Screenplays By Quentin Tarantino

"[last words before she dies, while screaming] F***ING B**CH!!! [screaming] F***ING B**CH!!! [screaming] I'LL KILL YOU!!! YOU'RE F***ING DEAD!!! [screaming] YOU B**CH!!! YOU B**CH!!! [moaning and screaming] I'LL F***ING KILL YOU, YOU B**CH!!! [hissing and screaming] OH, I'LL GET YOU!!! I'M GONNA... [screaming] WHERE ARE YOU?!?! LEMME F***ING KILLL YOU!!! [continues screaming] WHERE ARE YOU?!?! I'M COMING, YOU F***ING B**CH!!! [screaming] YOU'RE F***ING DEAD!!! YOU'RE DEAD!!! [continues screaming and crying] OH...SH*T!!!!!! [screaming]"

"[on the phone with Bill] Let me put it this way: if you ever start feeling sentimental, go to Barstow, California. When you get here, walk into a florist and buy a bunch of flowers. Then you take those flowers to Huntington Cemetery on Fuller and Guadalupe, look for the headstone marked Paula Schultz, then lay them on the grave. Because you will be standing at the final resting place of Beatrix Kiddo."

"[lighting up a cigarette after Budd has collapsed from a black mamba bite] I'm sorry, Budd. That was rude of me, wasn't it? Budd, I'd like you to meet my friend, the black mamba. Black mamba, this is Budd. You know, before I picked that little fella up, I looked it up on the internet. Fascinating creature, the black mamba. Listen to this. [reads from a notepad] "In Africa, the saying goes, 'In the bush an elephant can kill you, a leopard can kill you, and a black mamba can kill you. But only with the mamba' — and this is true in Africa since the dawn of time — 'is death sure. Hence its handle: Death Incarnate.'" Pretty cool, huh? "Its neurotoxic venom is one of nature's most effective poisons, acting on the nervous system, causing paralysis. The venom of a black mamba can kill a human in four hours if, say, bitten on the ankle or the thumb. However, a bite to the face or torso can bring death from paralysis within 20 minutes." Now, you should listen to this, 'cause this concerns you. "The amount of venom that can be delivered from a single bite can be gargantuan." You know, I've always liked that word "gargantuan," and I so rarely have an opportunity to use it in a sentence. "If not treated quickly with anti-venom, 10 to 15 milligrams can be fatal to human beings. However, the black mamba can deliver as much as 100 to 400 milligrams of venom from a single bite." [puts out her cigarette and addresses Budd] Now in these last agonizing minutes of life you have left, let me answer the question you asked earlier more thoroughly. Right at this moment, the biggest "R" I feel is Regret. Regret that maybe the greatest warrior I have ever known met her end at the hands of a bushwhackin', scrub, alky piece of shit like you. That woman deserved better."

"My Pussy Wagon died on me."

"Looked dead, didn't I? Well, I wasn't, but it wasn't for lack of trying I can tell you that. Actually, Bill's last bullet put me in a coma, a coma I was to lie in for four years. When I woke up, I went on what the movie advertisements referred to as a roaring rampage of revenge. I roared and I rampaged and I got bloody satisfaction. I've killed a hell of a lot of people to get to this point. But I have only one more. The last one, the one I'm driving to right now. The only one left. And when I arrive at my destination, I am gonna kill Bill."

"I'm a killer! I'm a murdering bastard, you know that. And there are consequences to breaking the heart of a murdering bastard."

"I suppose the traditional way to conclude this is we cross Hanzo swords. Well, it just so happens this hacienda comes with its very own private beach. And this private beach just so happens to look particularly beautiful bathed in moonlight. And there just so happens to be a full moon out tonight. So, swordfighter, if you want to sword fight, that's where I suggest. But if you wanna be old school about it, and you know I'm all about old school, then we can wait till dawn, and slice each other up at sunrise, like a couple of real-life, honest-to-goodness samurais."

"Is that not the perfect visual image of life and death? A fish flapping on the carpet, and a fish not flapping on the carpet."

"Once upon a time in China, some believe around the year one double-ought three, head priest of the White Lotus Clan, Pai Mei, was walking down the road – contemplating whatever it is that a man of Pai Mei's nearly infinite powers would contemplate - which is another way of saying "who knows?" - when a Shaolin monk appeared on the road, traveling in the opposite direction. As the monk and the priest crossed paths, Pai Mei, in a practically unfathomable display of generosity, gave the monk the slightest of nods. The nod was not returned.Now, was it the intention of the Shaolin monk to insult Pai Mei? Or did he just fail to see the generous social gesture? The motives of the monk remain unknown. What is known were the consequences.The next morning Pai Mei appeared at the Shaolin Temple and demanded of the Temple's head abbot that he offer Pai Mei his neck to repay the insult. The Abbot at first tried to console Pai Mei, only to find Pai Mei was … inconsolable.So began the massacre of the Shaolin Temple and all sixty of the monks inside at the fists of the White Lotus. And so began the legend of Pai Mei's five-point-palm-exploding-heart technique."

