You're Still Not Fooling Anybody

Mike White has hit a new low. He now nitpicks on every small little line and shot said and made in Pulp Fiction and tries to find similarities in other movies. Does he succeed?

• Ezekiel 25:17 speech taken from the movie "The Bodyguard"

• "They'll strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blow torch" "Charley Varrick" (1973)

• The mysterious golden glare from the briefcase. "The Killing" (1955)

• The adrenaline shot speech. "American Boy" (1978)

• The animated square made by Uma Thurman. "Three Little Bops" (1957)

A little bit maybe yes but what ever made you like this, Mike? What made you target Quentin Tarantino for this? Many filmmakers steal from other movies and put it in theirs. And you don't make no movie about them. Tarantino took a line from a movie here and a shot from a movie here and he made Pulp Fiction.

Now tell me, would you rather he didn't make Pulp Fiction?

"Showing that someone's reading Ezekiel 25:17, and say that one is stolen by Tarantino, is in my opinion very poor, because that part is a passage written in the bible !!"

This comment is not entirely correct. If you took the time to read the Bible, you would see that the passage simply reads: 'And they will know I am the Lord, when I lay my vengeance upon them'. The rest is taken straight from a title crawl in 'The Bodyguard' starring Sonny Chiba. The problem I have is this - although Quentin used the text in a different context, he still stole someone else's written work. This person should have received royalties. The rest is mostly garbage: A shining light in Kiss Me Deadly, who cares. Nice homage.

Not long after watching the fairly interesting documentary "Who Do You Think You're Fooling?" by Mike White, which makes good comparisons between Reservoir Dogs and City on Fire, I watched this 'sequel'... where Mike - as opposed to seeming like a bright man with good, argumentative points - just comes off like a whiny little kid. With the exception of one or two of the five(count 'em, five) minor similarities between Pulp Fiction and other, earlier films, none of them have any real merit, and/or are too obvious to waste time mentioning. This starts off with a reply from Tarantino to White's first documentary, which is fitting... but from there on out, it just falls flat. The comparisons range from vague to downright embarrassing. It's like Mikey got real drunk one night, got the idea for this and didn't sober up until it was too late... until the film was out and had been seen by too many people to be forgotten, its existence denied. Why he felt it necessary to make a sequel to the first, I have no idea. This is just embarrassing. Should only be watched by those seeking to take perverse pleasure in watching White mess up. I recommend this only to the Tarantino-lovers who were offended by the(arguably quite meritorious) criticisms of the first documentary and who's looking for a cheap laugh. 3/10

"You're Still Not Fooling Anybody" opens with a clip of Kurt Loder reading out that Mike White's original tackling of QT (he ain't worth to get his name full credited here) was not allowed to be shown at the New York Underground Film Festival. "Who Do You Think You're Fooling?" aptly showed how QT ripped off a lesser known film, "City on Fire". And by ripping off, I mean that Mike White was able to compile 10 minutes of footage from both films and neatly juxtaposing them. Be amazed as the sound from "R. Dogs" is placed on top of the image of "City on Fire" (as Ringo Lam's film is in Cantonese, you can follow the story by reading the subtitles). Fitting like a glove, both films have robberies that go wrong, people shot in the stomach, a revelation about a character's profession and hit men approaching the building.

The MTV news clip included a statement from the so-called director (read: petty thief), saying he would look forward to watching "City on Fire" (original title: "Long Hu Feng Yun"). At this point White's title becomes prophetic: Who do you think you're fooling, QT? Yes, the teens who watch MTV News and haven't seen "Who do you think you're fooling?". But anyone who did see Mike White's short won't believe you.

After the MTV News segment "You're Still Not Fooling Anybody" continues with a split screen with on the left "Pulp Fiction" and on the right a series of films QT plagiarized. Or at least that is White's intention... the problem is that in "Pulp Fiction"'s case QT stole a lot of short scenes from lots of movies. So here we can question whether it is robbery or just a homage. The moment where the suitcase in "Kiss Me Deadly" is opened (the nuclear box of Pandora) is an iconic image in film history, which has inspired many directors: Alex Cox used it in the trunk scene in 'Repo Man', to name but one. That in "Pulp Fiction" a suitcase is opened can be seen as a nice nod to "Kiss Me Deadly", just like the scenes which bear resemblances to a.o. "Charley Varrick" and the cartoon "Three Little Bops". It's a bit more problematic for the Ezekiel paraphrase (from "The Bodyguard") and the adrenalin shot (from "American Boy"): as we are looking at over 30 seconds each of very similar footage, it's likelier to call this plagiarism. QT likes to use nods to other films (from "Kiss Me Deadly" to "Thriller - They Call Her One Eye") and there's nothing wrong with a few nods (the technique of 'sampling' is widely used in movies, music and literature). The title of this review is a nod to "Lady Snowblood" (a film QT plagiarized to the maximum in "Kill Bill"). However, if your film appears to be the same as another film for more than half a minute it may be questionable. When it's ten minutes, it's time someone called the cops.

I don't think "You're Still Not Fooling Anybody" should be seen as a short. In these days of the DVD it looks more like an extra, an appendix, a message to QT that Mike White still isn't fooled and that he still knows his cinematic history as well as QT. You're still stealing, QT, you're still not fooling anybody.

Did Tarantino lie through his teeth about White's movie exposing Reservoir Dogs not being true because he hadn't even seen City on Fire? Of course he did. But I think we can all have sympathy for him, because who wouldn't be a freaked out 30 year old that was hailed as a genius paranoid it was all about to end? Remember, Tarantino was only thought to be maybe the new Abel Ferrera when RD was released and was suddenly called the new Orson Welles by Roger Ebert on Siskle & Ebert when Pulp Fiction was released. That heady fame would cloud anybody's judgment.

So White came out of it looking like the better man to anybody who saw the short. Why he had to be petty and take shots at Pulp Fiction is beyond me. Outside of the Bodyguard borrowing, it's a whole lotta nothing.