Did you use the commode story?

You know how you see a movie so many times that it becomes attached to the period of your life when you watched it the most? Just a mention of the title brings back a flood of memories from the period when a copy of the film took permanent residence on your VCR/DVD Player/TiVo.

One of those movies for me is
RESERVOIR DOGS. It was the mid '90s, college and the waning days of the VHS age. A ratty ol' copy of the film that was pressed pre-PULP FICTION (i.e. When the word Tarantino was only spoken among geeks) was viewed ad nauseum by the unofficial film club I belonged to comprised by my roomie Ray, his girlfriend Jo and four chicks who lived in an apartment down the hall.



Despite having seen it more times than any human should, I had never seen it on the big screen until Friday night when I caught a showing atThe New Beverly Cinema, which has revived it as the de facto midnight Friday movie following a hiatus.

I find it hard to believe that any of you reading this, all three of you, haven't seen it several times yourselves and heard more opinions than you'd care to on it already, so I'll keep it brief. What struck me during this viewing was how well it has aged after all these years and how well it stacks up against QT's bigger-budgeted films. The film doesn't feel dated, or even played out despite the endless hordes of pale imitators that followed in the mid-'90s. (I'm looking at you, THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD.)

I'm still struck by Mr. Orange's backstory, in particular the flashback-within-a-flashback that takes place when he learns and practices the commode story that cements his place on Joe's diamond caper roster. In an era where the audience lacks the attention span to follow any story that doesn't lead them by the hand through three, simple linear acts, it took a crate full of balls to break away from a flashback to allow the characters to digress about how they got to the flashback in the first place.

In fact, RES DOGS reminds me a lot of Led Zeppelin's self-titled debut. Both QT and Zep came firing right out of the chute w/a bold and fully developed sense of style that you wouldn't expect from rookies. Both singlehandedly kickstarted their respective genres. And both are just plain badass.