"Maybe it is progress of a sort—moral if not cinematic—that in KB2 Tarantino largely eschews the hyper-violence that characterized its predecessor. But rather than replace it with, say, clever dialogue, imaginative plotting, or meaningful Character development, he's substituted the cinematic equivalent of dead air. He intends this to be a nod to the stately, deliberate style of Leone, but it's unaccompanied by any of the elements that made that style great—the use of landscape (both facial and geological), the musical crescendos (Tarantino borrows some Morricone tunes in KB2, but seems afraid of using them in anything other than a minor key), the rhythmic interaction of lengthy buildup followed by momentary violence. (Quentin prefers lengthy buildup followed by lengthy violence; it's not the same thing.) Leone was by nature a mythologizer; Tarantino is by nature a demythologizer. His killer-heroes are not silent, stoic types. They're video store clerks with guns, babblers on every subject from Madonna to French cheeseburgers."

"The audience has expanded. We have more women this time than we had on Volume 1. There was less violence in this one, and that came out in the publicity and the reviews, which drove more women into the theater. And the movie really stands by itself; you don't have to see Volume 1 to enjoy Volume 2."

"Vol. 2 makes a compelling case for a more serious interpretation of Tarantino’s talent, and the film justifies the otherwise vapid (and very cool) Vol. 1, which should never have existed as a separate film. The commercial logistics of a four-hour movie aside, Kill Bill would have worked best as a single entity, the second half imbuing the first with a certain weight. Indeed, Tarantino’s lip fetish is itself enough to empower Vol. 2 with far more powerful scenes than Vol. 1: when a tied-up Beatrix must wrap her lips around a flashlight, the degrading image is worth more than any moment in the first volume. Here Tarantino employs the same technique as in Reservoir Dogs, where he subtly focused on his characters’ ears before slicing one off in the end. It’s a cruel trick, but a crafty one—and proof that Tarantino plays more than lip service to the art of film."

"Q: Uma, how was it to shoot the coffin scene, as a claustrophobic person myself it seemed very scary to watch?"

"We try to appeal to her maternal instincts, and suggest that the ending, in which Beatrix is reunited with her four-year-old daughter, makes the film a kind of love story, a family romance. Did she like that about it? "Yeah, I think it takes a tremendous turn where the character is thrown back into life, because if that hadn't happened she might as well have given herself a five-point exploding palm and died."

"Uma Thurman doesn’t get nailed to a cross in Kill Bill Vol. 2, but writer-director Quentin Tarantino runs her battered character, called the Bride, through a gauntlet that is gory enough to make Mel Gibson flinch. No matter. You’ll thrill to the action, savor the tasty dialogue and laugh like bloody hell. Tarantino has done more than continue the revenge tale he started in Vol. 1 — the Bride wants payback after being left for dead in her wedding dress by Bill (David Carradine) and four other killers in his Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, of which she was once queen bee. Vol. 2 ties the events of Vol. 1 together, just like The Return of the King did for The Lord of the Rings trilogy. You watch and think, “I get it now.” Tarantino has made the hottest mix tape in the history of cinema. Like a master DJ, he samples every lowdown, B-movie genre that formed him, from kung fu and samurai flicks to anime and spaghetti westerns, then filters it through his imagination to create something totally Tarantino: a blast of pure movie oxygen."

"Uma Thurman – Beatrix Kiddo/The Bride"

"David Carradine – Bill"

"Gordon Liu – Pai Mei"

"Michael Madsen – Budd"

"Daryl Hannah – Elle Driver"

"Vernita Green: Black Mamba. I should have been motherfucking Black Mamba."

"Vivica A. Fox – Vernita Green/Copperhead"

"Daryl Hannah – Elle Driver/California Mountain Snake"

"Chiaki Kuriyama – Gogo Yubari"

"Sonny Chiba – Hattori Hanzo"

"Lucy Liu – O-Ren Ishii/Cottonmouth"

"Uma Thurman – The Bride/Black Mamba"

"David Carradine – Bill/Snake Charmer"

"For Tarantino, who set aside his skill at dialogue to show he can do pure action, the film is a challenge to his ego. Ads trumpet Kill Bill as “the Fourth Film by Quentin Tarantino.” Talk about hubris. Fellini didn't even start counting till 8 1/2. But moxie is part of Tarantino's DNA. Who else would make his first film in six years a wet kiss to kung fu and pack it with his fetishes for ultraviolence, Uma Thurman's feet and music from Nancy Sinatra to RZA? And who else could pull it off? Kill Bill is damn near as good as Tarantino thinks it is."

