The Image of Violence

I've seen the future, baby, and it's 1994's Natural Born Killers on Disney+. I assume it's on Hulu in the U.S. but, here in Japan, one of the favourite movies of the Columbine shooters is available on to-day's equivalent of the Disney Channel. I didn't see that coming. Or maybe I kind of did. It's all right there in the movie itself, after all; a society so desensitised to violence that they venerate killers. Director Oliver Stone's Big Message, though, about how media perpetuates a cycle of violence, comes off pretty trite if you read Quentin Tarantino's far superior original screenplay for the film, which is more about the difference between real and fictional violence.

Oliver Stone is not a smart man. I remember listening to his commentary for the scene in which tabloid journalist Wayne Gayle (Robert Downey Jr.) interviews serial killer Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson). Stone compared it to Geraldo Rivera's interview with Charles Manson and observed how Manson actually came off as more intelligent in the interview than Rivera. In the original screenplay, Tarantino describes Wayne Gayle as a journalist like Geraldo Rivera so maybe Tarantino had the same thing in mind. But however superior Stone may feel to Rivera, I think the two have a lot in common. He portrays Wayne Gayle as a fool who is eventually caught up in the glamour of Mickey and Mallory. Stone himself, in recent years, has become enamoured of Vladimir Putin, though he did condemn the invasion of Ukraine. It's no surprise to find that, in comparing the Tarantino screenplay and the film Stone shot, that Stone was clearly seduced by Mickey and Mallory, too, just like one of the suckers he was supposedly lampooning.

He gives Mallory (Juliette Lewis) a tragic backstory with abusive parents and, in this context, Mickey becomes the hero who helps her escape by murdering the two. Stone's other most notable contribution is a Native American shaman who is essentially portrayed as saving the souls of the killers.

One of the scenes cut from the film, that existed in Tarantino's screenplay, is a courtroom scene in which Mickey, acting as his own defence attorney, taunts and murders one of his victims on the stand (Ashley Judd). In an interview included with the scene, Stone confirms that the shaman scene was meant to show that Mickey and Mallory were no longer meant to be viewed as killers afterwards.

The real villains in Stone's film are Wayne Gayle and the police detective Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore). Both characters, particularly Wayne Gayle, are much more complicated in Tarantino's screenplay, which could be said not to have heroes or villains at all. Which would have been normal for Tarantino in the '90s. Is anyone really a hero in Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction? Mickey and Mallory do bear some resemblance to the protagonists of True Romance, a Tony Scott movie with a Tarantino screenplay.

Part of the reason Tarantino's movies are great, usually even better than the exploitation films that inspired him, is that he doesn't feel the need to make a protagonist likable. Real people can do or say things you like one moment and in the next do something you absolutely abhor. Lesser filmmakers can lose the thread too easily if they start to like a character. Stone liked Mickey and Mallory so, in his version, Mallory couldn't use a racial slur, and he couldn't portray any of their victims as human. Wayne Gayle gets it the worst. As good as Robert Downey Jr is, Stone's version reduces him to a slobbering cartoon character. In Tarantino's screenplay, he's very much like Geraldo Rivera. Shallow but not a psychopath. Not unlike Oliver Stone.

The dichotomy Tarantino was considering in writing the screenplay becomes more apparent when you compare it to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Others have noted he essentially transferred Mickey's dissing of Bruce Lee to a scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. In interviews, Tarantino has talked about the difference he sees in Lee's Martial Arts, which is effectively more of a performance, and the skills of a real killer like Brad Pitt's character--or Mickey in Natural Born Killers. Again, it's about a comparison between real violence and movie violence. The two things are very different animals.

Stone's film does have a great soundtrack, though. At times it functions like a great music video for a mix tape. Leonard Cohen, Patsy Cline, Patti Smith, Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails. Back in high school, when all I listened to was movie soundtracks, the Natural Born Killers soundtrack was one of my gateway drugs to a lot of other music. Though, at that point, I already admired Trent Reznor from the Lost Highway soundtrack.

I read Tarantino's screenplay for Natural Born Killers for the first time this morning. I was intrigued that he had Wayne Gayle's cameraman, Roger, argue that Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is Steven Spielberg's best film. Tarantino occasionally puts his own opinions in the mouths of his characters and this felt like one of those times. But when I looked for lists of Tarantino favourite movies, the only Spielberg film I saw was Jaws at number 11. But then I found a Vanity Fair interview in which Tarantino describes the opening action sequence in Temple of Doom as one of the best of all time. So I guess there was indeed a little bit of Tarantino himself in "Roger". I guess it would have been boring to have Roger claim Jaws as Spielberg's best film, Temple of Doom is the more provocative opinion. I don't know if I agree with Roger but I do think Temple of Doom is the best Indiana Jones film.