Hey! I’m that guy trying to sell my latest screenplay, publish it as a novel or die trying.

In DIE TRYING, you will get an unvarnished look at a bitterly honest writer struggling to make it. No name-dropping or Hollywood phoniness. Just the facts ma’am on what the media landscape really is like behind the curtain.

In TODAY’S ISSUE, we examine the screenplay structure of Quentin Tarantino’s newly reissued Kill Bill masterpiece.

If Hollywood refuses to release quality theatrical films, then I will see the reissued classics.

Yesterday, I sat for nearly five hours for Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair. 

This was Tarantino’s original vision, with new anime sequences, before Harvey Weinstein split the early aughts tale of a pregnant Bride seeking revenge on her mentor/lover and his team of assassins who spoil her wedding by executing everyone.

In the film’s coda, Bill, played by a wily David Carradine, gives a Tarantino signature monologue, declaring that Superman is the greatest hero because he was born with great powers and didn’t choose to become a superhero like Spider-Man.

Superman cloaks his powers with his nebbish newspaper reporter alter ego, Clark Kent.

This introduces the idea of polarity or opposites that Tarantino’s screenplay uses as a structure throughout the film.

The Bride (Uma Thurman) is a killer and a mother. She gives and takes life. 

When she hunts down the four-member Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, Tarantino creates a recurring pattern of violence, reconciliation and final bloody revenge.

For example, the Bride confronts O-Ren Ishii, the leader of the Tokyo yakuza, in the House of Blue Leaves, where she lethally dispatches O-Ren’s squadron of elite fighters as well as her twisted schoolgirl bodyguard.

O-Ren, played by Lucy Liu, initially mocks the Bride and her fighting skills.

As the two duel in a gorgeous snowy Japanese garden, the silly Caucasian delivers a blow. The violence subsides as O-Ren apologizes for her slight. Mutual respect builds between the two deadly killers. The reconciliation ends when the Bride scalps O-Ren with the greatest sword ever made.

This polarity is evident in the film's first and last images. 

We meet the Bride at the wedding rehearsal massacre. In a black and white close-up, she is bloody and near death. In the final shot of the film, we see the Bride in color. Beaming with happiness as she holds her daughter on a bed, the two watching cartoons. 

We open with death and close with life.

Call it polarity or yin-yang in Tarantino’s homage to Asian cinematic genre staples of kung fu and samurai stories.

Thank heaven for the current polarity in the film business. In the current contraction, where studios and streamers are cutting back on theatrical releases, exhibitors are filling seats with the oldies but goodies.

Dig this content? Help us build an audience and forward this newsletter to a friend or trusted associate.

Got something on your mind? We’d love to hear from you.