The role Quentin Tarantino spent months training for and never played: “It wasn’t going to be any fun”
In most walks of life, somebody repeatedly showing that they aren’t very good at something would eventually convince them that they should drop it. However, because Quentin Tarantino is a world-famous director, people – mostly himself, admittedly – keep hiring him for acting jobs.
It’s clear that Tarantino always fancied himself as a thespian, mostly because he’s admitted it several times, but it’s easy to see why filmmaking took precedence. As a writer and director, he’s one of the most talented and influential in modern cinema. As a performer? Not so much, and that’s putting it lightly.
His work in Reservoir Dogs was passable, Pulp Fiction bordered on the self-indulgent, and Django Unchained was ego-stroking to a distracting degree. He was terrible as a short-lived villain on the TV series Alias, couldn’t convincingly inhabit a dive bar in Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado, and was blown out of the water by George Clooney’s radiant charisma and natural star power in From Dusk Till Dawn.
In fairness, things could have been much worse. Gary Oldman’s Drexl Spivey is one of the most memorable characters Tarantino has created, and he wanted to play it himself. Similarly, Samuel L Jackson is as cool as ever as Jackie Brown‘s Ordell Robbie, which was developed with the intention of the filmmaker playing the part.
Drug dealers and criminals aren’t too much of a stretch, but an elderly martial arts master who dwells in the mountainous regions of Japan and instructs Uma Thurman’s Beatrix Kiddo on how to master the way of the warrior? It sounds ludicrous, and yet Tarantino spent months envisioning himself as Kill Bill‘s Pai Mei.
“I trained for three months to do the fights and everything like that,” he admitted to Phase 9. “I did all the training and stuff, and we were shooting in the House of Blue Leaves for eight weeks, and Pai Mei was going to be way towards the end of it. I was in the fourth week of shooting this epic battle scene, and one, I was having such a good time directing, but two, it was just so difficult, so hard, all of a sudden, I was dreading the idea of having to direct and act at the same time.”
Tarantino resigned himself to the fact that playing Pai Mei while overseeing a mammoth production “wasn’t going to be any fun, I didn’t want to do it, but then, also, I had Gordon Liu right there on set.” The actor was already part of the cast as the Crazy 88’s Johnny Mo, so all he needed was some hair, makeup, and costuming and he was able to slip seamlessly into the role the two-time Academy Award winner had earmarked for himself.
Although there would definitely be novelty value in seeing Tarantino flying around on wires as a wizened sage with a wispy beard, it could also be unintentionally hilarious and tank the entire movie. Needless to say, not doing it himself was the right call.
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