The 1968 Jimi Hendrix song that inspired Juliette Lewis’ ‘Natural Born Killers’ performance
There was a reason Jimi Hendrix was once referred to as ‘the most dangerous musician alive’ – quite simply, there wasn’t a musical boundary he wasn’t willing to push with the guitar, and no part of the establishment he wasn’t willing to upset in doing it. And that inherent sense of danger was something that Juliette Lewis relied on decades after he was gone.
Speaking of upsetting the establishment, Lewis’s 1994 movie Natural Born Killers, directed by Oliver Stone, was a film that did that in spades on its release. In fact, even before it was released, there were people up in arms at the tale of criminals in love who go on a mass-murdering spree, and things got worse once it hit cinemas.
The road movie, in which Lewis played one half of the couple opposite Woody Harrelson, was based on an original story by Quentin Tarantino, and described an ultra-violent rampage across the US, with a central theme being that of the media’s lascivious coverage of deadly events. The American press was duly apoplectic and launched campaigns to have the film banned. Stone responded by making cuts to the film to ensure it got an ‘R’ rating rather than the prohibitive NC-17.
Over in the UK, it was the same story, the pearl-clutching tabloids were outraged by what they called a ‘sick’ film, and the British Board of Film Classification delayed rating it for months while they investigated whether or not it was likely to inspire copycat killings. Ireland, in turn, banned it completely.
Stone was someone who used Hendrix’s music on several of his films and Lewis leaned into that, she prepared for her character Mallory’s borderline unhinged nature by listening to the legendary musician on a daily basis, telling Film Experience: “I use music for brainwashing if that’s what you want to call it. I was listening to Jimi Hendrix. It’s not so much his voice but the guitar playing. It had so much danger, despair, torment, chaos if you listen to ‘Voodoo Child’ it’s everything of that journey, that character. I would listen to that over and over before filming, so that was living inside.”
‘Voodoo Child (Slight Return)’ was born out of the 15-minute ‘Voodoo Chile’ jam on Hendrix’s album Electric Ladyland. It became one of Hendrix’s best-known songs and appeared in many of his live setlists; he once announced the song as “The Black Panthers’ national anthem.”
While Hendrix’s music didn’t feature on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, produced by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor, one of Lewis’ songs did, a song called ‘Born Bad’. Although the movie came a decade before Lewis launched her musical career, she had made a name for herself with her performances in edgy movies, notably Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear with Robert De Niro, for which she had received an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actress’.
Her performance in Natural Born Killers was also widely praised; she picked up industry awards for her work on the film and went straight on to making Strange Days the following year, Kathryn Bigelow’s dystopian sci-fi, for which she sang two PJ Harvey covers.
Most recently, Lewis has been winning praise for the teen drama Yellowjackets, and this year she will be appearing in The Rocky Horror Show in New York. She’s never appeared on Broadway before in a 40-year career, but then, as Hendrix himself once said: “Lots of the things we do are dangerous, but life itself is dangerous; nothing is really worth bothering with that isn’t full of danger.”
Never Miss A Take
The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter
All the latest Quentin Tarantino content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.