Budd isn’t the good guy, by normal standards, but when has QT ever made his protagonists the “good-guys”? Think about it: Beatrix kills countless people, she’s a trained assasin, yet we still root for her. In Reservoir Dogs, we consider an undercover cop to be the bad guy.
Budd is the most noble of all the vipers. I mean, Bill comes close to being in second - but he does use her daughter against her a little. Then there’s Vernita who also tries to use her kid as a bargaining chip, and O-Ren tires out the Bride before facing her, probably knowing she would win, but hoping she would be too spent to win against her. Elle hides a snake in the money.
So with those people he’s put up next to, he does look like the best guy of the bunch (after Bea).
Plus, there’s something about Michael Madsen - you just can’t hate him. We should hate Mr. Blonde, but we don’t. We shouldn’t like Budd, but we do. It’s all Madsen.
I thought the exact same thing. I figured he felt that as long as Budd is technically killed by A “Black Mamba” (haha) it would count, but he knew that Budd would become too likable or remorceful to make his death seem justified.
[quote]Yes, I totally agree (with FilmGuy).  This is also the reason why I am glad Budd wasn’t killed by Beatrix.  When Beatrix kills a character, the film provides a context in which the death is smiled upon by fortune (Beatrix even tells you this directly), and, if the established context is successful, by the audience.  If Bea had killed Budd, the act wouldn’t have been smiled upon since Bill is a remorseful and somewhat repentant character, and it violates the established context.
None of the characters are good in any sense of the word, but some of the characters are evil and some aren’t.  For simplicity’s sake, I will refer to these characters as “Good.”
“Good” = Bea, Budd
Evil = Elle
Good Kills Evil = Good
Good Kills Good = Bad
Evil Kills Good = Good (assuming that it produces the desired effect, which is to be met with anger by the audience.  Admit that you were angry as fuck at Elle as she torments him to his last agonizing breath.  Wanna guess why?)[/quote]
Hi, all. First time poster here, fleeing from the troll fest that the KB imdb message boards have become. :’(
I don’t think Budd was a good guy but I had a lot of sympathy for him during the bar room sequence. It’s made pretty clear that what they did to Bea has broken him and, as he famously remarks, ‘That women deserves her revenge and we deserve to die’. The twist here is when he adds ‘Of course, so does she!’ If nothing else Budd is pretty faithful to that.
It’s part of Quentin’s talent in that he tries to give you different sides to his characters. He’ll show you someone behaving sympathetically and then all of a sudden they’ll turn around and do something so horrendous it has you gasping. Same thing for O-Ren in Vol.1 - you get a glimpse of the awful events that shaped her adult life and that remarkable moment during her swordfight to the death with the bride when she apologises to Beatrix for not taking her seriously.
Okay, admittedly Elle Driver doesn’t have any sympathetic features but that’s fine because you always need one irredeemably evil character in these sort of things!
Incidentally, am I the only one who thinks Michael Madsen deserves a nomination as Supporting Actor? He held his own as an actor and gave a versatile, layered performance. No mean feat in a film full of good performances.
No, you’re not - I almost wanted to nominate him in Die Another Day for being the only actor who wasn’t playing parody through the whole thing (excepting, of course, the fab miss Judy Dench). Of course, he won’t be nominated - Kill Bill is too far off the richter for any of those Academy “The English Patient Is the Best Movie of All Time” advocates.
[quote]Hi, all. First time poster here, fleeing from the troll fest that the KB imdb message boards have become. :’(
I don’t think Budd was a good guy but I had a lot of sympathy for him during the bar room sequence. It’s made pretty clear that what they did to Bea has broken him and, as he famously remarks, ‘That women deserves her revenge and we deserve to die’. The twist here is when he adds ‘Of course, so does she!’ If nothing else Budd is pretty faithful to that.
It’s part of Quentin’s talent in that he tries to give you different sides to his characters. He’ll show you someone behaving sympathetically and then all of a sudden they’ll turn around and do something so horrendous it has you gasping. Same thing for O-Ren in Vol.1 - you get a glimpse of the awful events that shaped her adult life and that remarkable moment during her swordfight to the death with the bride when she apologises to Beatrix for not taking her seriously.
Okay, admittedly Elle Driver doesn’t have any sympathetic features but that’s fine because you always need one irredeemably evil character in these sort of things!
Incidentally, am I the only one who thinks Michael Madsen deserves a nomination as Supporting Actor? He held his own as an actor and gave a versatile, layered performance. No mean feat in a film full of good performances.
