Above right, top to
bottom: Drexl Spivey,
here played by Gary
Oldman. The True
Romance pimp/drug
dealer was originally
written by Tarantino
for himself; The
Groundlings’ Stephen
Hibbert as Pulp
Fiction’s Gimp.I’m done with this movie and my life is my
own again, I’ll start watching stuff again.
It’s funny, the first time I met Scorsese we
talked about this. I was in Vegas when he
was doing Casino and I got invited to the
set on a Thursday. They mentioned at the
production office that they were having an
Anthony Mann double-feature on 16mm
that Saturday — Raw Deal and T-Men or
something. And I go to Scorsese, “Oh
wow, you going?” “No, no, I can’t.” “Why
not?” He said, “I can’t watch anything that
good! When I’m making a movie I can
watch Antonio Margheriti all day, but I
can’t watch an Anthony Mann movie.”
And that’s where I’ve kinda found myself
too. When I was making [Once Upon A
Time In... Hollywood], I got into a big
kick on ’70s TV movies. And I had about
three or four friends on the crew watching
them all with me. I also got on a Darren
McGavin kick, where I wanted to watch
episodes of shows that he guested on, his
Mannix, his Man From U.N.C.L.E., his
Mission: Impossible. That kind of stuff, that
I didn’t have to pay too much attention to,
but still enjoyed. That’s not to say I didn’t
love them, but they were one step back.You have famously used a large purple
dildo named Big Jerry to wake up sleeping
actors. Where is Big Jerry now?
ALEX EVANS
He’s in my office. [Laughs] He’s in a little
purple sack — or rather a big purple
sack. And he’s not coming out again.Of all your characters, who was the most
fun to write?
JAMES CLAYTON
Oh wow, that’s a good question. Probably
Colonel Hans Landa [Inglourious
Basterds]. The minute he enters a scene, he
dominates it. All the things that he was
supposed to be good at, he was that good
at them. I found I had a really interesting
situation with him that has been hard to
have with any other character. It was the
fact he was not only a bad guy, not only
a Nazi, but a Nazi known as the Jew
Hunter, who is finding Jews and sending
them to the concentration camp, but when
he shows up towards the end of the movie,
kinda figuring out what the Basterds are
doing, the audience wants him to. They’re
not rooting for him, but it’s a fucking
movie, and if he figures it out it’s going to
be a more exciting movie! You know, you
don’t want him to let you down. We’ve set
up that he knows everybody’s secrets, so
he’s got to know theirs. And it will make
a more exciting climax if he does.In a world of Netflix, can we rely on you to
still own a LaserDisc player?
SIMON CRIPPS
Oh yeah, absolutely. I love my LaserDisc
player. There’s a few films that I don’t
have on video or DVD — I only have
them on LaserDisc. And I have no reason
to update them, because I like my
LaserDiscs! The last one I watched was
Dressed To Kill. I have many versions of
Dressed To Kill, but for whatever reason
I like watching it on LaserDisc.Have you ever seen a Carry On film?
BARRY FRANCIS
I’ve seen scenes from them, alright?
I wanted to see them when I was younger,
like eight or nine, because my stepfather
brought them up. And every once in a while
you’d see little suggestive ads for them in
the newspaper — Carry On Cleo, Frankie
Howerd’s Up Pompeii!... [Laughs] But I’ve
never watched one from beginning to end.I was fortunate to see you on Broadway
with Marisa Tomei in Wait Until Dark.
Why do you not do more stage work?
MARTIN BLACKBURN
Because that was so traumatic! Look, that
was fun. But it’s just a huge commitment
of time. I kinda got it out of my system,
frankly, doing that play. If I wasn’t a
director, if I didn’t have the situation to
do what I get to do, then yeah, maybe.
But during that time when I was kinda
pursuing acting, there was this thing where
whether you liked my acting or not, there
seemed to be a negative attitude about ❯