The director Quentin Tarantino made an honorary Reservoir Dog: “I’m officially Mr Purple!”
Colour-coded characters have rarely, if ever, been cooler than they were when Quentin Tarantino made his feature-length directorial debut. Sure, the principal cast of Reservoir Dogs didn’t dress to reflect their names, but by the time they walked down the street to the strains of ‘Little Green Bag’, they were iconic.
Harvey Keitel’s Mr White, Tim Roth’s Mr Orange, Steve Buscemi’s Mr Pink, Michael Madsen’s Mr Blonde, Edward Bunker’s Mr Blue, and Tarantino’s Mr Brown helped usher in a brand new era for American independent cinema for better or worse, where everyone wanted to copy the first-time writer and director’s homework.
Thanks to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Tarantino evolved from a wunderkind into an auteur, inspiring every generation that followed. While it’s not a requirement for someone who grew up adoring his films to make movies that follow a similar template should they decide to try breaking into Hollywood, there are nonetheless dozens of pictures with the two-time Academy Award winner’s fingerprints all over them.
One longtime Tarantino fan who became a successful filmmaker and makes movies absolutely nothing like his hero and inspiration is Gareth Edwards, who burst onto the scene with the lo-fi creature feature Monsters before instantly making the leap into big-budget blockbuster fare and becoming a studio favourite for his ability to bring an expensive production in on time, on schedule, and on budget.
Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, The Creator, and Jurassic World: Rebirth is hardly the filmography anyone would expect from a diehard Tarantino fanboy, but Edwards revealed to Den of Geek that he’s such a supporter he vividly remembers the first time he met his idol and was named an honorary Reservoir Dog.
“We were falling down trying to push past each other so we could sit next to Tarantino during this film,” he said, referring to a trip he took to Nottingham to see a screening of Le Samourai. “We eventually sat there, and he goes, ‘Have you guys seen this? Ah, you’re going to love it’, he says. So he introduces the movie, comes back and sits in his seat and then seems to spend the rest of the movie watching our reactions.”
After the screening, the future multi-billion-dollar director asked Tarantino to sign a poster, where he got more than he bargained for. “He wrote, ‘To Mr Purple, aka Gareth,'” Edwards shared. “And I’m like, ‘I’m officially Mr Purple!” In a full-circle moment, he crossed paths with the Reservoir Dogs mastermind two decades later when they were now directorial peers, which was admittedly a little embarrassing.
“I said, ‘You actually signed my poster to Mr Purple,'” he told him. “And I think, like an idiot, he’s going to remember. ‘Ah, finally, we meet again!'” Of course, Tarantino had absolutely no idea what the hell Edwards was talking about, which made their second encounter significantly more awkward than their first.
Still, he hasn’t forgotten. On the other hand, knowing how Tarantino feels about the onslaught of CGI-laden reboots, remakes, and sequels that swamp cinemas on an annual basis, maybe he wouldn’t have dubbed Edwards Mr Purple if he had any inkling that he’d eventually specialise in that arena.
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