S4E47: Reservoir Dogs

November (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Kill James Bond. I am November Kelly. I am joined as always by my friends Abigail Thorn and Devon.

Abigail (0:27)

Hello, let's, uh...

Devon (0:28)

Cowabunga, what's up?

Abigail (0:30)

What's up?

November (0:30)

How are we doing? Beautiful cowabunga to you too. And I think it's really beautiful that, you know, it's taken us a long way into Heist season before we got to this, but finally, in the podcast where we ask, what does this film say about masculinity, we get to one of the most saying something about masculinity films I think we've yet talked about.

Abigail (0:54)

Is this the first film on the podcast that we've covered that is Quentin and Tarantino'd by Written Directino?

Devon (0:59)

I believe so.

November (1:00)

I believe so, yes. I think it is. Yeah.

Devon (1:02)

I think so.

November (1:03)

It's also the first one that he Quentin and Tarantino'd. Wow. So, it's a nice kind of, you know, merger there.

Abigail (1:10)

Okay, we're starting in the beginning, yeah. Starting as we mean to go on.

November (1:13)

Yeah. Starting with Reservoir Dogs, which was his first film.

It was, you know, I think it's a much better film than people remember it being. I think that people look at Tarantino now and they see the kind of nihilism, and misogyny, and stuff, and the Israel. The Israel will come up. Yeah, the Israel will come up.

Abigail (1:36)

The feet Israel, yeah.

November (1:38)

Yeah.

Devon (1:38)

The feet in the Israel.

November (1:40)

They look at Mr. Feet Israel and they go, I assume that because he's a dick, and he's always been a dick, that's true, his movies have always been bad. And I want to take the position here that for me at least, I think Reservoir Dogs is a good film.

Abigail (1:56)

Yeah.

Devon (1:56)

It's Chinatown, it's one of those situations. Unfortunately, sometimes a bad person makes a good movie.

Abigail (2:01)

Really? I have curiosities about it, and honestly, it reminded me a little bit of like David Mamet, but we'll get into this.

November (2:09)

But, it's Reservoir Dogs. If you're curious about the title, by the way... Yeah, I was, I was. Because Tarantino, he's never officially like confirmed or denied anything, he likes to preserve some mystique about this, which I think is bullshit. The story, I believe, is because it, you know, casts Tarantino as what he is, which is a kind of cinephile nerd who has gotten out of control, is that it's how his old boss mangled the pronunciation of the film Au Revoir Les Enfants, which I guess future episodes.

Devon (2:40)

Oh, that's kind of fun, actually.

November (2:41)

I hope that is true. Yeah, to be like the Jean Cocteau movie, you know, their French movie Reservoir Dogs.

Devon (2:49)

Yeah.

Abigail (2:50)

That's really funny.

November (2:51)

It's a mean-emma thing, other than it's a joke at that guy's expense. But yeah. And so, we'll just jump straight into it because the movie does as well.

Devon (2:59)

Yeah. We begin in situ.

November (3:01)

You get your opening titles, and we begin with a come town bit. A bit from, you know, your boyfriend's favorite podcast. Yeah.

Devon (3:08)

Just some banter is going on here.

Abigail (3:10)

Guys in suits and ties are sitting around in a diner talking about Madonna's song, Like a Virgin, and about Madonna's career. And it's a very misogynistic conversation that they're having. This film depicts a lot of very bad things. And one of my overarching questions is like, okay, why are we depicting this? Not necessarily that's bad. I just like, I want to know.

But they're having this very misogynistic conversation about Madonna. We've got many, many guys we'd like to see. We've got Harvey Keitel. We've got Steve Buschemi. We've got Michael Madsen. We've got Tim Roth. We've got Edward Bunker. And we've got Tarantino himself, who's also in the film very briefly.

Devon (3:44)

Yeah.

November (3:45)

And he sort of gives himself pride of place in this opening to sort of unveil this theory, this sort of misogynistic theory that the Madonna song, Like a Virgin, is not about, you know, it's not romantic. And he gets some comedy from like, because these are all tough guys, right? They're all sitting around in the diner from Heat together, basically. And, you know, some of them have quite sort of, like, sensitive emotion, all of them, it's taken as read, are like, you know, have heard the song, like Madonna, have opinions about different periods of Madonna's career.

Devon (4:20)

Yes, absolutely.

November (4:21)

And some of them have have quite sort of sensitive emotional reads of it. And Tarantino's character is like, no, it's about, like, getting fucked, like a virgin, in very explicit terms, right?