If
you told me that there was a movie starring Rosario Dawson, Rose
McGowan, Jordan Ladd and a bunch of other
Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino… I’d say hell yeah.
And that is exactly what I’m saying.
HELL YEAH! First off,
Rosario Dawson is stunning. I
defy you to watch CLERKS 2 and not go crazy with she gave a dancing
lesson and not fall down flat on your knees and thank God you are a
man then I’d say one thing… LIAR!
This is the girl that came up through the ranks from KIDS and
dressed for success in
act. And act damn well too.
In fact, she is one of the most exciting actresses around as
of late and she gets to play chase in Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF, the
other part of GRINDHOUSE
I
couldn’t believe her energy when she joined the GRINDHOUSE gang at
the Four Seasons in
to dig her excitement. One the
other duders even made the brave statement that she was kind of a
geek. Now this was meant as a
compliment in the highest regard. Check
it out. She’s a comic book
girl, loves to talk about cars, movies and feels like someone you
just wanna hang with and possibly play a few video games.
It just so happens that she is also stunningly beautiful.
Rosario is the kind of girl that is made for all the fanboys
and comic book geeks. She is
also shockingly interesting and has a way of bringing you into the
conversation. What can I say?
It’s Rosario Dawson man…!
Rosario
Dawson
No, he wrote
this for [co-star] Zoe [Bell]. He
very much wrote this for Zoe. He
met Zoe on ‘Kill Bill’. She
was Uma [Thurman’s] stuntwoman on that.
You know he describes it; he wrote that script and gave it to
Uma on her 30th birthday.
He wrote this for her. And
then through his experience in meeting Zoe and having her work on
it; he’s always said that he had two actresses for this movie –
Uma is ‘The Bride’ as she walks and talks and the look of her,
and Zoe Bell was the bad-ass side of her.
So there are two actresses in that.
It was very necessary. They
collaborated strongly.
And
then four years later when him and Robert sat down and said, let’s
do this double feature, he was like, I’m going to make this my
homage to great car chases and great grindhouse, gearhead kind of
thing and I’m going to have stuntmen.
Stuntman Mike and you have Zoe Bell and you have Tracie
Thoms playing a stuntwoman, who is based a friend of his who
is also named Kim. He
really worked really hard. [He
said] my car chase movie is going to have Zoe Bell strapped to the
hood of a car. She’s
going to play Zoe Bell, New Zealand stuntwoman.
I want people to know when they’re watching that this woman
who is doing that great dialogue actually does step out of the car
and go down the hood of that with nothing.
She really can do it. She
is so bad-ass.
And
it was really weird for me because I’d only known her as an
actress up until that point.
We were suppose to shoot it over the summer but it didn’t
happen until the fall, and we didn’t really start doing the stunts
until wintertime. So
I’ve known her for months and been rehearsing with her and doing
dialogue, so I only know her as an actress.
So literally when she was like, “check this out” at me,
and she steps on the car, I was like [gasp!].
It was really weird. It
was just like the idea of it because there were a lot of close
calls.
They
are very controlled situations but anything could happen.
It was an insurance nightmare to make the movie with your
lead actor doing her own stunts.
So the idea of how hurt she really could get – as easy as
she makes it look. They
had to do this one thing where they have to show her being launched
and she steps on this jib, that as soon as you stepped on it, it
shoots you off. She made
it look so easy and so graceful, and I was like, “I want to do
it!” and she goes, “No, really Rosario I’ve seen people crush
their genitalia with it. And
you have to keep you leg really strong.
I am going to be in so much pain tomorrow.
As much I make this look easy, it’s because I’ve been
doing this for years. Believe
me, for you this is very dangerous.”
Is
she lucky too, like the cat you see in the movie?
That’s
a very interesting thing, when I started shooting the movie, I
realize the character and why it was kind of difficult to play Abernathy,
it’s because a lot of it was based on Quentin’s personality.
And that character, that story that I tell around the table
actually happed to Quentin and Zoe four years ago when they were in
China. They were all
drunk and they were having a great time and she was like, “Stand
up, let’s take a picture of you!”, and he almost fell in a
ditch, freaked out about it, and true Quentin style said, “What
are you trying to do, kill me?”.
He was just really freaked out.
And then two seconds later, she falls in the ditch.
And
not only did she fall in the ditch, a ditch he said, when she landed
she had to get pulled out because her fingers didn’t reach the
top, that’s how deep it was. She
fell, and in her head, literally when she stepped off she goes,
“There is that ditch Quentin was talking about.”
And falls on her feet and stood up and was like, “Hey!”
and Quentin was like, “I would have died.
If I fell in there, they would have had to helicopter me out
of there. Seriously, how
do you do that?” There
were shots you could see it was really cool.
When she was on this launch thing and he had told her he
wanted her to land on her back, and she just flew off and she was
like this far off the ground, like maybe 12 inches and she flipped
in mid-air and landed on her back.
It just defies gravity. This
woman really is Zoe the Cat. She
is phenomenal!
Do you like cars? Do
you hate speed cars?
I’m used
to being driven in cars being from New York.
Probably the car I’ve been most in has been a taxi.
I
just moved out here so it’s very interesting.
It’s a very interesting thing; you know I drive a [Toyota]
Prius. So I’m talking
to Daryl Hannah about it. I’m like, “This car is really dope!
Do you think we could put an electrical motor in it?” And
she’s like, “Yeah right, Rosario.
Go like 5 miles per hour in the thing, it’s so heavy.”
You know, I’m so into it and I go, “But Daryl, I’m an
environmentalist. This
so doesn’t work in a gear head movie.”
But I just got into a car accident a couple days ago.
