Production
Quentin Tarantino had been working at Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California, and originally planned to shoot the film with his friends on a budget of $30,000 in a 16 mm format with producer Lawrence Bender playing Nice Guy Eddie. When actor Harvey Keitel became involved and agreed to act in the film and co-produce, he was cast as Mr. White. With Keitel's assistance, the filmmakers were able to raise $1.5 million to make the film.
Reservoir Dogs was, according to Tarantino, influenced by Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. Tarantino said: "I didn't go out of my way to do a rip-off of The Killing, but I did think of it as my Killing, my take on that kind of heist movie". The film's plot was suggested by the 1952 movie Kansas City Confidential. Additionally, Joseph H. Lewis's The Big Combo inspired the scene where a cop is tortured in a chair. Tarantino has denied that he plagiarized with Reservoir Dogs instead claiming that he does homages. Also, the main characters being named after colors (Mr. Pink, White, Brown, etc.) was first seen in the 1974 film The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.
Of his decision to not show the heist itself, Tarantino has said that the reason was initially budgetary, but that he had always liked the idea of not showing it and stuck with that idea. He has said that the technique allows for the realization that the movie is "about other things". He compared this to the work of a novelist, and has said that he wanted the movie to be about something that is not seen and that he wanted it to "play with a real-time clock as opposed to a movie clock ticking".
Read more about this topic: Reservoir Dogs
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”
—Charles Darwin (1809–1882)
“Perestroika basically is creating material incentives for the individual. Some of the comrades deny that, but I can’t see it any other way. In that sense human nature kinda goes backwards. It’s a step backwards. You have to realize the people weren’t quite ready for a socialist production system.”
—Gus Hall (b. 1910)
“The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)