News culture A real criminal stars in this cult film directed by Quentin Tarantino: he spent 25 years behind bars
Published on 10/13/2024 at 06:05
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Sometimes there is only one step between a movie character and your own life! The proof with the role of this actor in Quentin Tarantino’s very first film.
Symbolic films for Tarantino
It is through his films, 9 in number, that Quentin Tarantino lets his different inspirations ooze. Something that can be seen clearly in Kill Bill for example: we see the director’s love for martial arts films. With Once Upon A Timehis latest film to date, it demonstrates his attachment to the first Hollywood westerns. A genre of feature film that we find in his filmography with Django : Unchainedthe most lucrative of its kind.
First loves that Quentin Tarantino began to infuse into his productions from the very beginning. Reservoir Dogs was released in cinemas in 1992 and modernized the detective film genre. Something he perhaps gets from the novels of Edward Bunker, the one who plays Mr. Blue on screen. Because before being an actor, Bunker is a writer who used his criminal past to write his own novels.
From prison to the spotlight
In fact, Edward Bunker is a repeat criminal who spent 25 years in prison, 18 of which were consecutive. He was incarcerated in the Saint-Quentin state prison, then renowned as one of the harshest in the United States. During his journeys behind bars, Bunker does not put literature aside. An avid reader from a young age, his dream is to become a writer. A dream that he accomplished by publishing several novels starting in 1972 with No Beast So Fierce.
He uses his own life as a source of creativity for his books since he depicts characters who have gone through prison and violence. The latter, like Bunker, have difficulty reintegrating into existing societal life. At the time, Tarantino was looking for Reservoir Dogs someone who looks like a real bank robber. Already an actor then, Bunker constitutes the ideal actor although he only has a few lines of dialogue. And for the record, he is not the only one in the cast to have been to prison either. : Lawrence Tierney, one of the main roles, has often been behind bars for his excessive violence, his addiction to drinking and even shot his nephew during the filming of Reservoir Dogs.