It’s not that bad, I just got a little scratch in my
forehead. [She reveals the scratch on her head]
I was sitting
in the backseat and it was very interesting because I was in the
same exact position that I had spent weeks in this car, and we were
doing really crazy dumb things, like 360’s and types of stuff,
going up and around cliff sides, going super, super fast, and I
never ever felt in danger. I
mean there were a couple of times when my heart went into my throat
because that’s just the nature of it, and it is pretty scary,
especially when you are not the one driving and there is no control,
and you’re like, I’m so glad they weren’t cheap about getting
the best to do this, because these are the best stunt drivers in the
world. But it is not
nearly the same as the emotional response of getting hit and not
having any control, and being like, “Wow!
It really was very close.”
I mean we really tempted fate.
Yes,
my driver missed a turn and so he decided to try to make it on San
Vicente and he cut across, and he wasn’t on the right lane so the
car on the right lane clipped us on the back.
I couldn’t open my door.
Luckily the window didn’t shatter, it just dropped.
We had to be towed. He
turned it on and it wouldn’t go past idle.
It killed the car.
Are you working on something right now?
I just produced my
first feature which got into the Tribeca Film Festival.
I’m very excited about that.
It’s
an exploration of sexual violence – and revenge.
What’s
it called?
It’s
called “Descent”. I
also have a comic book, I showed it last year, and I’m producing
the feature at Dimension with Bob Weinstein, it’s called “OCT”
– The Occult Crimes Taskforce.
So
“Harry Potter” for the Manhattan…
Yeah,
kind of a little “Constantine”-ish, a little “BPRD”, maybe
“Men in Black” a little bit, but it’s not any of those things
just because of the tone of it.
s
it in comic book now?
We’re releasing our fourth in the trade soon.
I’ve doing the
comic book now for the entire part of last year and we’ve always
made it to be multi-platform material.
Oh,
I don’t know. They
got the cash. But I shot
my film “Descent” in
New York. So that was
very exciting. I’m
very glad to have it at the Tribeca Film Festival.
Is
that a union-waiver film?
What
was it like to the producer’s hat?
It can be a very thankless job.
It was very difficult to do, with also being a lead in it.
There were times that it was kind of difficult.
We started shooting it the day after the “Rent” premiere.
So all during rehearsal I was doing the “Rent” press
junket, so after doing the “Rent” press junket all day, I’d go
home and we’d do like make-up tests and the hair tests and
rehearsals. So it was
really hard because you didn’t have a lot of time.
We didn’t have the luxury of stuff.
We
had to change DPs [Director of Photography] in the middle of
shooting.
We didn’t have any extras.
We would throw everyone of the crew in it.
Anything and everything could go wrong on your first film,
low budget independent, did. And
it was great because we hit the ground running.
I think it will be a very controversial film.
No,
it doesn’t exploit it but it really doesn’t shy away from it.
It’s not one of those rape films where we start going in to
the court drama or all that other stuff.
This is a woman who doesn’t say anything.
This is a woman who collapses into herself and her identity.
“Irreversible”?
No,
because you don’t see the descent of those characters as much.
And the person who ends up getting revenge is the boyfriend
on the wrong person. This
is a woman reclaiming her own sexual identity and her own strength
and wanting that revenge for herself and having that
closed-mindedness and focus to do it herself and then seeing what
that actually does, and exploring what revenge actually does to
people. It might feel
like the right thing but when it is actually happening in the
moment, are you any better than your rapist, when the role is
reversed. Like we’re
in a state of war right now, at what point does someone turn the
other cheek? Do you
ever?
Do you
You have NO time for a personal life!
[Laughing] Well,
it’s lucky because I’m working with my friends, you know. Talia
Lugacy, who I did the film with, she co-wrote it and she directed
it, I produced her thesis film at NYU, a twenty minute short on 35
mm. I did all of her
sight and sound films, I’ve known her for twelve years.
So this was our first feature we had done together.
We
also did… ‘Glamour’ magazine had wanted me to direct a short,
“The Little Black Dress” and I ended up having her direct it
because I really wanted to establish us as a bona fide team and get
Trybe Films, our company out there so… we’ve been working
together for a very, very long time.
And
we practice it out to see how well we work together and it makes it
great, because I’m excited to go see my friends and have a great
time with her and spend some quality time.
But also it’s gonna be work.
One
of the best compliments ever was every time I was in there, they
were like… ‘we love having you in here.’
You know, I really watched a lot of things, I’m really
attentive to a lot of stuff and I knew my position was a very easy
one, so I’d make sure… you know, a lot of times, Tracy can’t
do anything and she can’t say anything as to mess up the take.
So when we’re going around curves or whatever I’d give a
lot of direction to help out. Sometimes
I’d scream Zoe, move your foot here or there because she can’t
see where she’s driving, you know, it’s a really dangerous
thing.
I met Tracy briefly when we were doing “Sin City” but I
got really tight with Jeff on “Sin City” because I was that
weird freak who wanted to keep doing the shot over and over again.
And be tearing out Alexis Bledel. neck with my teeth.
I loved the stunts so much, I was so bummed that the only
stunt I had to do was getting whacked and hit with the chair across
the… I wanted to be Miho so bad.
And this… can we strap me to the hood of the car?
I’m a great hood ornament, I swear.
I was so excited about doing any of the stunts and I wasn’t
able to, but they were really cool with me, letting me be in the
care most of the time.
I have a tremendous respect for what these guys do, and
especially since, they really were not cutting any corners.
Quentin was like, ‘if we can’t do it ourselves, then
it’s not gonna be in the movie’.
We were not CGI or “special effecting” anything.
We also didn’t have the time; we finished shooting a month
and a half ago. It’s
unbelievable, we literally wrapped picture in mid-January.
“Sin
City 2”… are you doing it?
Dame
to kill for; we’re shooting it this summer.
Send
questions and comments to jimmyo@joblo.com.
