The ballad of ‘Big Jerry’: Quentin Tarantino’s faithful giant purple dildo
As a noted perfectionist who spends years fine-tuning screenplays and meticulously laying out his shooting schedule before a single frame has been shot, Quentin Tarantino demands the utmost professionalism from his actors.
Performers who do a great job will be welcomed into the inner circle and invited to collaborate on a number of projects in the years and decades to come, but standing around on set all day every day for weeks – and often months – on end can be a tiring business. Sometimes, even stars tend to fall asleep at random times during the day, which is how the ballad of ‘Big Jerry’ began.
The two-time Academy Award-winning filmmaker revealed that “he introduced a new crew member to the set around Jackie Brown” that would go on to become a key part of his repertory. However, this is no flesh-and-blood thespian but rather a hulking purple dildo that Tarantino uses to take photographs of the offending nappers, which he then mounts proudly on a wall of shame for all to see.
‘Big Jerry’ doesn’t discriminate, with a multitude of noteworthy names having been subjects of its wrath during a reign of terror that stretched on for a quarter of a century. Uma Thurman shared how “it would be brought out like Jaws” whenever somebody fell asleep on set, where it would be placed “in some ungodly horrific angle next to the face of the offending sleeper”.
Are the biggest stars in Hollywood immune from the wrath of ‘Big Jerry’? As Michael Fassbender put it, no, they are not. The Inglourious Basterds star confirmed that even A-listers like Brad Pitt were placed directly in the gigantic purple firing line because when it comes to synthetic penises, Tarantino doesn’t discriminate against anyone who dares succumb to the ravages of fatigue.
“Brad was up there once on the ‘Board of Shame’, Gedeon Burkhard got caught twice, Diane [Kruger] was on the board,” Fassbender continued, which instilled him with a genuine sense of peril. “That kind of really worried me because I have a tendency to nap,” he admitted, but he managed to escape without joining the ever-expanding list of offenders.
Tim Roth has been part of Tarantino’s regular ensemble since the pre-‘Big Jerry’ days, but he remains well aware of how “the camera crew are ready for you” should the desire to snatch a sneaky 40 winks set in. Some people have rebelled against ‘Big Jerry’ and his penchant for curating his victims into a collage of dildo-assisted behind-the-scenes snaps, but as the Reservoir Dogs and The Hateful Eight star ominously intoned, that only makes things worse.
He wasn’t even part of the film but nonetheless heard through the grapevine that when an unnamed victim angrily removed their mugshot from the ‘Board of Shame’, drastic measures were implemented. According to the account: “I think this happened on Django Unchained, where somebody got so furious about this picture they put it all on T-shirts, and the whole crew was wearing them.”
From the sound of things, then, ‘Big Jerry’ sounds a little like the Terminator. It can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with, it doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop ever until you are on the ‘Board of Shame’ alongside everyone else who nodded off and ended up suffering the consequences.
That being said, the ballad of ‘Big Jerry’ could be drawing to a close after Tarantino shared in a 2020 interview with Empire that “he’s not coming out again”. With The Movie Critic set to mark his tenth and final feature, the purple dildo’s career may already be over before its most prominent wielder makes his own swansong.
No explanation was given as to why, but in the current climate, it’s probably not the wisest idea for a director to hound unconscious people with a sex toy that, from the sounds of things, would give Godzilla cause for concern. Either that or ‘Big Jerry’ is simply biding its time, ready to go out in a blaze of glory the next time a Tarantino set becomes cursed by the inevitable onset of sleep.
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