He wrote the original story, wrote the screenplay, he produced it, he edited it and he directed at least the final twenty minutes of the film. He also funded it via Lightstorm. The film was Cameron’s in nearly every technical way. And it’s a masterpiece, but it flopped and is destined to become a lost classic.
Well I think it flopped because people just didnt understand it like they would today. Its somehow both ahead of its time and very anachronistic with the Year 2000 trope.
It was also delayed and the advertising sucked. It was set for a summer release and they pushed it to October and marketed it as a straight-up sci-fi-movie and it simply isn’t that. “Urban Noir Action-Thriller” is how I would describe it. It predicted VR would be the new rage (it wasn’t), that voyeurism would become an obsession (check) and that police would become pseudo-military (they have).
Yeah, I forgot about that whole thing. Im not sure why that was even a plot element. It would have made more sense that she was afraid of Buffalino if she had witnessed him committing a crime or something. It was just a really creepy interaction. I wonder of Scorsese was trying to recreate the type of scene he had in Taxi Driver where Bickle is buying black market guns in a hotel room. The dealer is all calm and cooler from Travis's perspective because he wants the guns but when he starts talking about other goods hes dealing, hes all frantic and creepy. I guess this could have been a similar thing of Frank's perspective of Buffalino vs a normal person's. Who knows.
I’ve been WAITING for someone to bring this up as I just saw this like a month ago. I honestly didn’t know how much material Quinton Tarantino lifts for content in his films. So that gun dealer from Taxi Driver was just this crazy guy Martin Scorsese knew. Scorsese did a whole documentary on him where he just interviewed him and had him talk non stop for 2 hours back in the 70s. In the doc the guy relates this story of how he brought his girlfriend out of an OD coma with a shot of adrenaline. Word for word, his mannerisms and everything were copied directly into the famous scene in Pulp Fiction. Eric Stultz basically replays the scene from the documentary. I mean I know he’s copied styles and remade scenes shot for shot cinematography wise but I didn’t know he lifted whole lines and ideas straight from other material.
You've never seen the documentary "Who Do You Think You're Fooling?", have you. Check it out; it's on YouTube.