Naveen Andrews
Everyone who works on a Quentin Tarantino movie gets a movie education courtesy of Tarantino's own private screening room. Even though he did not direct the Planet Terror segment of Grindhouse, Tarantino made sure all of Robert Rodriguez's actors knew the source material.
Naveen Andrews Gets Off the Island for Planet Terror
Knowing Tarantino's obscure tastes, these screenings are not fun for everyone, but actors like Naveen Andrews manage to get through them "just because of Quentin's irresistible sort of enthusiasm and energy," said Andrews. "It's infectious. Even if it's not hostile, try as you might to actually perceive the aesthetic that him and Robert seem to, I didn’t perceive it until I was actually doing it. Or have some idea what they were on about. When Rob would actually edit the scene that I was in, stick music on, so you could see the rhythm of the scene and then actually seeing on the screen, I thought, 'Oh, that's what they were on about.' It's not something that can be easily defined. But at the time, God, it was really hard to get through. They were interminable, those films. It's impossible, isn't it?"
As Tarantino fans have found ever since he started mentioning obscure movies in the press, it's often more fun to hear him talk about them than to sit through them. "There was one film called Zombi that I remember and then this other one with I think Mia Farrow's sister. They were appalling, I thought. Just drivel. Abysmal films. And for the life of me, I was looking around and I saw Robert and Quentin laughing like maniacs, and I found it amusing for maybe like two minutes. What am I not getting here? I felt embarrassed."
An actor hailing from the UK, Andrews admits his pretensions. "To be honest with you, in England we're snobs. Our in-cinema is Pasolini or anything with an I on the end. So it's kind of a jaundiced view of this genre of filmmaking, yet Robert and Quentin, they can see some kind of aesthetic."
Being a snob though, the boys sold Andrews on Planet Terrors gory action in the extreme. "Gory action in the extreme, if that's all it is, I'm not interested in. But if there's something else to it, if there is, again, this aesthetic that Robert and Quentin found. It has to do with a kind of obscene humor, sort of a schadenfreude and an innocence too which is what Robert brings to it, a child likes to be frightened but then very quickly reassured. It's got that in it too. Then I'm interested. Also, even though there's no political context to this film at all that I can see, there's the fact that they mention Bin Laden, it was just hilarious to me. Just on the page it was hilarious. And kind of very clever. I can't actually define why."
Yeah, they name drop in Planet Terror as part of the backstory for the infection the military unleashes. But that's as political as it gets. "II thank god there's no political context to the violence any way. In some way's it's very clever in that way because Robert's a child. To me the real violence is going on in the war. That's what's really f*cking violent, people dying in a war, young working-class people dying in a war. That's more f*cking offensive to me than anything a film could produce."
Grindhouse opens to theatres on April 6th.
For the trailers, clips, posters, stills, interviews and more movie info, go to the Grindhouse
Movie Page.
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