Terrible news to report. This morning Sally Menke's body was discovered in Beachwood Canyon. She was 56 years old. It may have been California's extreme heat on Monday when she went missing but details are still emerging. She had been hiking with her dog, a black lab (the dog is okay). The amazing film editor was best known for her work with Quentin Tarantino. She edited all of his feature films.
Christoph Waltz poses with Tarantino's editing queen Sally Menke, during the awards run for Inglourious Basterds.
So you can thank her in part for the wondrous control of Tarantino's very distinctive pacing, intricate performance shaping (and so many great performances had to have been carefully shaved, trimmed and aided by Sally's deft hands), freeze framing (just mentioned!) and not least of all those incredibly precise long-form action sequences in Kill Bill Vol 1 and Kill Bill Vol 2.
And here's a lovely compilation from Inglourious Basterds of the actors saying "hi Sally" before and after takes to amuse her in the editing room. My favorite is Til Schweiger's. He's so serious in the film but such a goof here.
Heartbreaking in retrospect but so sweet to think about. She must have so enjoyed these moments.
Fine farewells:
Edgar Wright (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) shares his last conversation with her.
Aint it Cool News Tarantino: "I don't write with anybody. I write by myself. But when it comes to the editing, I write with Sally."
ArtsBeat She was also hiking when she first heard she got the Reservoir Dogs job.
Joblo Menke's own words having worked through both of her pregnancies "my babies had Tarantino movies played to them in the womb, but they seem to have turned out OK."
Our hearts go out to Menke's family and to QT.
Trivia: She was nominated for an Oscar twice for Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds. Here at the Film Experience she won two medals, the bronze for Basterds and a gold medal for Kill Bill Vol. 1(2003) -- I'm still horrified that the editor's branch didn't honor her genius there.
[Great Moments in Screen Bitchery #580, Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill, Vol. 2]
Ya think?
It's even ruder if Budd doesn't like being read to. That's a common pet peeve, you know. In those last agonizing minutes of life he has left, she'll do just that.
P.S. Quentin Tarantino sure can write/direct the hell out of a scene, can't he?
P.P.S. Useless Trivia! Q: What is Nathaniel's absolute favorite thing about Kill Bill Vol 1 and Kill Bill Vol 2? A: How similar Elle Driver ("California Mountain Snake") and The Bride ("Black Mamba") actually are, right down to their love of deadly handwritten notepads. (One never thinks of notepads as violent. teehee) Though it should be noted that Elle has more meticulous handwriting.
Madonna was once both adored and reviled as "The Great Appropriator" so I suppose it's only fair that Lady Gaga borrows from her. When I first heard "Alejandro" I kept thinking 'Oh, Ok. Gaga has to have her own "La Isla Bonita," too.' And then she went and collaborated with frequent Madonna iconographer Steven Klein for the music video.
So even though Klein is shamelessly borrowing from his own past work here, the wonderful thing about Gaga is that, like her spiritual pop empress predecessor, she's her own artist, too. This makes the appropriation palatable as well as fun... until crazed fans start giving her credit for everything. [But that's another funny subject matter entirely.] I mean even Madonna didn't invent the chameleon approach to pop stardom, though her fans, like Gagas, also tried to give her credit for it at the time.
Doesn't that "what on earth will they wear/look like next?" thing go directly back to Bowie? Or is it earlier than that. Paging pop historians???
Blond helmet bobs and flare pants forevah!
So mark my words. Someday soon -- let's say within the next 3 years -- Gaga is going to have her Madonna "Live to Tell" moment wherein she totally shocks the world, not with a new provocative look but by showing up with a demure, classic one. It'll get everyone talking as much as any diet coke can hair rollers ever did.
The Madonna / Steven Klein collaboration from 2003 One might call the stylings Gaga-esque but for the year in question
So, my point is this: Clumsy homage/ripoff like the kind that Christina Aguilera does in "Not Myself Tonight" when she plagiarizes both Madonna and Gaga *shudder* is not fun at all and should be looked down upon. But riffing on the work of others in a new context or with a fresh twist is totally fun and what many great artists do.
We see this in feature films all the time, too. Both of the best shots in Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces are arguably inspired by other work: There's that white sheet shrouded sex scene (Margritte) and that moving emotional climax with the hands caressing the static image (which I'm hearing is a Godard reference... but it totally works in the Almodóvarian context). A couple weeks ago we chatted briefly about the various A grade riffs on Ingmar Bergman's Persona (Lynch's Mulholland Dr and Altman's Three Women). And everyone knows that the wildly popular Quentin Tarantino is all about referencing other movies. But whether or not we recognize the references --I often don't with Tarantino since the genres he loves most are weak spots for me -- great artists reference past work only in the service of making their own fresh visions.
The only real issue with doing this is when the new artist acts as if it's completely and 100% their invention. Which is why it was a shame that Beyonce's otherwise awesome and awesomely ubiquitous "Single Ladies" video didn't have a "thank you Bob Fosse" attached to it, for example.
Madonna & Gaga. They're both "tops"
So, I can't help but think about Madonna the entire way through"Alejandro" maybe because of the Catholic imagery. I see "Alejandro" like so: Madonna's men in cone bras helping hot blond divas masturbate (Like a Virgin, Blonde Ambition Tour), women topping men suggestively in dance choreography (Express Yourself, Blonde Ambition Tour) and catholic girls obsessing over funerals and death in snowy black and white ("Oh Father") plus a couple choreographed bits from "Human Nature" and "Express Yourself" all get tossed into the Gaga/Klein blender and come out the other end as an angry military puree. Here the woman isn'ttopping men with a flirtatious feminism but actually appears to be penetrating them rather more subversively like a man would. And instead of just obsessing at the coffin and weeping for her dead loved one, the girl is actually leading the funereal procession. And the cone bras become guns. Bang Bang.
I'm not sure I've ever fully registered the sheer amount of aggression in Gaga's art before. But after the mass murder of "Telephone", the crispy end-gag in "Bad Romance" and the poisoned Skarsgaard in "Paparazzi," and this, it's abundantly clear. Suddenly those silly rumors about Tarantino wanting to work with her that sprung up when she used Kill Bill imagery for "Telephone" make more popcultural sense. Gaga is out for blood!
Unfortunately this new video is too effortfully mounted and grave to be half as fun as her previous outings and it also feels more derivative. Will she ever top the exquisite aesthetic control, hilarious sight gags and awesome choreography of "Bad Romance"? That said, even though I'm unmoved by this new work, I really love Lady Gaga and remain thrilled that someone is taking the music video format so very seriously again and has the fanbase to back up that particular passion. It had been a long while since each music video premiere felt so "NEW SHORT FILM!" headline worthy.
Three final errant thoughts...
On a shallow film referencing note, can I just say that I absolutely hate beautiful men with perfect bodies. It's entirely unfair that anyone can stay "hot like Mexico" while sporting Moe's Three Stooges 'do. Entirely unfair.
How much do you love that lyric "you know that I love you, boy | hot like Mexico"? Well, I love it more than you do. Genius.
Craig here, asking you all (on her 40th birthday): where is Uma at?
Ah, Uma. Always the bridesmaid, never the bride. And despite actually being Tarantino's Bride twice last decade. What is it about Uma? She's widely known and adored by many, yet never seems to (quite) make it to the top of the A-list. The likes of Helen Hunt, Gwyneth Paltrow, Charlize Theron, Reese Witherspoon, Renée Zellweger, Jennifer Connelly, Angelina Jolie and Hilary Swank - all peers and contemporaries - have bagged themselves Oscars in the last thirteen-or-so years. The simple question is: where's Uma's gold?
She's one of the most uniquely beautiful actresses working, but nowadays, more so than in the early '90s, she doesn't often tend to get the recognition come awards season, or even appear on any of those Sexiest Hollywood Stars lists that crop up year-on-year anymore (although, is this really a fair indication of a star's Tinseltown standing anyway?). She has a singular talent and is open and vibrant with her on-screen persona: sultry, yet unafraid to play silly; refined, but willing to be raffish. There aren't many stars who have her particular mix of versatility and charm. And I'm sure some of her peers would have killed to have played Beatrix Kiddo.
Venus Rising: Uma in her first major role, in Baron Munchausen
Her florid introduction to the silver screen came in 1988 in the shapely form of the Goddess Venus (as an homage to Botticelli's 'The Birth of Venus') in Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It's an entrance comparable to (although it came six years before) Cameron Diaz's similar blond siren walk-on in 1994's The Mask (the year Uma got her first and, to date, only Oscar nomination, for Pulp Fiction). She was newly established and well on the rise back then, but how to define her career since?
Diaz made cartoon Jim Carrey's eyes pop out - and so, too, the cinema-going public's - and has gone on to be one of Hollywood's top female earners. Uma's salary doesn't quite reach Diaz's heights, but she's gained a solid and singular reputation for her - sometime fun, sometimes frank - body of work all the same; and when she's on top form she's often unmatchable. (Diaz may pull in bigger crowds, but she's rarely as risky or as resourceful as Uma: it ain't all about the money!) But since Kill Bill Vol. 2 six years ago - and despite some recent game attempts at more commercial rom-com fare - she hasn't set the film world on fire as once she did. With a whole host of rising stars strutting the red carpet year-on-year where does this leave a talent like hers?
Many a year she's dipped her toes in a variety of genre pools (and there are few genres that Uma hasn't tried and tested). Let's take stock and get an overview here: era-hopping period drama (Dangerous Liaisons, Les misérables, Vatel, The Golden Bowl, Henry & June, Sweet and Lowdown); adaptations of contemporary plays (Tape, Chelsea Walls, Hysterical Blindness, My Zinc Bed); an array of rom-coms (The Truth About Cats & Dogs, Prime, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, The Accidental Husband, Motherhood); fantastical sci-fi (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Gattaca, Paycheck, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief); a pair of franchise-ending flops (Hey, they all have 'em) with The Avengers, Batman & Robin; and a couple of true genre-defying oddities thrown in for good measure (Where the Heart Is, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues).
Left: does Uma get a massive thumbs up from you?
She's played the villainous vamp, the demure ingénue, the good-hearted girl and swift-footed samurai - and a multitude of lead and supporting ladies in between. She has the cool-handed knack for boldly trying out all those different cinematic genres (still a decision to be applauded in today's movie world - especially when many big-name actors all too often stick to the safety of their particular genres of choice).
She's had a fair share of notable roles - the high profile one-two punch of the Kill Bill double, closely backed up by her dance-and-drugs dealings with Travolta in Pulp Fiction (to name two obvious ones), but why is it that when she's either killing Bill or pulping fiction she only seems to gets the high praise? I think it's about time for her to be given the chance to re-shine on the silver screen, to remind us that there's still a vast and varied career path after 40 just around the corner.
But maybe the over-abundance of variety has resulted in her career so far not entirely finding its own groove. Has the wide variety of roles made her an all-too indefinable screen presence? Or has the genre indecision left Uma slightly adrift? She's tried almost everything: where for a girl to go next. Either way, it's a big birthday for Uma. Let's hope the roles keep getting just as big.
So, today on her 40th, if you were a director with a free pick of projects, what gift of a role would you give Ms. Thurman?