"Like a dick-swinging flasher, Quentin Tarantino lets all his obsessions hang out in Kill Bill: Vol. 1. Some people may want to kill him for it, and not just because they'll have to pay again to see Vol. 2, set for release on February 20. Kill Bill is an act of indecent exposure. Everything that makes Tarantino tumescent — kung-fu fighting, samurai flicks, spaghetti westerns and babe-on-babe head bashing, preferably with swords — is stuffed into the 110 minutes of Vol. 1. No use hammering Tarantino for raiding the lost ark of 1970s pop culture when his movie is killingly funny, wildly inventive, bloody as a gushing artery and heart-stoppingly beautiful. Tarantino has the talent to show us what's sacred about the profane, even if you didn't enjoy a misspent youth in seedy theaters with floors sticky from God knows what. In Kill Bill, Tarantino brings delicious sin back to movies — the thrill you get from something down, dirty and dangerous."

"I don't like realistic violence. In fact, I don't really like violence full stop. The violence is Quentin's thing. I don't groove with him on it. But I think the way he executes his violence is comic, creative, dramatic and playful, and not titillating in that horrifically realistic way. It's clearly a creative expression. If you look at the House of Blue Leaves sequence in Kill Bill Volume 1, the reason he wanted it to be so operatic and absurdist was because, if it had been less ridiculous, it would be more upsetting."

"Q: Kill Bill is an eclectic movie, stitched together from samurai movies, Yakuza movies, spaghetti westerns..."

"The sordid creepiness that occasionally seeps into Kill Bill makes you wonder what Mr. Tarantino is trying to do, and whether he is entirely in control of his own imagination."

"While being so relentlessly exposed to a filmmaker's idiosyncratic turn-ons can be tedious and off-putting, the undeniable passion that drives Kill Bill is fascinating, even, strange to say it, endearing. Mr. Tarantino is an irrepressible showoff, recklessly flaunting his formal skills as a choreographer of high-concept violence, but he is also an unabashed cinephile, and the sincerity of his enthusiasm gives this messy, uneven spectacle an odd, feverish integrity. Old movies are not the sole focus of his obsession. The most vivid emotional connection in Kill Bill does not take place between any of the characters, but between the director and his star, Uma Thurman. Mr. Tarantino has referred to Ms. Thurman as my actress, and as Marlene Dietrich to his Josef von Sternberg. Accordingly, much of the perverse energy of Kill Bill arises from his near-maniacal fascination with her. She is at once his idol, his alter-ego, his dream lover and his muse, the way Anna Karina was for Jean-Luc Godard in the early 1960's."

"In parts of Pulp Fiction (1994) and in his last picture, Jackie Brown (1997), Mr. Tarantino seemed to be using the action-exploitation formulas of which he is so enamored as stepping stones toward an exploration of plausible characters and authentic emotions. Now, it seems, his interests have swung in the opposite direction, and he has immersed himself, his characters and his audience in a highly artificial world, a looking-glass universe that reflects nothing beyond his own cinematic obsessions."

"WITH its relentless bloodshed and scrambled, inconclusive narrative, Quentin Tarantino's long-awaited fourth feature, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, is certain to provoke both awe and revulsion. The film's detractors and its fans are likely to agree, however, that the movie, a densely referential pastiche of B-movie attitudes and situations, is above all an exercise in style."

"The violence is ridiculous, in the literal sense of the word: When a baddie (there are no goodies) is decapitated, the neck-stump sprays blood like an infernal lawn sprinkler. These abattoir antics might amuse in limited doses (though John Cleese's Black Knight proved 30 years ago that the joke is not in the mutilation but in the obliviousness to it). Yet transgressing limits is Tarantino's whole point, and so we get stabbing after stabbing, severed limb after severed limb, arterial spray after arterial spray, until the walls are painted red and the floor piled high with body parts. And though the carnage is composed by famed martial-arts choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping, it lacks both the athletic poetry he brought to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the dizzying spatial geometry he presented in The Matrix. Rather, with the exception of a single sequence featuring a ball-and-chain, the fight in the restaurant (which runs to more than 20 minutes) feels like what it is: a long, mostly earthbound slog through bone and sinew. By the end, it's not funny, or beautiful, or even shocking. It's merely tiresome, an hour spent at the Safeway meat counter."

