Grindhouse

Two features by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, with fake trailers between them, as one programme. Rodriguez, Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth and Jason Eisener made those trailers, and three later became real films: Machete, Hobo with a Shotgun and Thanksgiving. The missing reel idea came up in editing. Tarantino was about to screen an Italian crime picture with Oliver Reed missing a reel; Rodriguez wanted the same, a card reading missing reel held for 10 seconds so the audience lands in the third act, the second act’s end being the most predictable stretch in movies. Death Proof went in shortened; Tarantino says he cut it like a brutish American exploitation distributor. The extended Death Proof, 127 minutes, competed for the Palme d’Or at the 60th Cannes, and the lap dance scene swallowed by the missing reel card sits in that version. It opened with 11.5 million dollars and the United States total stopped at 25,422,088. Outside the United States and Canada the two went out separately, in longer versions, about two months apart. A good fit if you count the damaged print, the missing reel card and the fake trailers as part of the programme. Not for anyone who would rather watch the two separately; in most of the world that is how they came out.