Apologies for the long post but I am going to reminisce for a minute;

I saw it in theaters when it was released as the Grindhouse double feature. I loved “Planet Terror” and was so looking forward to “Death Proof” but was ultimately disappointed in it.

While the cinematography, stunts and etc were great the problem I had with it was that it was too self-referential about how cool it was. Tarantino sometimes writes his stories in way that setup a rule or theme and then the story does that rule or theme. Like he calls out the gimmick and then shows his version of it all within the story. That initial conversation with all the friends at the diner explains what the whole movie is going to be about and that ruined it for me. It is a gimmick he employed more liberally in his earlier movies but rarely does nowadays. I’d like to think it is a lesson he learned from this movie and it made him a better filmmaker.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Tarantino movies and his thoughts on cinema in general. I watched a double feature of “Machine Gun McCain” & “Rolling Thunder” (a movie so dear to him that he named one of his now defunct film studios after it) with him at the New Bev in LA back in 2007 that were his personal 35mm prints of those films. There were about 30 people in attendance and he introduced both films. This was not long after Grindhouse came out. I talked to him about Death Proof and my thoughts on it. He was receptive and also a bit defensive at first but opened up after a few minutes. It was a cool convo to get to have during the intermission between movies.

Other highlights from the night;

He seemed a bit coked up, especially during Rolling Thunder.

He sat in the same row as me but about 3 seats down with no one in between us.

He kept rocking back and forth, the rows of seats back then at the New Bev were old school theater seats where they were all bolted together so it rocked the entire row every time he moved. It drove me nuts!

He asked for some of my Chinese food that I got from the takeout restaurant across the street.

I saw him there a few more times after that, he remembered me and we would chat about nerdy and hardly remembered old movies for a bit or just do that heads up nod to each other in passing. He can talk when he gets going on a topic of interest. I tried to never sit in the same row as him after that first time though, I’d always try and sit in a row in front of him because he’d move a lot, like he doesn’t like sitting still, or didn’t at the time, and that would always distract me if I was sitting behind him but that’s a me thing and not something I can blame him for… when you gotta move you gotta move.

I haven’t been back to the New Bev since I moved away from LA a couple years later but I hear he owns it now to keep it running. He has, or had at the time, the largest private collection of 35mm print film in LA, maybe California? I can’t remember the actual stat but it was a large collection. The New Bev only shows 35mm film prints so they would get their movies from studios or private collectors, Tarantino being one of them. He grew up going to Grindhouse double/triple features in the LA area, so the theater was a bit of a nostalgic playground for him. It had been open for 30 years at that point and when the original owner died his son struggled to run it for a bit and then Tarantino ended up buying it from what I hear.

If you haven’t been then you should go and catch a movie there if you have the opportunity. Back then the audience was mostly cinephiles, film geeks, film industry professionals and sometimes actors and/or directors of the movies we were watching. I met a lot of famous people just chilling in the audience trying to catch a movie they did decades before and hadn’t seen in a long time or movies that inspired them as a kid. I remember meeting Elliott Gould at a double feature of “The Long Goodbye” and “California Split” and Edgar Wright during some monster movie marathon. Fun times.

https://thenewbev.com/