By Patrick Macias
 

Q: Do you think that Kill Bill Vol. 2 is a different kind of film than Vol. 1? 

Lawrence Bender: Very much so. For me, Vol. 1 is a very kinetic show-off piece of cinematic filmmaking that combines all these different genres like Wu Shu kung fu, samurai, spaghetti westerns, putting them all into the blender and hitting high speed. This is a much more emotional journey. But it’s still so Quentin Tarantino. You know, it has that sense of humor, and it has these great monologues. It still has some great action sequences, but the other one is more action orientated. Here we get more of Quentin’s great dialogue. But I guess for me, its a much more emotional journey. I think women are going to love it, especially the stuff with Uma and her kid. On the other hand, you’ve got the most amazing cat fight between two blond beauties that you could ever dream for. 

Q: In terms of scale, how does Kill Bill compare with other films you’ve produced?   

LB:  The only thing that could compare in terms of scale are a couple of movies I’ve made in other countries. I made the Mexican (Gore Verbinski, 2001) in Mexico and I made Anna and the King (Andy Tennant, 1999) with Jodie Foster and Chow Yun Fat in Malaysia. Its always a challenge going to a different country and shooting there. But this was by far the biggest challenge. Four different countries and 155 days of shooting is by far the biggest thing I’ve ever tackled. 

Q: How do you cope with the stress of it all?   

LB:  Well, it is a lot of pressure. No question about it. You try and plan as much as you can and at a certain point you have to take it one step at a time. For example, what country are we shooting in? And why? Are we going to train the actors there? But if we train the actors first and plan to shoot certain scenes first, then the training will be out of shape. So its huge, just this huge puzzle in your brain. And of course, you go to work and nothing happens like you expect, because that’s just the nature of making movies. So its a mixture of trying to be a control freak and trying to get everything that you can together, and then having to let go knowing that nothing is going to happen the way you planned it, and accepting it when that happens. 

Q: So what’s it like when you have to tell Quentin no?   

LB:  Its brutally difficult, because I don’t want to tell him that. He thinks out of the box in a way that very few people do. Usually when he has ideas, they’re usually pretty good. Sometimes I don’t agree with them and I’ll argue with him and most of the time I’ll wind up being wrong. Sometimes I’ll be right. Of course he listens and he’s reasonable. But a lot of times he has this point of view that so amazing that you want to deliver for him. But sometimes it can’t be done. Sometimes things are impossible or they aren’t realistic. He gets it and that’s fine. 

Q: What happened with the missing fight sequences between David Carradine and Michael Jai White?    

LB:  Early on, the script changed. There used to be this big scene in a gambling casino and we took that out. It became another scene with David Carradine and Uma on a street in China and there’s a fight there with Michael Jai White. I think what ended up happening is that it became clear that we didn’t want to see David fight. We just wanted to build him up and build him. We didn’t want to ruin the suspense with scenes of him fighting. We wanted to stretch it out as far as we could before he fights with Uma. So we end up kind of defining Bill him through her eyes more. But that fight scene we shot is a great scene. It just didn’t make sense for the movie. But it was a good scene. 

Q: Are you and Quentin still considering a Kill Bill anime spin off?   

LB:  Yeah. Absolutely. Honestly though, I don’t think Quentin is thinking about anything else right now except finishing this movie. I mean, we’ve got two weeks left to get this entire thing finished, and I don’t know exactly what we are going to do next. As for anime though, we could do something about Vivica A. Fox`s kid, or when BB grows up. It could be a flashback about Bill and Bud’s relationship flashback. There’s a lot of stories that could come out of it, and I think Quentin would love to do that. It just a matter of what he’s going to do next. You can talk to Quentin at different times over the year and he’ll tell you something slightly different each time about where he’s going next. But at the end of the day I just know that there’s no way he’ll actually be able to say what he’s going to do next, even if he tells you himself. I mean he finishes a movie, goes to Cannes with it, then promotes it, then goes home and takes a breath and says, “okay, what girl do I want to date next?”
 

-Go to Kill Bill review
-Go to Tarantino interview
-Go to David Carradine interview
-Go to Lawrence Bender interview