[/quote]
[quote]No, you’re not - I almost wanted to nominate him in Die Another Day for being the only actor who wasn’t playing parody through the whole thing (excepting, of course, the fab miss Judy Dench). Of course, he won’t be nominated - Kill Bill is too far off the richter for any of those Academy “The English Patient Is the Best Movie of All Time” advocates.
[/quote]
when was Michael Madsen in Die another Day?
Yeah - a very, very, very, very small role. He played the asshole American MI-6 agent who thinks Bond can’t do the job. He’s in the climax and the beginning for short periods of time. Apparently it’s an re-occuring role, so they’re gonna give him more to do in the next one. I’ll see if I can find a picture.
<LINK_TEXT text=“http://www.angelfire.com/celeb/addicted … dpics.html”>http://www.angelfire.com/celeb/addictedtomadsen/bondpics.html</LINK_TEXT>
There you go. Found it. Kind of a funny cameo, but strange. We’re not supposed to know whether he’s batting for the home team (I don’t mean in terms of sexual orientation) or not. So he will supposedly be in #21 if they make it, unless they let QT do his idea of re-doing Casino Royale, in which case… they’d probably find it tough sticking him in.
Considering it was one of the worst Bond films (the ones with Timothy Dalton and Never Say Never Again don’t count) I wish they had given him more to do, and given less time to Halle Berry whose dialogue was almost as bad as her acting. It was kind of surprising, because Pierce is one of my favorite Bonds (Connery is, of course, at the top of the list)
Does anyone know what brand of boots Budd wears?
They appear to be dark red/brown snake skin with black soles.
Any ideas who makes them?
[quote=“CPS”]
He is as bad as the others.
Haven´t you seen how happy he looked when he talk to the Bride after shooting her with the rocksalt. He loved her pain.
And this troch thing. IMO he lover the idea how the Bride would fight for her life under the earth.
If he really thought, that the Bride could escape, he would wait at the grave as long as it takes that she has not enough air to breath.
By the way, in an interview Davidn Carradine talked about the idae that Budd left cuz he was angry, that Bill takes him the Elle…
Maybe he has something aganst blonde chicks… = just kidding.
[/quote]
I don’t know about him enjoying her pain whenever he smiled in the film it seemed like a hollow smile, generally the impression I got from the character was that he knows hes fucked and that after all that hes done he disserves it, when the bride was struggling when they where trying to bury her bud warns her that he could blind her but he doesn’t and he doesn’t look like hes having fun but you cant expect him to look sad either hes a seasoned killer, budd may not be a good guy but hes probably the least evil of the villains in the film, cept for maybe copper..? Bill….?
I don’t think any argument about him being “good” really holds up…I think we get the impression that he feels some amount of guilt for killing her, but the guy also buries her alive (unless we assume that he really thought she was dead). I dunno, he plays this deadbeat character who has seemingly given up on the life of a Viper, but at the same time he never really shows any remorse for killing (just comments that she deserves her revenge, like any warrior would say).
What do you expect him to do shed tears? I don’t know why people think someone needs to feel guilty in order to understand what they’ve done is wrong and then sympathizes with them, because not everyone has such a capacity, budd being an old killer is unlikely to and you cant expect him to just let the bride kill him either because importantly shes just as bad as he is
dont know if i would agree, one kind of dynamic that isn’t mentioned, I don’t think the bride herself was that great of a person, Its apparent, beyond them trying to kill her that most of the other squad members didn’t like her much (cept for bill, course) Granted, does or did Budd feel some sort of guilt about the lifestyle he was living and thus was the bouncer at the titty bar? I think its implied, at the same time its implied that he is a bit of a fuck up, maybe with a booze or drug problem he wasn’t able to cut the mustard as far as an assassin goes. (hmm tho he was able to tag her with the rock salt…) What you see as kindness (flashlight, buried alive with chance to make it out etc) I see as him being sadistic. There is no proof that he would have known what Pei Mei taught her, she didn’t tell Bill everything she learned right? And she was fucking him.
[quote]Does anyone else think that Budd is a good guy? I think he is. There’s no real evidence that he’s still bad. There is however a lot of evidence that he’s good.
- “That woman deserves her revenge and we deserve to die.”
- When his boss is yelling at him, I thought Budd was going to kill him but he doesn’t.
- He shoots the Bride with rock salt so that she doesn’t die.
- He buries the Bride with a flashlight and in a cheap wooden box. He knows that she was trained by Pai Mei and knows that there is a chance she could escape.
- He tries to get rid of the Bride’s sword so that she stops killing.
- He gave up the life of a millionaire assassin.
Here are some other interesting facts:
- The Bride isn’t the one who kills him. The real “bad guy,” Elle Driver, kills him.
