You mean like Warren Beatty, the original Bill, versus David Carradine? [Beatty felt Carradine was better suited to the role.]
Exactly. The danger that can happen when you’ve imagined one actor [doing a part] is that you can get bored with it before you’ve seen it. As a director you try to avoid giving the performance for the actor in your brain, before they have actually had a chance at it.
How would Bill have been different if Beatty had played him?
With Warren, Bill was much more of a James Bond character – James Bond as a villain. There was more of an old sexy lion, which David has too. But, you know, it was much more playing with the subtextual analogy of Bill as a killer pimp and these are his bitches. We are talking about killing, but we could have been talking about f—ing. David had more of a mystical quality and that became much more important at the end [of the movie]. My whole thing is I’m going to do it so well, you can never imagine Warren Beatty.
So you really use the personalities of your actors to create your characters.
Very much so. Actually, to answer it correctly, I have written the character, and actors who work for me don’t need to go out and find somebody that’s like this person to teach them how to be this person. Daryl Hannah has said that it was really cool that I gave her her character’s whole back story. But I’m also trying to find out who the actor is so I can add that to the character… People always ask me who are actors you’d like to work with. Well, you know, there’s a lot of actors I’d love to work with, but I don’t think that way. I want to come up with the right combination of character and movie and actor. And I think that’s one of the reasons why my casting is so good, and why the actors are so good.
Well, why should we be any different? Who would you like to work with?
Tom Hanks. He’s got kind of a snide side in real life that I really like. It’s a biting sense of humor that hasn’t 100 percent been capitalized on. And he doesn’t need to super-capitalize on it. He’s a wonderful comedic actor – I’ve loved his comic performances in the '80s. I’ve wanted to work with Johnny Depp forever, and Johnny Depp has wanted to work with me forever, but it has to be special. The same thing with Daniel Day-Lewis. But usually the opposite happens. They get the actor, and then, okay, f— it if it’s right or not, make it right, all right?
After seeing ‘‘Reservoir Dogs,’’ I never would have pegged you for a feminist. But ‘‘Jackie Brown’’ and ‘‘Kill Bill’’ are female empowerment fests – and Jackie and the Bride are certainly two of the most multidimensional women ever to be seen in genre films.
I definitely do have a feminist [sensibility]. I almost feel weird about categorizing it as ‘‘feminist.’’ Not because I am demonizing the word, but I think it’s more of a femininity, an appreciation for women rather than a label. But I mean, it’s not hard to figure it out if you think about it. I was raised by a single mom who came from white-trash beginnings. She created a very nice career for herself as an executive – a legend in her own time in the HMO field. From the very beginning I never considered that there were boundaries, things a woman can and can’t do. I had my mom as an example of someone who came from nothing and she was going out to eat in nice restaurants, paying her own way. She had nice s—, she drove a Cadillac Seville, and she was living the life.
Is she in a lot of your female characters? Is she Jackie Brown?
She’s a little of Jackie Brown, but ‘‘Jackie Brown’’ actually has a person, my second mother, a woman named Jackie Watts. She was my mother’s best friend when they were two hot chicks in the '70s. Jackie was black. Mom is half white and half Cherokee, and they had it going on.
Your characters clearly reflect a childhood with strong women and lots of racial diversity.
Completely. My house was like the United Nations. And my mom, you know, white guys, black guys, Mexican guys – it was all good. But I also think I’m just empathetic – I have empathy for people, their situation, their problems, their specialness. I can see their specialness.