"In an interview following the release of Reservoir Dogs in 1992, Tim Roth ventured that "I honestly think you could take the same script but reshoot it with women and it would work. It would be the most controversial film ever. ... You could call it Reservoir Bitches." It took more than a decade, but with Kill Bill Volume 1 (out on video this week), Quentin Tarantino finally made his Reservoir Bitches. And while it's not the most controversial film ever (nor even of the past twelve months), that was clearly the director's aspiration. Originally conceived as a single film but split into two "volumes" due to its length (Volume 2 opens in theaters on Friday), Kill Bill is, by most accounts, the most violent film ever released by a major studio. If that weren't enough to ensure its notoriety, the vast majority of that violence is performed by officially hot actresses Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, and Vivica A. Fox."

"It's a really important moment... I didn't think it was gory, because it wasn't a lot of blood, it was just the head was gone, at the end. I just feel like it represents how important it was for her to go to Japan and get that sword made by Sonny Chiba's character, Hattori Hanzo. Hattori Hanzo's sword is in itself its own individual character in the movie. And to have that payoff in the end, with how strong it was, it could just slice her head off like that, through a skull, which is very difficult to do. It really takes, it comes all the way back around for why she went to get that sword and why it was important, and how for her character, she had always wanted one of those swords. To die by that sword is really the only way that she could have died with respect. I think the Bride knew that. So they sort of allow each other the respect that they deserved... You'd have to think that if you do something that's not such a great thing, even though she was taking orders from Bill, that it's going to come back at you, and you have to take responsibility for that moment. I think that she probably knew at some point that that was going to happen."

"I actually didn't think she was tough. I didn't, I thought she was a really cool character to play because she was a survivor, you know what I mean? She had so many reasons why she had become what she was. She had to continue fighting all her life to basically stay alive, from the moment that her parents were killed. He (Tarantino) pretty much lays it out for you... O-Ren Ishii wasn't the type of person who was ever gonna die peacefully in her bed, you know what I mean? She was going to die fighting and that was how it was gonna be. She died the best way that she could have ever imagined, with the Hattori Hanzo sword. So ultimately, it was a very respectful death, and I think her character is more of a survivor than someone who's tough, you know?"

"Compared to Q.T.'s slice 'em, dice 'em deli, the much-hyped Neo versus 100 Agent Smiths showdown appears unforgivably gutless and soulless. Moral guardians may be outraged but, after a build that most audiences will find slow, it is the bloody geysers Tarantino uncorks here that will have them joining the queue for the very next showing."

"For three months, Uma Thurman, Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, David Carradine, and I spent eight hours a day studying martial arts at a gym they put together in Culver City. It was nine to five, Monday through Friday. If you didn't walk in the door between 8:55 and 8:59, you were in trouble at 9:01. I thought I was in the damn Olympics or something."

"We went out to Kushiyu on Ventura in Tarzana. At dinner, he told me his plan for the film: There would be no quick cuts or getting away with special effects to make us look like real warriors. I had to commit to six months of training, and all of the actors needed to become experts in martial arts to make his vision real on the screen."

"That really was a Hattori Hanzo sword. [falls dead, the top of her head slashed off]"

"Silly Caucasian girl likes to play with samurai swords. You might not be able to fight like a samurai, but you can at least die like a samurai."

"O-REN ISHII! Shoubu wa mada tsuicha inai yo! [calling out O-Ren in Japanese: "You and I have unfinished business!"]"

"[in Japanese] Those of you lucky enough to still have your lives, take them with you! But leave the limbs you have lost. They belong to me now. [to Sofie, in English] Except you, Sofie! You stay right where you are!"

"[punctuating each word by spanking a boy with the flat side of her sword] This - is what - you get - for fucking - around - with Yakuzas! Go home to your mother!"

"So, O-Ren... Any more subordinates for me to kill?"

"[about O-Ren] O-Ren Ishii was born on an American military base in Tokyo, Japan. The half-Japanese, half-Chinese American army brat made her first acquaintance with death at the age of 9. It was that age she witnessed the death of her parents at the hands of Japan's most ruthless Yakuza boss, Boss Matsumoto. She swore revenge. Luckily, for her, Boss Matsumoto was a pedophile. At 11, she got her revenge. By 20, she was one of the top female assassins in the world. At 25, she did her part in the killing of 9 innocent people, including my unborn daughter, in a small wedding chapel in El Paso, Texas. But on that day, four years ago, she made one big mistake. She should've killed 10."