Originally Posted by Piddzilla
Reading the thread title and Silver's initial post I don't think there's anything saying that the discussion is only about homage to specific parts in films and not about homage to certain genres.
Well, yes it does. That's what Tarantino and P.T. Anderson do. Granted, you do need a basic understanding of that going in, as SB didn't give specific examples, but yes, that's
exactly what he's talking about.
One could wonder what personal vision the Coens have if all they want to do is to make a movie from each and every genre there has ever been. Because that's what this topic is about: directors lacking originality.
Working in a genre does not mean you are without originality. Most films can be slotted into one or more various genres. Sorry, but that just isn't the point. Re-read the original post if you must.
Actually Joel & Ethan's films are a good example of what Tarantino doesn't do much of. While the Coens do often work in very established genres, they do so without spending time referencing a dozen particular movies note for note, and they do so with such originality that they make it into their own thing. In
The Man Who Wasn't There for instance, there is no specific series of shots designed to restage
Double Indemnity or
The Postman Always Rings Twice or
The Strange Love of Martha Ivers or any other classic Noir. They could have. It's certainly a fun film schooly kind of exercise. But they don't ever do it. To me that stuff is best for comedies, spoofs where noting the previous movie is the whole joke. Similarly,
Intolerable Cruelty has no moments from
His Girl Friday or
Adam's Rib,
The Hudsucker Proxy no restagings of
The Philadelphia Story (other than Jennifer Jason Leigh's overall Kate Hepburn-like manner) or
Executive Suite,
The Big Lewbowski doesn't recreate
The Long Goodbye or
Chinatown, and on and on and on. They just don't.
In
The Man Who Wasn't There, Joel & Ethan use the same basic language of the Noir, but it is totally in their style. It's populated by their strong characters, their unique dialogue, their sense of humor, and their visual style. Even though the visuals very clearly and very obviously call to mind the Noirs of yesteryear, they don't stoop to quoting and get caught up in paying homage. They use it generally, then move on into their own stories, their own visions.
I haven't seen American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince but I understand it is a documentary. In what way has Tarantino stolen from it and where in Pulp Fiction is he using it?
Yes, way to use the IMDb.
American Boy is indeed a documentary. Here is a word-for-word transcript of one key scene from it. See if you can figure out where Tarantino may possibly be paying homage to/stealing it in
Pulp Fiction....
STEVEN PRINCE: We had a lot of close calls. I managed to get a lot of medical supplies, medical equipment that you wouldn't normally have. Like we had oxygen, we had an electonic stethoscope that gave a tape read-out so you could tell how many heartbeats, we had adrenaline shots, we had all kinds of stuff, these kind of shots to bring you through when you O.D.'d.
And this girl once, O.D.'d on us. And she is OUT, man. And it was myself and her boyfriend, and he said - Her heartbeat was droppin' down, and we got everything out, oxygen, and nothing was working. And he looked at me and he says, "Well, you're gonna have to give her an adrenaline shot." I said, "What are you talkin' about?" I said. "You give it to her." He said, "I can't, it's like a doctor working on someone in his own family." I said, "BULLSH!T, you've known her TWO DAYS, what the fu*k is that?!?" And he said, "No, I can't do it."
So we had the medical dictionary. You know how to give an adrenaline shot? OK, an adrenaline needle is about T-H-I-S big, and you gotta give it into the heart. And you have to put it in in a stabbing motion, and then plunge down on the thing. I got the medical dictionary, looked it up, got a magic marker, made a magic marker of where her heart was, measured down like two or three ribs and measured in between them. And I just stood there and I went *HUH*, and *RRRRRRRR*, *snap*, she came back like that. She just came right back, *SNAP*, like that.
- American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (1978 - Scorsese)
Subtle, huh? And if you called him on it, Quentin would be quick to tell you, 'Oh yeah, of course we took that from Scorsese.' But the more casual filmgoer will never have seen
American Boy, and so to me it feels more like theft because the source material is obscure.
So do you seriously not see the difference between the Coens making a Noirish film in black and white and Tarantino lifting entire passages from somebody else's movie (and his films are chock full of 'em, the
American Boy one is just a great example for this discussion)? THAT is what Silver Bullet was on about. And that's why, as I say, Joel & Ethan simply don't fit in such a discussion.