Quentin Tarantino names “the greatest comedy chase scene of all time”
Throughout his cinematic career, Quentin Tarantino has always maintained a morbid sense of humour that constantly elevates his work. Whether it be the incorporation of highly stylised action sequences that transcend the limits of realism or the inclusion of soundtracks that work with the images on the screen in an ironic manner, even Tarantino’s darkest material contains comedic undercurrents.
These humourous flairs will probably be a major part of his next and final work, The Movie Critic. Having decided to retire from the industry while he’s still at the top of his game, Tarantino’s next film will revolve around a critic reviewing movies for a porno magazine in California during the late 1970s. Rife with potential for Tarantino’s characteristic existential investigations and comedic tangents, it is already one of the most anticipated projects on the horizon.
Tarantino’s sense of humour has inevitably been informed by the movies he loved as a child, including fascinating genres like exploitation flicks and martial arts movies. While he obviously sought inspiration from these works for some of his more violent sequences, Tarantino also found immense comedic value in them. During an interview, he also praised Peter Bogdanovich’s 1972 screwball classic What’s Up, Doc? as a true cinematic gem.
The Pulp Fiction director described the movie as “made for I.B. Technicolor” and “as close to [Frank] Tashlin as you are going to get”.
He added, “Peter [Bogdanovich] would actually say that his jumping-off [point] for the chase scene at the end – which I think is the greatest comedy chase scene of all time – was Mack Sennett, and he’d be right. But it also looks pretty similar to the end of [Tashlin’s] The Disorderly Orderly to me.”
While discussing the film, Tarantino also revealed how Bogdanovich completely transformed a major scene on the day of the shoot. He noted: “That was actually a situation… so she’s walking across the street, and Peter goes, ‘It’s boring watching her walk across the street. Let’s have a car stop. And then another car hit it.’ And [the crew] go, ‘Well, we weren’t planned for that.’ ‘Well, we got a little bit before we’re doing it. Just go to Hertz Rent-a-Car, just rent a couple of cars where the box says insurance, X it, then come back here.'”
What’s Up, Doc? was Bogdanovich’s love letter to the classic comedies he had loved, including the pioneering Bugs Bunny cartoons that reshaped the animation medium forever. Even after all these decades, it is definitely a standout from Bogdanovich’s brilliant filmography.
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