“They sing it”: The actors who read Quentin Tarantino’s dialogue best
Quentin Tarantino has honed one of the most distinctive filmmaking styles in modern cinema. Marked out by unflinching violence and killer soundtracks, it’s stylish and slick, but his accompanying screenplays are never lacking in substance. Though his masterful writing can be overshadowed, for some, by his excessive use of expletives, the never-ending entertainment of his filmmaking hinges upon his conversational and character-focused scripts.
But it wouldn’t be so effective if the right cast didn’t deliver it. The director has honed a dependable list of collaborators to take his dialogue from page to screen, and at the top of the list is Samuel L. Jackson. With six Tarantino films in his filmography, it’s no surprise that the director believes that Jackson is one of the most adept actors who can bring his dialogue to life.
Since they first collaborated on Pulp Fiction, which won Tarantino the Palme d’Or, the director has honed a long-standing relationship with Jackson. As he revealed during a conversation with fellow filmmaker Robert Rodriguez on the El Rey Network, this is because the pair share the same priorities in filmmaking. They both live by the words of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “The play is the thing”.
“He knows his dialogue left, right, and centre,” Tarantino enthused, “Upwards and downward”. The director went on to suggest that no one else quite gets his dialogue like Jackson does, an artistic understanding that can be seen throughout their on-screen collaborations. From the conviction of Jackson’s delivery of the Bible excerpt in Pulp Fiction to his snappy dialogue in Jackie Brown, there’s an undeniable creative connection between the pair.
The only other actor who understands Tarantino’s writing in the same way, according to the director himself, is Cristoph Waltz. Though he hasn’t worked with the filmmaker quite as many times as Jackson has, he has a similar grasp on his style of dialogue, though his delivery differs greatly. “Cristoph says my dialogue as good as Sam Jackson, but he doesn’t say it in the Sam Jackson way,” Tarantino explained. “He sings it in a completely other tune.”
Waltz received particular acclaim for taking on the role of Hans Landa in 2009’s Inglorious Basterds, delivering a stand-out performance that even won him a nod from the Academy. It was chilling and considered in equal measure, different to Jackson’s delivery but no less masterful.
It’s easy to see why Tarantino was so willing to heap praise upon each actor. While Jackson has become a dependable actor in his arsenal, a master of his ramblings and religious references, Waltz embodies his writing in a different manner. Each of them, as he suggested, made it sing in their own way.
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