Tough Sh*t: Life Advice From a Fat, Lazy Slob Who Did Good (17 page)

That moment meant the world to me; I’ll take it to my grave.

Just like the moment I’d later share with Michael Parks and the greatest filmmaker of my generation.

S
 lacker
was the movie that changed my life, but it was a film I’d see almost a year later, featuring a diamond heist pulled by Madonna-savvy hoods in black suits that’d have a dramatic impact on
what
I’d write about. Whoever made
that
movie seemed awfully geeky—like
me.

Back as far as childhood, I’d try to do things just as well as a normie (sometimes even better), but at the end of the day, my gut, thunder thighs, and childbearing hips earmarked me as somehow less than others. But what was a curse in youth became a blessing in adulthood. Being fat meant relying on a sense of humor to keep from getting my ass kicked simply for an inability to stop at
one
Devil Dog. Bugs Bunny never seemed to get beat up, so lots of us fat kids went for the devil-may-care, smartest-rabbit-in-the-room personality. Do that for ten thousand hours across childhood, and when you’re in your twenties, if you apply
yourself, you can do it for a living. But it all stems from being
different
somehow—and not in a way that’s usually celebrated ’til after years of eating shit.

I suspected Quentin Tarantino was a kindred spirit. I’d purchased and read a bootlegged, xeroxed copy of the
Reservoir Dogs
screenplay before even seeing the flick, but as I watched jewel thieves debate the etiquette of tipping in a movie theater that first time in 1992, I
knew
that, like me, Quentin Tarantino had spent lots of time alone in the dark, dreaming about movies. Different dark room, different movies, same dream.

One of my fondest memories of my film career is seeing
Pulp Fiction
before even the 1994 Cannes jury, in a theater packed with Harvey’s handpicked tastemakers. The flick was like nothing we’d ever seen before while still being as familiar and comfortable as your favorite jeans (and just as cool).
Pulp
was thrilling, then mesmerizing, then educational: I walked out of that screening and started redrafting
Dogma
. Quentin had not only taken it up a notch, he’d also thrilled me with wild tonal changes throughout the narrative. The flick is a roller coaster of a film: funny, then serious, then fucked-up, then iconic, then quietly beautiful. It’s a mind-chigger of a movie that burrows into your cranial hard drive and won’t let you forget it. You see that movie, it’s a part of you forever.

There were always boatloads of benefits in being part of the Miramax family during the dynasty years—not the least of which was seeing movies first (for free). In 1995, Bob Weinstein invited me to a screening of Dimension’s post-
Pulp
Quentin/Robert Rodriguez team-up picture,
From Dusk Till Dawn
. Quentin had already taught me you could talk
about anything in movie dialogue (not solely plot), and he’d already taught me you could fuck with the audience and give ’em a bunch of different movies at once, and they won’t hate you for it (in fact, they’ll love you). Do something
different
—stand apart from the rest—and you’ll always have the audience on your side. And even though
Dusk
wasn’t expected to be much more than a popcorn flick, I was curious about whether Quentin had anything to teach me
this
time.

Michael Parks
owns
the opening of
Dusk
and just about
any
flick he’s in, for that matter. As a fan of performance (I love when actors act), seeing Parks for the first time was akin to discovering masturbation: Where had
this
been all my life? The man delivers dialogue in the least obvious manner and
never
smells like he’s acting. After the screening, I told my producer and friend Scott Mosier, “I wanna work with that guy one day. Can you imagine what you’d learn over the course of production, sitting at the feet of an acting Yoda like him?”

It took fifteen years, but
Red State
finally put me onto a set with the actor who is lots of actors’
favorite
actor. And the legend, Parks, had been introduced to me by the legend, Tarantino.

So when I went up to Quentin’s house to watch
Red State
with him
and
Parks together, it was akin to going to meeting your girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend—the one she’s still really good friends with. And while a critic’s thoughts on my flicks didn’t interest me any longer, hearing the opinion of a guy who directly inspired the movie? The opinion of a Grand Master Filmmaker? I’d be way interested in hearing
that.

Parks and I met in Quentin’s courtyard driveway—where the Pussy Wagon sits idle, forever awaiting The Bride’s escape. After introducing Rie Rasmussen, the director of
Human Zoo
who was going to be watching the flick with us, Quentin came clean.

“I’ve already watched it,” he chuckled. “I watched it Friday night. By myself.”

At which point everything in me went away but the filmmaker, and I asked that all-important question …

“Did you dig it?”

“I fucking loved it! That’s why I’m—”

I didn’t let him finish. I just hugged him as hard as I could.

You see, Quentin’s was the only review that was ever gonna matter.
Red State
was inspired by the man’s work, his casting choices, his daring
Pulp Fiction
tonal shifts. With
Red State
, I didn’t want to make a Kevin Smith movie. This time, I wanted to make a movie that was Quentin Tarantino by way of the Coen brothers, with just a soupçon of Kev. And to have Quentin not only watch the flick but also dig it enough to watch it again in the span of seventy-two hours? That’s graduation day, folks. Ain’t no reason for me to continue as a filmmaker past
Hit Somebody
—because I scored the respect of a Grand Master.

He said it stood beside
Chasing Amy
as his favorite of mine, and then said, “Your words coming out of Parks was perfect.” He loved that he never knew where it was going. He just plain loved it—which was all that the guy who made the film wanted to hear, considering how often throughout the writing and shooting of
Red State,
he’d wonder, “What
would Quentin do?” before executing a shot, making an edit, or even eating lunch on set.

“Well, we really don’t have to watch it again now …,” I started to say.

