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Reservoir Dogs (1992)
Starring Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Steve Buscemi. Cinematography by Andrzej Sekula. Edited by Sally Menke. Produced by Lawrence Bender. Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Joe Cabot has assembled a team of six criminals to pull off a big diamond heist. Each man is given a code name and the job is planned down to the finest detail. Everything seems to be falling in place until an alarm is tripped and the police arrive. Everyone scatters and makes their way back to the rendezvous point.
Mr. Orange has been shot in the gut and is bleeding profusely. He is being shuttled by Mr. White who is trying his best to console him. When they finally arrive at the old warehouse, they find that Mr. Pink has already arrived. They argue about what step to take next until Mr. Blonde arrives. Mr. Brown and Mr. Blue never make it back. The four remaining hoods bicker and fight with each other as they wait for the arrival of Joe and his son Nice Guy Eddie.
It’s tough being a young and struggling writer in Hollywood; especially for one who will not be satisfied just writing. For three years Quentin Tarantino tried to find legs for his first legitimately marketable screenplay, True Romance. The problem wasn’t that it was a horrible piece of writing, quite the contrary actually. The problem was that Tarantino would not sell the screenplay without his name attached to the director’s slot.
And so for those three years he waited with another doomed deal always just beyond the horizon. Finally, after completely burning out on the project, True Romance was picked up by British producer Stanley Margolis. Tarantino decided to use the money he earned from the sale of his script (the Writer’s Guild minimum of thirty thousand dollars) to fund the production of his freshly written heist picture. Reservoir Dogs, as it was ambiguously titled, was inspired by the pulp crime novels of the thirties and forties that Tarantino loved so dearly. It would indeed be his directorial debut, but not in the way, or with the budget, he originally envisioned.
Like Tarantino, Lawrence Bender was beating on the door of the film industry begging to be let in. The two crossed paths just before Tarantino launched into his ultra-low budget production of Reservoir Dogs. Bender loved the script and showed it to his acting class mentor, who in turn shared it with his wife, who then passed it on to her friend Harvey Keitel. Keitel was so impressed with the screenplay that he not only wanted to star in it, but offered to help find it funding as well.
With his involvement, and some positive criticism at the Sundance Institute, Reservoir Dogs was able to muster up one point five million dollars; modest by industry standards, but leaps and bounds beyond what Tarantino started with. The money was put to good use and Reservoir Dogs went on to find unprecedented critical success. Financially the film struggled in the US, but oddly enough it made a killing overseas. With just one film under his belt Tarantino had elevated himself from complete obscurity into the golden child of independent filmmaking.
Budget: $1,200,000
Total US Gross: $2,832,029
Genre: Crime
Runtime: 99 Minutes
US Release Date: 10/23/92
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Awards: Sundance Film Festival: Nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for a drama.
Tagline: Four Perfect Killers. One Perfect Crime. Now All They Have To Fear Is Each Other.
Quote: “Are you gonna bark all day, little doggy, or are you gonna bite?”
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