KILL BILL VOLUME 2 - US interview with Daryl Hannah

Were you a little frustrated with VOLUME 1 and chomping at the bit for VOLUME 2 so you'd have so much more to do?

No, because VOLUME 1 and VOLUME 2 are the same film.

Of course.

So it was really just an afterthought to cut them into two. However, the only thing that was frustrating about it was just the fact that everyone kept asking me what was going to happen, what happens to my character, why she lost her eye, all these things that I couldn't really answer because then I would have ruined their enjoyment of VOLUME 2. Even doing interviews, I couldn't really answer questions because then I'd give stuff away. It's just more fun to watch and find out.

You can't really now either, can you?

No, true. But at least you can, you can ask me questions about certain things.

Absolutely. But there is a lot of explanation in this film.

Yeah, and also many people just got over the little sampling of my character in VOLUME 1, and now they'll have a fuller understanding of exactly how evil she is to the depths of her problem.

What side of Elle do we see in VOLUME 2?

Well, you just get to know her. In VOLUME 1 you only see her in one scene which is in the hospital, and you know she's trying to put The Bride out of her coma and out of her misery, put her to sleep. But in this one you understand a little bit more about her relationship to Bill, how she feels about Budd, how she feels about The Bride. Basically, she doesn't really have very many good feelings for anyone, even the man she supposedly loves. Even her master... I don't want to tell you too much...

She's a rather cold person.

Yeah, I mean that's the point.

And there is a great rivalry between Elle and The Bride that's played out in a small trailer. It does seem like an unlikely location for the showdown between these Amazon blondes.

It did seem like an unlikely location because originally it wasn't meant to be in a trailer, it was meant to be outside in the desert, and we were going to have this much more classic spaghetti western... a duel where we turn back to back and take paces away from each other, turn around and choose a stance and do the whole thing, but when Quentin decided to place the whole fight inside the trailer, I was a little bit worried at first, I thought he was gonna cut me off because he had spent so much time in China in The House of Blue Leaves and he had run over schedule and wanted to cut it short, but it turned out that he just wanted a complete mess of a bar room brawl, a sort of Godzilla gone wrong, two cats in a tin can kind of situation; and then that's what it turned out to be, and I think ultimately it was probably the funnier and more entertaining decision.

Tarantino seems to relish in confusing the audience's expectations. Here we were, as you say, expecting this elegant swordfight between these two very skilled women and he does that...

Every time - it's true. He's a movie fan; he's a movie lover, so he likes to throw something at you that he would love to see. This is his fetish/fantasy.

Does this film show perhaps a sentimental side to Quentin Tarantino, do you think?

Quentin is a big sap, he's definitely sentimental, and he's a big softie. I've heard some people say that they cried when they went to see the movie. I haven't seen it yet, so it's hard for me to say what kind of emotional effect it's going to have on me when I see it. But it's got definitely some very moving scenes and very poignant scenes.

Did you see the need to cut the film into two episodes? Does it come full circle for you now?

It definitely made sense to cut into two episodes because there was just so much material. The script was massive to begin with. Even Quentin called it his magnum opus because it was so large and he'd been writing it for so long. But also it was written in an episodic fashion, so it had natural places to break; and that way he wouldn't have had to lose something by cutting this huge story into an hour and a half or two hours. It just wouldn't have been possible, he would have had to have lost whole characters and storylines, and they're all so entertaining, but it would have been too bad.

In what ways did these films and the character of Elle enable you to indulge you in some quirks in terms of character... the idiosyncrasies of this role... how often you do use the word 'gargantuan'?

Actually, I do use the word 'gargantuan,' I like the word 'gargantuan,' it's a fun word to say.

Since the movie or before?

I think I've said it a few times. I think that Quentin actually threw it in there because one of the references that he gave us for our fight sequence was a movie called THE WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS.

My daughter's favourite film.

Is it really? My gosh. So I think that was probably thrown in as a little... But one of my favorite things to do was to drive the Trans-Am, it was so much fun, I got to drive 120 miles an hour... and the desert road went on forever and ever, and no one could give me a ticket or arrest me... also learning from the stunt guys how to fishtail the car and stuff like that, that was really fun. I also really loved, in the training part, learning how to fly on the wires, even though I didn't really get to use that. But it was fun to do. So there were a lot of things that personally I enjoyed. The character though gave me a little bit of a present, because once I felt how she moves and the way she walks through the world... it's so much more forceful and aggressive and arrogant than my traditional posture. But sometimes if I throw my shoulders back and put her on, I feel a little more confident in myself.

I can imagine. She's a pretty formidable woman. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

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