Dir.
Oliver Stone, 1994, USA, 122 mins (Director's Cut)
Cast:
Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Robert Downey Jr, Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Sizemore
The creative pairing of established writer/director Oliver Stone and new cinematic sensation Quentin Tarantino on Natural Born Killers in 1994 was bound to produce incendiary results. Arriving in the UK amidst a storm of controversy generated from its US release, Natural Born Killers was scheduled for a UK cinema release in November 1994. Although the film had already been subjected to cuts for violence in the US by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) pulled it from UK cinemas before its release, after reports of copycat crimes were allegedly committed in the US.
The only UK public screening in 1994 was at the London Film Festival, which was the hottest ticket to get. Unlike subsequent 'controversial' works like Fight Club, it looked as though Natural Born Killers might never see the inside of a British cinema auditorium. Its appearance in the UK seemed to cap a controversial cinema period, where the early nineties looked set to rival the early seventies as a time when a bunch of high profile mainstream films were banned and/or cut by the BBFC in cinemas and on video. While the seventies gave us such films as Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, The Exorcist, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the nineties served up films like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Reservoir Dogs, Bad Lieutenant and Natural Born Killers.
Although Natural Born Killers eventually got a UK cinema release in February 1995, controversy continued to dog the film in the Britain. The UK video release was delayed and the film did not appear on British video store shelves until the late 1990s. Now widely available on DVD in a director's cut assembled by Stone, people can see the film in its uncut form. It has been ten years since Mickey and Mallory Knox (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) blazed a trail of death and destruction across the screen, and with the benefit of hindsight, we can now look back and see just what all the fuss was about. First off, there's the violence. Yes, Natural Born Killers is extremely violent, but the violence is so hyperkinetic and stylised that at times it approaches the surreal. However, there's no denying that the violence shown here hurts people, and that the consequences of violence are horrific. Some may argue that there have certainly been more 'objectionable' films or contentious films released, before and after Natural Born Killers, with numerous action films presenting violence as entertainment. Of course, that's exactly what Stone shows us here, but he presents it through the prism of the media. As Mickey and Mallory embark on their killing spree, they are presented as icons by the media, particularly the television media, which Stone sees as the parasite feeding off of the violence and death in the world.
Whether or not you love or hate the film, and whether you like or loathe the director's views, there's no denying the sheer technical audacity of Stone's film. The film uses 35mm, 16mm and 8mm formats, CGI, hand drawn animation, rear projection, freeze frames and much more. Stone puts a vast array of cinematic technology to amazing use and appropriates the MTV aesthetic to show the world's unhealthy obsession with celebrity. We watch as the two killers are pursued by the media juggernaut, personified by Robert Downey Jr's sleazy reporter Wayne Gayle, hounded by the forces of law and order, represented by corrupt cop Jack Scagnetti, played by Tom Sizemore, and incarcerated in a prison run by the Tommy Lee Jones' corrupt Warden McCluskey.
Anyone who catches the director's cut of Natural Born Killers will be treated to Stone's original vision of the film before is was cut by the MPAA, with reinstated images of violence adding to the compelling kaleidoscope of images on offer, and further hammering home the horrific consequences of the violence we see. In addition to the MPAA censorship cuts, the film's deleted scenes also became legendary at the time of the film's initial release, which added to its notoriety. Instead of the unremarkable missing or extended scenes that often appear on DVDs, the scenes omitted from the final cut, and which are available to watch on the DVD, are truly extraordinary. These scenes include a bizarre cameo by motor mouth comedian Denis Leary, a shocking courtroom scene featuring Ashley Judd and Downey Jr's interview with the Hun Brothers, two philosophical body builders who pontificate about the 'edge' that Mickey and Mallory have given them after brutally amputating their legs with chainsaws!
Many TV stars trade on their small screen fame to catapult them to big screen stardom, and Woody Harrelson is no exception. Before Natural Born Killers, Harrelson was most familiar to audiences as a bar man in the hit TV comedy show Cheers, and as a likeable basketball player in the sports comedy film White Men Can't Jump. Although he has acted in many films before and since Natural Born Killers, Harrelson's portrayal of Mickey Knox is one of his most memorable roles. Stone even slyly references Harrelson's TV comedy image in Natural Born Killers, presenting the first meeting between Mickey and Mallory as a twisted sitcom full of incestuous overtones and domestic violence. This sitcom is presented as a flashback that's filtered through Mallory's memories, and Juliette Lewis does an excellent job here, turning from victimised teenager to wild killer when she teams up with Mickey.
