Reservoir Dogs

I’ve heard rumors on how good of a director Quentin Tarantino is. Before watching Reservoir Dogs I’ve never seen any other Tarantino films. I was open minded, and really had no idea about him. I find it very interesting on how he became such a big star from such a young age. He was your average person working at a movie store, and suddenly he drops out of high school. It’s hard for me to grasp how someone can just drop out of high school and in a few years just make millions of dollars. Enough talking about how he suddenly became famous, and let’s shift gears to Tarantino’s first film produced, Reservoir Dogs. 

Photo Credit: Indiewire.com

For Tarantino’s film debut, he was originally planning on having a very small budget. In the article I read, Tarantino stated that he was planning on using his friends to save some money, and perhaps act in his own film. Turns out Tarantino as seen above does act in his own film. Another hand in help for Tarantino was his producer, Lawrence Bender who was supposed to help out with being the character Nice Guy Eddie. This never panned out, but once production started the budget went from a minimal amount to $1.2 million dollars. Which then later makes Tarantino $2.8 million dollars in the box office.

Having been able to set such a high budget, Tarantino was able to attract some very popular stars. Let’s start out with Mr. Pink who was casted by Steve Buscemi. Buscemi has a huge list to his name including Waterboy, Fargo, Pulp Fiction, and more. Buscemi always seem to make me laugh. He was the first character that I recognized from the start of this movie. Another similar face that popped on the screen was Mr. Blonde who was casted by Michael Madsen. Madsen is a Chicago native and has starred in Sin City, Kill Bill, Free Willy, and more. One more face that stuck out to me was Mr. White who was casted by Harvey Keitel. Keitel has appeared in Taxi Driver, Pulp Fiction, and Scorsese’s Mean Streets. 

Another thing that I found interesting about Tarantino’s first film was that it went on to become a video game. It was a more in detail story of the diamond heist. The game encouraged taking hostages, and to avoid mass killing. The game features the entire soundtrack that was in the movie. Of all the actors in this guy, the famous Michael Madsen is the only one to provide his actual voice into the game. (Warning: this video can be graphic. Includes violence, and profanity).

In Australia, the game was taken off the shelves because it didn’t pass the Classification Board. Even taking it to another step, New Zealand made it not only banned for sale, but also illegal to possess or have a copy of the game.

Overall, this was Tarantino’s first film that he directed. He went from absolutely nothing to making millions of dollars. He was able to increase his budget from being small to a lot, which helped him find a good crew and good talent. I would recommend for others.