The UK Premiere of Tarantino’s “Death Proof”
August 20, 2007 – 11:49 pm | by Benjamin Watt
So, Ratatouille wasn’t the only premiere I went to on Saturday at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. In the evening I came back to the same cinema and screen, this time to see a rather different film (to say the least), Quentin Tarantino‘s ‘Death Proof‘. In the US, ‘Death Proof’ was shown as part of a double-bill called ‘Grindhouse‘, but unfortunately there are no firm plans to show the other film in the UK yet, or for both of them to be shown together at all. Nonetheless, ‘Death Proof’ has more than enough clout to be seen on its own, and if you’re a Tarantino fan, you couldn’t ask for a better film to sum up what makes his films so unique. It’s pretty violent, but if you take a step back and enjoy the humour of it, you can’t help but like it.
But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here. When I arrived at the cinema, the red carpet was out, albeit with sheeting on it to protect it from the rain (Edinburgh couldn’t have been any wetter and miserable if it tried that day). Camera in hand, I joined the other press photographers to see if I could find out who was expected, and maybe get some good shots myself. Alas, Tarantino couldn’t make it, but it turned out someone called Zoe Bell was coming, an actress from the film. Nobody seemed to really know who she was, but they were going through a lot of trouble to give her a good welcome. I hung about in the rain for a bit, listening to the organisers frantically radioing ahead to see if the car with her in it was almost there or not, but decided that it was getting too close to the start time, and that a better seat was preferable to a photo opportunity. If I’d hung about, this is what I would have seen, as Zoe arrived in style.
If you click on the above photo, you’ll see some other photos taken at the premiere. My rather grim take on how things were before I went inside for a comfy seat, is rather different:
Once everyone was there though, the aforementioned (rather pretty as it turned out) Zoe Bell came out and introduced ‘Death Proof’ for us all, explaining that she knew Tarantino would have loved to introduce it himself, but she would have to do. She realised no one would know who she was, but told us we certainly would by the end of the film. And she was certainly right on that front. Before ‘Death Proof’, Zoe was only known as a stuntperson, doing work in the Kill Bill films as a stand in for Uma Thurman, amongst other things. In this film though, she was both stuntperson and actor, and between her and Kurt Russell (who does some fantastic acting here), they really stole this film and made it their own.
Make no mistakes, this is a pretty unusual film, even for Tarantino, he’s obviously had a lot of fun putting it together, really going to town. But it’s no less enjoyable because of it. In fact, it’s pretty bloody brilliant. You’ll probably agree too when the words “The End” come up on screen at (you guessed it) the end of the film in a particularly silly moment. I won’t spoil anything here, the tagline for the film, ” These 8 Women Are About To Meet 1 Diabolical Man!” sums up the ridiculous nature of the whole thing, and summarises essentially what the film is all about.
When the credits rolled, and we’d finished cheering, Zoe came back on stage to a much more receptive audience. Zoe did a great job taking questions for an audience that had gone from not knowing her at all, to becoming her biggest fans in the space of a couple of hours. She was asked if anything actually scared her, to which she responded that “Houses, and mortgages and shit like that” do, but although the stunts she does are scary, she just enjoys doing the thrill from doing them. Zoe seems to be very proud of the work she did in Death Proof, and rightly so – going from a stuntperson to actor/stuntperson was quite a step, but it really paid off. I don’t know of any other film that has the actor and stuntperson as the same person. There’s something oddly brilliant about being able to clearly see that a character in a film is actually doing these crazy stunts, rather than seeing the back of a different person’s head. Zoe said the hardest part about acting was having to act as though she was actually scared of these stunts. She did a great job though, and helped round Tarantino’s quirkiest film yet.
