Quentin Tarantino’s favourite line of dialogue in movie history
From the brutal prejudice of Col Hans Landa’s language-hopping opening in Inglorious Basterds to a pithy exchange regarding tipping culture in Reservoir Dogs and Ezekiel references being rattled off in Pulp Fiction; no matter the context, there is something decidedly singular about the quick-fire dialogue of Quentin Tarantino. These days, you can spot it being emulated with all the fidelity of so-called €2 Ray-Bans in a Turkish market.
However, Tarantino himself would be the first to admit that even this singularity is not without influence. In fact, like just about every other facet of his filmography, a lot of the influence is borne from his favourite movie: The Good, The Band and the Ugly. “Why?” he asks rhetorically, “because it is the greatest achievement in the history of cinema.”
Thus, there are plenty of ways that the picture has rubbed off on him. However, one of the more profound is the simple swaggering coolness that it carries off. A lot of this is tied to the clever quips that the screenplay equips the handsome actors with. After all, if you give Clint Eastwood a great line, he’s not the sort of fellow who is going to squander it.
In Tarantino’s view, the team of Sergio Leone, Luciano Vincenzoni, Agenore Incrocci, and Furio Scarpelli behind the screenplay for The Good, The Band and the Ugly, handed Eastwood one of the greatest lines of all time., or at the very least his personal favourite. When asked for the line of dialogue that inspires him most by HMV, Tarantino offered up the following: “You see, in this world, there’s two kinds of people, my friend; those with a loaded gun, and those who dig. You dig.”
However, it is also vital to look at how such a line is delivered in a Leone film. In other hands, that line could almost be cheesy – “I’m here to chew bubblegum and kick ass – and I’m all out of bubblegum” nearly springs to mind – but when Eastwood says it in his surly almost-under-acted manner, you can’t help but be dragged into the drama of it, and fall a little bit in love with his character.
Thus, it’s not only the line of interest, but the mood it is cast in that has inspired Tarantino. This is a thread the runs through the influence he has derived from Leone. “When I first started filmmaking,” the Pulp Fiction director recalled, “there was all these like little film-making expressions I didn’t know as anything. So, I would just kind of make up stuff, and that became the expression as far as the term was concerned on the set.” In other words, he developed his own shorthand.
“The biggest one, was I always knew how to say an extreme close-up. I’m always thinking in terms of the effect I want. So, I’d say, ‘I want a Sergio Leone, okay, give me a Sergio Leone here’. Now, when I’m saying Sergio Leone, that’s more important than saying an extreme close-up because anybody can give you an extreme close-up. When I say give me a Sergio Leone, I’m implying the feel; it’s just not an extreme close-up, it’s not just a frame.” No, it’s a sense of cool character drama too.
You can watch the glorious scene below.
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