When Tarantino
Popped Off

Quentin Tarantino has always been crazy. You can tell from his films, from Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill to Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. His movies are wild, especially when they get violent, and I love every minute of it. Though all the films I mentioned are fire, he really popped off with Reservoir Dogs.

It's the best heist story I ever watched on film. Six criminals hired to carry out a robbery get ambushed by the police, realize it was all a setup, and then have to find out which of them betrayed the rest. Damn! Tarantino did his big one here, didn't he? And people have the gall to say this wasn't his best movie.

Look, I get it. Some of you probably like Pulp Fiction more. Others might prefer Kill Bill instead. I know a couple of guys who say their favorite movie is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. All are good choices, and I respect the taste; I really do. But these are all his projects after he already made it big in Hollywood.

Reservoir Dogs was Tarantino's feature-length debut. He still had a lot of bite in him when he did it, a rawness that gets lost the more you get into the Hollywood machine. I can understand why people would say it's far from his most polished work, but for me, that's what makes it the best.

It's also why I regard it as my favorite movie. It was Tarantino at his most unhinged, and I wanted to be in that world as much as possible. Just as Tobey Maguire and Reese Witherspoon got inside a 1950s TV show in Pleasantville, I wanted to jump onto the screen and hang out with the Reservoir Dogs.

I finally got my wish when the cast reunited for the 25th anniversary screening at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2017. Almost all of them were there: White (Harvey Keitel), Orange (Tim Roth), Blonde (the late Michael Madsen), Pink (Steve Buscemi), and of course, Brown (Quentin Tarantino). Sadly, Mr. Blue (Edward Bunker) passed away in 2005.

Still, if it had just been Tarantino, I would've gone crazy just the same. But to have all five of the remaining six dogs there really blew my mind. It was a rare chance to see all of them together in one place, and I was so excited to watch the movie again with them at the Beacon Theatre.

But before all that, I actually got to meet some of them as they arrived. I didn't get to interact with all of them, but the ones I did see were still the big ones. As they posed for the cameras, Harvey Keitel noticed me first. He went up to me, and I asked him to sign my Reservoir Dogs movie poster.

Right behind him was Tim Roth, who was mid-conversation, but I called out anyway, and he kindly obliged. I couldn't have been happier that he did.

The others, including Madsen and Buscemi, were whisked down the carpet before I could reach them. Maybe they didn't hear me over the crowd. Anyway, even though I didn't get their autographs, I was still stoked to have seen them in real life.

It's hard to focus on that because I eventually got Tarantino's autograph instead. Now that was a big one! Getting one of Hollywood's best and wildest filmmakers to sign the same poster made missing the others a lot easier to take.

Overall, I may not have gotten all five of the dogs who reunited that night, but I'm more than happy with who I got. And with Madsen gone now, I'm even more grateful I got to be in that room with him. I wouldn’t trade that night for anything!