- He is the only one out of everyone who actually beats her and has the perfect opportunity to kill her. Sort of like that saying, "good triumphs over evil."
I just think that the evil things that he does do to the Bride is really just Budd defending himself. He really is a good guy.
Does anyone else feel this way, or is it just me?[/quote]
i think that he is a good guy
I don’t think he’s “good” per say. However, I do think he wanted to get out of the killing Biz just like Bea. If you look at the scene where the DVAS are looking down at her Sidewinder looks like he’s almost sad they had to do this to her. Nevertheless, Remember he says the reason he’s burying her is that she broke his brother’s heart. He wants her to suffer because of that.
Didnt bud kill his boss in the original script? Ive never read it but thats what I heard.
I liked bud and felt bad when he had to clean up the shitty water in the bathroom. lol I think he was trying to put his bad guy persona behind him but as is often the case. it catches back up to a person no matter how far one hides. I can’t blame him for not wanting the bride to kill him but making money off of the deed brings back the evil side he still possesses. He is trying hard to be the shepard but he is still the tyranie of evil men. Or however that old saying goes.
Budd is definitely the most complex of the Deadly Viper characters, but he is no good guy.
The key thing is that Budd has the chance to stay out of the life of crime but doesn’t. He’s given a chance to redeem himself. He admits that the Bride deserves her revenge, and he even plans on letting her take it. But then he goes to his job. There is a lot in the scene with Budd and his boss that makes sense of his story. There’s the shotgun behind the boss (an unconscious hint). There’s the fact that the boss crosses out Budd’s name, just like the Bride does on her list. Basically, though, the scene comes down to Budd’s realization that he can’t keep doing what he’s doing, working a crummy shot, making an honest but intolerable living - literally a shit job.
When Budd gets to his house, he senses the Bride’s presence. That part is obvious. But then he looks at his hat. This is the same “shit-kicker” hat the local yokels wear to the bar. When Budd takes off the hat, he has already made his choice: he will take out the Bride. He’s back in the life. Maybe he has also decided to sell her sword; maybe not.
In a way Budd is a more detailed version of the Jimmy character in Pulp Fiction. He’s the guy who tried to get out but came back as soon as the opportunity struck. Remember Jimmy selling his best linen - a gift from his dead aunt? Yeah, he protested, but he did it anyway. Well Budd has gone down the same path. He knows what’s right, but he just can’t follow through.
i don’t think Budd is a good guy. i think he’s weak, the matter of fact i despise him. i share elle driver’s opinion on him: “…Reagret that maybe the greatest warrior I have ever met, met her end at the hands of a bushwhacking, scrub, alacky piece of shit like you.”
I don’t think Budd is a good guy. He knows The Bride is coming and waits for her with a shotgun and shoots her the first change he gets; how nice is that? He thinks he (and the others) deserve to die, but doesn’t want it. Shouldn’t a typical “good guy” know about sacrifice?
I saw him not like he decided to quit his assassin days but was forced to do so. Sure he got in a fight with Bill, but who knows about what. Lemme speculate: he earned a goddamn lot of money, and so went out all the time, drinking the nights away. His alcoholism made him less sharp, so he was forced out of the Vipers because he wasn’t up for the job no more. So he became a bouncer in a titty bar where he cleans up shit in the toilets…
But then. As said before, they’re all Assassins; I bet the meanest assassin ever is still nice to bunnies and kittens, but that don’t make him good, yeah? Maybe compared to the others he’s less evil, but I doubt that, too, really.
But. Who
Budd kinda had an alter-ego. Just like Mr. Orange. One personality might be the calm, nice guy, the other’s the frickin’ psycho.
Or maybe not at all.
[quote]I don’t think Budd is a good guy. He knows The Bride is coming and waits for her with a shotgun and shoots her the first change he gets; how nice is that? He thinks he (and the others) deserve to die, but doesn’t want it. Shouldn’t a typical “good guy” know about sacrifice?[/quote]
Who really knows what Bill Told Bud to make him do the things he did as a bad guy. It looked as if Bud was trying hard to leave that shit behind what with cleaning up the shitty water and all. How can you expect him to let B break into his trailer for some slice n dice revenge?
[quote=“Starvin Marvin”]
Budd kinda had an alter-ego. Just like Mr. Orange. One personality might be the calm, nice guy, the other’s the frickin’ psycho.
Or maybe not at all.
[/quote]
When you wrote Mr Orange you meant Mr Blonde, right?
I don’t think that Budd had an alter-ego, he never did any things a psycho would do. Well, maybe the fact that he buried The Biride alive shows that Budd is evil but he’s not a psycho for sure