The message, given to us loud and clear by Stone, is that the characters view their life through television. However, whereas Tarantino seems to embrace and celebrate many of the things that television has to offer, Stone's attitude towards the same medium is far more sceptical and questioning. Although Stone liked Tarantino's original screenplay, which contains the expected structural games and verbal skill seen in Tarantino's other scripts, the two filmmakers' sensibilities (as both directors have pointed out) are quite different. This resulted in some creative friction between Tarantino and Stone, which became a source of mild controversy when the film was released. However, the clash of sensibilities makes for an interesting film that's unique in the careers of both filmmakers.
Looking back to the early nineties, it's extraordinary to see the impact that Tarantino had on American filmmaking. Arriving seemingly out of nowhere, Reservoir Dogs was (and remains) an astonishing debut film. Released in the UK in early 1993, it was quickly followed by the Tarantino-penned True Romance later that year. The following year heralded Pulp Fiction, and the rest is now history. Although Tarantino is credited as the author of the original screenplay for Natural Born Killers, he is on record as saying that this is the only film made from one of his scripts where he wasn't entirely happy with the approach taken by the director.
Coming up after Tony Scott's earlier interpretation of True Romance, which met with approval from Tarantino, Natural Born Killers was, and remains, the odd one out of Tarantino's films, in the sense that it's a film adapted from one of his screenplays that he has never fully endorsed. Tarantino's sensibilities chime with Tony Scott and Robert Rodriguez, who directed Tarantino's script of From Dusk Till Dawn, but his vision of pop culture and his attitude to cinema doesn't seem to match Stone's. Stone loaded Tarantino's original script with more of an overt message about how violence is presented and distorted by the media, as well as adding mystical moments and symbolism, such as the scene where Mickey and Mallory meet an Indian in the desert, which triggers a hallucinatory dream sequence that changes the course of the film.
Then again, it's interesting that the technical virtuosity and eclectic mix of styles (35mm, animation) seen in Kill Bill: Volumes I and II echoes Stone's formal experimentation in Natural Born Killers, with both Natural Born Killers and the Kill Bill saga being shot by top notch cinematographer Robert Richardson. Natural Born Killers also shares some cast members with other Tarantino films. For instance, Sizemore and Lewis appear in True Romance and From Dusk Till Dawn respectively, while Wayne Gale's cameraman (Kirk Baltz) is none other than the ill-fated cop Marvin Nash from Reservoir Dogs. Whatever the creative differences between Stone and Tarantino, there are still undeniably traces of Tarantino in Natural Born Killers, and of Natural Born Killers in other Tarantino movies. With a verbal reference to the film in Kill Bill: Volume II, it seems that it still holds a significant place in Tarantino's movie universe.
Since the late 1990s, Tarantino hasn't written another script to be directed by someone else. Although the scripts for True Romance and Natural Born Killers were sold early in Tarantino's career and became noteworthy films, it seems that he is no longer interested in seeing another director tackle his material, even though From Dusk Till Dawn, the last interpretation of one his scripts, was a happy collaboration between Tarantino and Rodriguez, who remain friends to this day. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see Tarantino write a script for another director. Maybe he could team up with buddy Robert Rodriguez on another movie; after all, Rodriguez has provided some of the music for Kill Bill: Volume II. Maybe Tony Scott could helm another Tarantino script, or get Tarantino to rewrite a script for him, just as he did with the 1995 submarine thriller Crimson Tide. Maybe Tarantino could write a script for one of his directorial heroes, like John Woo or Brian De Palma. The possibilities and the prospects that these imagined collaborations hold are tantalising.
In Hollywood, where the screenwriter and the script seem to get the least amount of respect, it's incredible to think that Tarantino's writing skills are as highly regarded and sought after as his directing skills, if not more so. Apart from the distinctive scripts of Charlie Kaufman, there may be no other screenwriter that has become so prominent, successful or highly regarded in Hollywood in the last ten years. Whatever your opinion of Natural Born Killers, it stands as one of the most fascinating writer/director combinations in recent Hollywood history, and the debate about the film's merits, and its place in Tarantino's and Stone's careers, will no doubt continue for many years to come.
Martyn Bamber
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