A Brilliant Horror Director Gave Quentin Tarantino A Terrible Note On Reservoir Dogs

One of the hardest parts of working in the film industry is the fact that your work, no matter how hard you've worked on it and/or how proud you are of it, can't move forward until you let other people pass judgment on it. That screenplay that you've poured every ounce of your creative energy into for months is finished, and now you've got to get notes from your friends, your agent, and anyone who might be interested in working on it. It's terrifying. And the situation gets more fraught when you're showing a cut of the film. You've been working with an editor to craft a compelling motion picture, and all that effort could come undone over two hours in a screening room.

When you've been through this, when you know how it feels to take a barrage of constructive criticism, you tend to be very careful when you're the one asked to give notes. Typically, you're being asked to do so because the person is a colleague, if not a friend, so your impulse is to be encouraging. If the movie doesn't work, you focus on what does and nudge the filmmaker in a direction that might improve the work. Usually, this means recommending cuts — which is easy when you've only watched a movie once. If you've lived with the film for months in the editing room, dropping a whole scene can feel like lopping off a limb.

It's a brutal process, but if the director in question is serious about their art, they want you to be as brutal as possible (and if you're Antoine Fuqua on "Training Day," you face that music). Not nasty, but tough in a way that might get you considering the work in a new light. It's helpful to remember that you don't have to take every note, but it's also important to know that you're wasting everyone's time if you wall yourself off from all criticism.

On the other side of the equation, you're not helping if you're just gassing up the director. And yet, what happens if the movie really is that good? What if they nailed it on their first pass? "Phantasm" maestro Don Coscarelli ran into this predicament when Quentin Tarantino asked him to check out an early cut of "Reservoir Dogs," and he's still kicking himself for how he handled it.

According to his Hollywood memoir "True Indie: Life and Death in Filmmaking," Coscarelli once found himself in a Los Angeles screening room to check out "Reservoir Dogs," and was stunned to discover that the younger filmmaker had aced the assignment. As Coscarelli wrote, "Throughout the screening, I kept wondering how a first-time filmmaker could make a film so accomplished and assured. It was simply stunning."

There were only a dozen or so people in attendance (including Tarantino's friend and occasional collaborator Roger Avary, producer Lawrence Bender, and the late, dearly missed editor Sally Menke), so when it came time to give notes outside in the hallway of the theater, Coscarelli was in an awkward position. How did he handle it?

Per Coscarelli:

"As a friend, and being the experienced director there, I felt obligated to give him some kind of constructive criticism since he was not finished with his cut. So, I had the temerity to ask Quentin if maybe he might think about trimming down some of that opening sequence dialog in the diner scene about Madonna and tipping and get on with the story. Maybe even lose it entirely and just get the story going?"

And how did that go over? "Quentin politely declined my advice," wrote Coscarelli.

Coscarelli acknowledged that his advice was wrong, but he learned from the experience. And so when he was asked to provide counsel after a screening of "Pulp Fiction" (a film that was almost made in a completely different format), he told Tarantino it was brilliant and left it at that. Later on, Tarantino called and asked if he should cut a lengthy scene with Julia Sweeney. Coscarelli told him what he'd felt, but did not say at the time: yep, it had to go. Perhaps the hardest job of all in this business is knowing how and how not to criticize a genius. The answer: when in doubt, keep your caveats to yourself because they'll probably figure it out on their own.