“No, I wanna watch it again,” he countered. “And I wanna show Rie.”

Rie nodded and said, “He’s been talking about it all day.”

You think
that’s
nirvana for any filmmaker—knowing your artistic better is willing to watch your flick
twice
within seventy-two hours? You’ll never know true, pure bliss as a filmmaker until you’ve sat
beside
Quentin watching your own flick.

As we all know, the man
loves
movies. Tarantino is the most interactive audience member on the planet. He makes a home screening feel like a full house at the multiplex. Even in a room of four, he will make you feel like you’re screening at the Palais. It’s not an act and it’s certainly no hustle; he watches movies like he makes them—with pure, unadulterated joy over the concept of storytelling.

This screening had the added bonus, the heightened effect, of having Parks with us there in the room, next to two dudes who love him so much, they were geeking out over every little nuance, eye shift, grumble, and song.
This
is the only person in the world who’d ever appreciate Michael’s performance on the same level I do. As he watched Parks act, Quentin communicated
exactly
what I felt every day we shot and feel every time I watch
Red State
: Michael Parks is the single greatest living actor on the planet, and he should be working
lots
more.

After the credits, we talked about how weird it was that Harvey didn’t make
Red State
, as it’s clearly a Miramaxian flick, intended to invoke the golden age of the mini-major, right down to the design of the Harvey Boys logo, which aped the classic Miramax Films logo of the mid-’90s. Quentin offered some soothing insight into the Weinstein
Red State
pass-over, as even
he’d
felt the confusing sting of the brothers doing a blank face when they twice passed on
Hostel
—a flick with Quentin’s name on it. Miramax was often called “the house that Quentin built” by Harvey himself. If Harvey and Bob could pass on the guy who built their house, they could certainly say no to the mooch smoking dope with his friends in the back pool house.

Quentin compared our self-distribution experiment to an old grindhouse release, at which point I told him
why
it felt so familiar to him: Back in 1997, he’d actually suggested it himself, during a South by Southwest panel featuring an indie dream team: Linklater, Tarantino, Rodriguez, Steven Soderbergh, Mike Judge, and me.

Someone asked a question about how to secure theatrical distribution. Quentin asked the audience how many people in the room wanted to make films and how many were potential distributors-in-training. There wasn’t a hand up for distributor. Quentin said that the next generation of filmmakers should distinguish themselves by forming distribution companies instead of production companies … and that always stuck with me. I kept waiting for it to happen. But that ol’ indie spirit, it don’t wait forever. Sooner or later, indie spirit rolls up the sleeves and says, “’Scool—we’ll just do it
ourselves
.” And
Red State
is
very
indie.

We eventually made our way into the living room,
where the world’s biggest movie fan then did something that touched me more than his praise for my flick: He produced a videocassette.

In Quentin’s house, this is a wholly remarkable feat unto itself based on the amount of stuff he’s got piled up: old movie posters, DVDs, laser discs, VHS tapes, lunch boxes, jukeboxes, toys, artwork, and film prints. He lives like Arthur (the Dudley Moore version). The videocassette he pulled out was nothing short of magical, a relic from an old world and the seed of what was to come for him, and then later, even
me
.

“This is my ‘Best of Michael Parks’ tape. See?” He held out the decades-old VHS cassette that still bore a faded label delineating it as such. “I made it back in the eighties, after I saw him in this amazing TV movie called
Club Life
. Well, the movie’s not amazing, but Michael is—so I taped his best scenes. A few years later, he did the best work of his career in
The China Lake Murders
, and I’ve got scenes from that and
Spiker
, where he plays a soccer coach.”

“Volleyball,” Michael added, rolling a cigarette.

You consider yourself a movie geek until you talk movies with Quentin. He’s very much like Jason Mewes, inasmuch as he’ll find the good in
anything
. As he played his favorite scenes, I remembered using my dad’s tape recorder to snag the audio from
Jaws
when it finally ran on ABC (long before the days of cable or home video). This was a kindred spirit: the dude who made a mix tape of one of his favorite actors’ best moments in movies nobody—not even the filmmakers themselves—likely remember. You start to see the beauty hidden within the cheese. Nothing about even an ’80s exploitation TV movie is dismissed without fair, comprehensive, and artistic consideration.

And all the while, good ol’ Michael was like the guest star in a married couple’s threesome: All praise, attention, and cock-suckery were bestowed upon him by a pair of filmmakers (one great, one trying) who absolutely adore him. Scene after scene on that tape, it didn’t matter what the caliber of the flick on display was considered to be, Parks dropped science. I’ll never forget watching Michael watch himself on Quentin’s big TV—seeing his life flash before his eyes without that pesky bother of having to draw a final breath. In a time when no one cared a tin whistle for an acting talent as staggering as Michael’s, Quentin didn’t carry merely a torch for Michael Parks, he carried the entire Chicago Fire. Because of that, I got to make the best film I’ve ever made.

As a filmmaker and an artist, Quentin has always been, for lack of a better expression, a role model. He showed me it was okay to write dialogue about pop culture, which allowed me to write movie dialogue about
other
movie dialogue—the language of my cine-centric world. He showed me it was okay to let characters ramble and pontificate. He showed me it was okay to mix comedy and jaw-dropping, scene-stopping violence in a movie. He showed me Michael Parks. I made
Red State
hoping it would be as cool as a Quentin Tarantino film, never dreaming I’d get to watch it
with
him. And as I was leaving Quentin’s that night, I gave him a hug and said, “I’m so glad you dig it.” Quentin quickly shot back, “I fucking
love
this movie, okay?”