Monologue: "Like a Virgin"
Monday, April 1, 2013 at 12:41PM Having revisited Tarantino's love of little piggies and Jackie Brown's Best Shots we end the Tarantino 50th Birthday festivities at the appropriate place given the director's love of circular plotting: The Very Beginning. When Quentin Tarantino was, essentially, a nobody, he was still Quentin Tarantino. Long before he was training his camera on knives and hands threatening Jamie Foxx's upside down junk in Django Unchained, he had the balls to open his debut feature with a monologue about big dicks... or Madonna's suggested love for them in her then 8 years old hit single "Like a Virgin".
This is the very first shot of Reservoir Dogs (1992).
Over the black of the credits Mr Brown (Quentin Tarantino) has introduced his thesis "The entire song is a metaphor for big dicks." more...
The first gangster we see is Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen) who disagrees. He thinks it's about a vulnerable girl who meets a sensitive guy who makes her feel new again. The conversation splinters as the camera weaves around the crooks in a cafe. Mr. Brown loses his train of thought but starts again until his (literal) partners-in-crime listen.
Let me tell you what "Like A Virgin" is about. It's all about this cooze who's a regular fuck machine. I'm talkin' morning, day, night, afternoon... dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick, dick!
How many dicks is that? "A lot," Mr White (Harvey Keitel) interjects, annoyed. But Tarantino can't help himself.
Then one day, she meets this John Holmes motherfucker. It's like, "Whoa, baby." He's like Charles Bronson in "The Great Escape." He's diggin' tunnels. Now she's gettin' serious dick action. She's feelin' somethin' she ain't felt since forever: pain, pain.
It hurts. It hurts her. It shouldn't hurt her. Her pussy should be Bubble-Yum by now. But when this cat fucks her, it hurts. It hurts just like it did the first time. You see, the pain is reminding a fuck machine...,what it was once like to be a virgin.
Hence, "Like A Virgin."
For as funny as the opening monologue is -- and I have to think Madonna laughed heartily about it at the time since she once has a great sense of humor about herself -- my favorite beat in the scene is the visual punchline of Mr. Orange's reaction shot; Tim Roth's dumbfounded face sways from side to side, lip curled, brows raised.
I wish this were a gif. It is TOO hilarious.
Is he...
- Trying to remember the lyrics?
- Ready to shoot Mr. Brown in the face to shut him up?
- Reeling from misunderstanding the song?
However you interpret it, it's damn funny.
If Reservoir Dogs were released today, Tim Roth and Harvey Keitel would be winning Oscar traction. They're teary bloody confused chemistry as false/genuine friends in the middle of the ear-slicing / stomach-shooting chaos is the film's weirdly tender soul. Hell, if you released it today Tarantino would surely be applauded for getting back to basics and delivering a much tighter film (99 crackling minutes) than he has seemed capable of ever since.
But back to the basics is an odd thing to say about a debut. What's most remarkable about Reservoir Dogs from our vantage point now, with more years of Tarantino having come and stayed in the interim, is how fully formed the auteur already was. "Let me tell you what 'Like a Virgin' is about," is the first sentence ever uttered in Quentin Tarantino's exhaustively vocal feature filmography. That pop culture pitch to moviegoers is even sharper and more oddly astute in retrospect. He, like Madonna, was never like a virgin at all.
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Reader Comments (11)
The disappearances of Tim Roth and Harvey Keitel from movie screens is a crime that needs fixing. Surely, at least, QT can find room for one of them in his next movie, right?
Tarantino's getting worse, he keeps speaking his reality into existence, saying directors get worse with age and he certainly has. I think Death Proof represents the best of the last of him, and it's not contrarian because it's true for me.
Tarantino's getting worse, he keeps speaking his reality into existence, saying directors get worse with age and he certainly has. I think Death Proof represents the best of the last of him, and that's not contrarian because it's true for me.
Mike, right? I'm unsure as to why some like Samuel L Jackson get to be in every film but no Keitel anymore?
QT's still got it. "Inglourious Basterds" was incredible. "Django Unchained" was certainly not. But I'm ready and invested in future Tarantino works all the same until he calls it quits. He's more than earned that with his filmography.
I hate when a director keeps using the same stars over and over and over again in each of their films. If Christolph Waltz is in Kill Bill Vol 3 I will puke! lol
Also appropriate that QT himself is the one that speaks that first line. Since he's an auteur whose personality and presence is just as big outside of his films as it is when he's behind the camera (or, God forbid, except in this first appearance, in front of the camera), I really can't think of a better way to start his first movie.
I'm right there with you on Roth and Kietel. That last scene with the Mexican standoff is killer in every way. And now I want each of them to get big, meaty, Oscar-baiting roles again. Roth's reaction shot to the "Like a Virgin" is so perfect. Ever since Lie To Me got cancelled, I miss that wonderfully expressive mug of his.
I agree. Roth, especially, was incredible in that film. He was also pretty great in his much smaller but bookending performance in Pulp Fiction.
"Tarantino's getting worse"
People have been saying this for years and years. They said it after Jackie Brown. They said it after Kill Bill V1. They said it after Inglorious Basterds. Foolish.
For me Resevoir and Pulp Fictoin are still my favorite, and criticize all you want but his newer films (Basterds and the Kill Bill saga in particular) are pretty darn great.
Roth somehow kept his accent pretty well under wraps, even when he had to scream a lot of his lines in character because of the worsening condition. I watched Arbitrage not too long ago and his accent was among the worst I have heard in a while and took me out of the movie entirely.
And speaking of Tarantino regulars. I nearly confused Michael Parks' excellent turn in Kill Bill for Keitel (who technically had a voice role in Basterds). Both would actually be quite good choices for a Tarantino movie- if Tarantino stop skimming history textbooks for ideas and templates of a movie.
I feel like Tarantino after going through Kill Bill and Death Proof (I feel so alone in claiming my love of this movie) decided to get back to awards fodder which meant not as female-focused, although Basterds has two good female characters their exits from the movie did not have to happen. Who is to say the Basterds could not have gone the way of Hickox and Stiglitz?
Reservoir Dogs never hid that these were men with a specific view of females without having to show females, playing more to their isolation and insulation in the movie. I tend to give Tarantino the benefit of the doubt with female characters but the kudos I have given him has slowly waned because there was also no reason for Django Unchained to not have strong female characters if we are playing to the alternative history, exploitation movie rules of the movie. Kill Bill had no trouble with this. But I think the Tarantino fatigue has a lot to do with the exhausting of themes: vengeance. It is getting old. There is no longer a real story- just themes bludgeoned to death and characters bludgeoned to death with some good, if tedious dialogue.
I'm all for leaner Tarantino movies. "Django Unchained" was a neverending mess. You could really feel Sally Menke's absence there (RIP). :-(
Sadly, I think Tarantino wlll never reach the former greatness of his earlier work. That monologue in "Reservoir Dogs" is priceless.
Sometimes I think that Tarantino is writing Jacobean revenge tragedies, a format that is hardy, adaptable, and resilient. This format seems especially popular in times of society unease and economic uncertainty. So I don't think he needs to change his themes as much as he needs to tighten up his narrative.
Harvey Keitel is a boon to first time filmmakers, and he's worked with lots of them. Keitel understands narrative and always puts the story first. He finds where the story is and adds bursts of character that propel the story forward.
But working with movie stars can derail narrative, because there's a reluctance to cut their scenes down. Half of DiCaprio's screen time in Django should have been cut out. Brad Pitt is an unusual movie star in that he understands that less is more, that cutting down can make a performance more effective.
So I'm all for Tarantino going for tighter narrative, no more movie stars, and more leading actresses.