ORDER THE GRINDHOUSE BOOK HERE
First off before I even touch the contents of the
book I must admit that I loved
GRINDHOUSE; I mean all of it! I know a lot of people argued that
Quentin Tarantino’s
DEATH PROOF was slow, but I found it to be
incredibly enjoyable. Kurt Russel made the flick, and Tarantino really bit down
on the sexploitation of the original Grindhouse cinema, and delivered it nicely.
As far as the
GRINDHOUSE compendium book goes, while a cool
idea for a coffee table read, it never really pan’s out to too much, and here’s
why.
The book is supposed to be written by Quentin
Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, while the truth of the matter is that they
simply do an intro to each section on their book, which is separated into two
halves much like the movie, and the rest is almost entirely the behind the
scenes technicians who helped make the
GRINDHOUSE movies.
The book starts with two separate introductions,
one from Rodriguez and one from Tarantino explaining a little bit about how they
came up with their film ideas and the whole
GRINDHOUSE concept. However the next section of the book is a
conversation between Tarantino and Rodriguez basically saying the same things
over again, except this time to each other. Tarantino attempts to enlighten
everyone on the whole ‘Grindhouse’ phenomena, but falls short by getting too
specific about certain films and not specific enough about the genre overall.
Following the opening of the book is the script
for
PLANET TERROR, the film which was written and
directed by Robert Rodriguez and starred in by Rose McGowan and Freddy
Rodriguez. I found this enjoyable to read only because it’s neat to see how the
script transferred from page to celluloid. Throughout the script section, the
pages are filled with tons of high quality photos of the action of
PLANET TERROR and they looked great. There were also several pages
throughout the script featuring some of the main players of
PLANET TERROR as well as their take on the characters they play and
the film overall. Sadly enough, once the script is through, the book sort of
takes a turn for the worse. The next section is all about the technical aspect
of the
PLANET TERROR film, and while the behind the
scenes pictures are great to see, the section really comes off only as a bunch
of people simply ‘talking shop’, which really doesn’t translate well to an
everyday reader.
One of the saving graces of this book must have
been the
DEATH PROOF section. Even if you were one of
the people who didn’t really like the film, some of the behind the scenes stuff
here is pretty interesting. This section of the book actually starts off once
again with a conversation between Tarantino and Rodriguez, and while it starts
down that same path a before, with Tarantino recounting his history of
the ‘Grindhouse’ cinema, it quickly turns to how he developed his work and where
he got his ideas from for this flick. It’s unfortunate that this doesn’t last
longer, but the book once again turns to the technical aspect of
DEATH PROOF. It’s not quite so in depth as it was with
PLANET TERROR, but it’s enough for you to want to put the book down
and stop reading. Or simply for you to just flip through the pages and check out
the once again great pictures.
Near the end of the book there’s a small section
dedicated to the faux trailers of
GRINDHOUSE, but unfortunately the only one’s featured are Robert
Rodriguez’s MACHETE and Eli Roth’s THANKSGIVING. While Rodriguez
and Danny Trejo discussing the MACHETE concept was ok, I found that the
best part of the whole book was the 8 pages that Roth wrote concerning the
making of his fake trailer. It had by far the most interesting story behind it.
It was disappointing, however, to not hear from Rob Zombie or Edgar Wright on
either of their trailers.
The final section on the book was dedicated to
the posters and lobby cards of
GRINDHOUSE, which really may have been one of the best aspects to
this whole project. And while not much is said about these in the section, the
book is filled with ton’s of beautiful glossy pics of the posters that haven
arisen from the making of this film.
Overall the book is worth buying only for it’s
aesthetics, which are wonderfully presented in high quality photos. The pictures
in this book really were it’s one saving grace, and there’s enough of them for
this thing to easily sit on your coffee table and have people generally flip
through it and still get a cool ‘Grindhouse’ feel. The reading of the book
overall became almost chore like however when it wasn’t the script to
PLANET TERROR. Basically it comes down to this; if you’re looking for
a book with tons of sweet glossy pictures and behind the scenes shots than pick
this bad boy up because it has both. But if you’re looking at it because you
want to read about ‘Grindhouse’ cinema, I would suggest moving on.
Rating: 2 out of 4 stars
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