For quite some time we’ve heard Quentin Tarantino would venture into a new medium with The Video Archives Podcast, which doubles in interest as a reunion with Pulp Fiction… well, what he did on the movie remains ambiguous, so we’ll simply say former collaborator Roger Avary after a supposed rift. (We might have Bret Easton Ellis to thank—not often you can type that.) It, in the man’s words, would be two former video-store clerks taking “one movie from that era, the ‘70s, ‘80s, or the ‘90s, the time of the store, and just kind of examine it, and it’ll be us and a guest and they’ll examine it too. They’re a customer and we’ll just talk about stuff.”
The first episode has finally arrived, their project already bigger than promised: two movies, with the promise of three in future installments. (The first two work as some kind of double-bill; the third will evoke an obscure title from a drive-in’s triple-feature.) Otherwise the format (including a brief appearance by progeny Gala Avary) is what’s to be expected—if the idea spoke to you then it’ll speak now at Tarantino’s mile-a-minute enthusiasm. (He duly introduces Avary as “Sancho Panza to my windmill-tilting Don Quixote.”) Nostalgic but not at the sacrifice of minute detail—their memory of decades past is impeccable, speaking to the impact that necessitated this venture—it suggests a fitting addition to Tarantino’s corpus, perhaps hinting at this fall’s Cinema Speculation.
For a discussion of John Carpenter’s Dark Star and Ulli Lommel’s Cocaine Cowboys, listen below: