Why one of Quentin Tarantino’s favourite actors threatened to “castrate” him over a role
While his films have come under heavy criticism for over 30 years due to their graphic violence, gratuitous profanity, and near-the-knuckle scenes indebted to the glory days of exploitation cinema, only one actor threatened Quentin Tarantino with an act extreme enough to make it into one of his movies.
Ironically, the two-time Academy Award winner is no stranger to cinematic castration, with Marsellus Wallace blasting Zed’s nether regions with a shotgun in Pulp Fiction to draw a line under his harrowing ordeal, and life would imitate art over a decade later when he was mulling a casting call.
Despite his insistence that he’s planning to retire after his next, tenth, and supposedly final feature, Tarantino has an entire vault full of over twice as many unmade ideas, half-written screenplays, and potential directorial vehicles that will never see the light of day.
As a staunch defender of original cinema, a remake would usually be far down the filmmaker’s list of priorities. However, he seriously contemplated a couple, most notably when actively penning a remake of the 1977 supernatural mystery The Psychic for Bridget Fonda and his alleged plans to mount a new version of Russ Meyer’s 1965 cult favourite Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Whispers first emerged in 2008 that Tarantino was in the process of scripting a remake of the midnight movie staple, which follows a trio of go-go dancers who escape from the nightclub they called home to embark on a kidnapping and murder spree across the desert in a B-tier extravaganza many have quietly called a feminist classic.
While the writer and director never publicly commented on his plans, or lack thereof, to repurpose Faster, Pussycat! for a new generation, the likes of Britney Spears and Kim Kardashian were floated as potential stars. When the scuttlebutt reached the ears of the original lead, Tura Satana, she was less than thrilled.
She was pretty much the only person tangentially connected with the original, or the remake, for that matter, who confirmed its existence, and the actor Tarantino said he would willingly “give up five years of my life to work with” issued an ultimatum should he dare try to replace her Varla with a pop star.
“Yes, he is definitely making it,” Satana told We Are Movie Geeks when asked if his Faster, Pussycat! was more than just a rumour. When Spears’ name came up, she let rip: “No, that is not true,” she said. “When I first heard that, I sent him an email and told him that, if she fills my role, I would come and castrate him.”
Could Tarantino have gotten cold feet and abruptly abandoned his plans to not only hire Spears but also make the movie after Satana issued a dire warning to his private parts? It can’t be ruled out, even if it seems unlikely. After all, the auteur has talked up at least twice as many hypothetical projects as he’s actually gotten around to making, so the most believable scenario is that is simply fell out of favour.
Satana’s passing in 2011 was probably the final nail in the coffin, too, and even if he’d gone ahead and added Faster, Pussycat! to his to-do list, there was always the chance she could castrate him from beyond the grave.
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