Just before making his first feature, Quentin Tarantino shot a long-take dialogue sequence at a Sundance workshop and showed it to three veteran directors; they all thought it stank. The next week, a new group of directors came in; this time there were raves for the same sequence. Tarantino says this taught him an important lesson: “People are gonna really like my stuff or really not, so get f—in’ used to it.” Enough people really liked Reservoir Dogs‘ crime-caper machismo — all the long coats and long takes, the ornate argot and the ear-cutting scene — to set QT on his epic Pulp Fiction, unquestionably the definitive movie of the ’90s, which grossed $100 million at home and another $100 million abroad. Not bad for a video savant.
Robert Rodriguez’s idea was to make three cheapo Mariachi movies for the Mexican home-video market. “Then I was going to clip together the best scenes for a demo film to get backing for a real feature film, like sex, lies and videotape or Reservoir Dogs. And then I was just going to explode out of nowhere. That was the original plan.”Alas, overnight success got in the way.
This funny-grungy “taco Western,” which the 24-year-old writer-director-producer-cameraman-editor-craft-service-guy made for a preposterously low $7,000, won the Audience Award at Sundance, was bought by Columbia Pictures and earned about $2 million in theaters. “If I thought a lot of people were going to see this,” he said, “I would have changed a lot of things that people ended up liking.” In the end, Rodriguez didn’t go Hollywood; Hollywood went Rodriguez. The do-it-all auteur still makes his movies in Austin, Tex., where he’s turned experiments in 3D and green-screen into hits like Spy Kids and Sin City (which had a scene shot by Tarantino). Like El Mariachi, these cunning, high-adrenaline indies are made for audiences, not film festivals.
The Grammys honored Houston in the awards themselves, which showcased forceful women who had dominated the year in music, and reminded us of her TV influence as American Idol’s diva ideal.
From Nicki Minaj’s Red Riding Hood getup to Katy Perry’s head-to-toe blue ensemble, TIME rounds up some of the best (and worst!) sartorial choices at the annual music awards show.
