive pictures which is quite enthralling to me. It might just be a stroke of unaware genius, because both predicaments “Baby Situation” and “Forgotten Birthday Situation” play large parts in film plot. You see in Eve, the forgotten birthday situation makes Margo jealous and aware of Eve’s ambitions, and in Basterds it is a turning point, because had not this man even approached Bridget and The Basterds, the Third Reich officer would have not intervened, and thus not have altered “Operation Kino”.



    So you see that is one thing that I love about movies.