Trivia / Reservoir Dogs

• Actor-Inspired Element:
  • The woman Mr. Orange shoots is Tim Roth's dialect coach, Suzanne Celeste. Roth insisted that she take the role, as she was very hard on him.
  • The suit Harvey Keitel wore was his own. It had been a specially-made gift from French Designer Agnès B.
  • Supposedly, the "I need you to be cool" dialogue was something Tarantino said to one of the actors after yet another fight with Lawrence Tierney.
• Banned in China: It's illegal to own a copy of the movie and/or import the licensed video game in New Zealand. Australia also banned it.
• Breakthrough Hit: For Quentin Tarantino.
• Cast the Expert: Mr. Blue, a member of the gang who only shows up in two scenes, is played by Eddie Bunker, a real life former criminal and convicted felon before he went into acting and writing crime fiction. Despite his criminal impulses remaining into his twilight years, he was able to retire from a life of crime based solely on the profits he made in crime fiction.
• Cast the Runner-Up:
  • Steve Buscemi auditioned for Mr. White and Nice Guy Eddie. He was also offered Mr. Orange.
  • Quentin Tarantino originally wrote the role of Mr. Pink for himself. He took the smaller role of Mr. Brown.
  • Harvey Keitel, Michael Madsen, and Tim Roth all considered playing Mr. Pink. Keitel and Roth were also considered for Mr. Blonde. Madsen said in an interview that he initially sought out the role of Mr. Pink versus the iconic role he ended up being cast as because Mr. Pink is the film's sole survivor.
• Completely Different Title: A case where the title actually makes more sense than the very non-indicative original: in Portuguese, it was Rental Dogs (presumably confusing "reservoir" with "reserve") in Brazil and Damn Dogs in Portugal, both of which serve as a decent description of the career criminal protagonists.
  • In Russia it's commonly known as Rabid Dogs. The translation by Dmitry Puchkov goes for Farewell, Dogs, referencing Tarantino's own answer as to the origin of the name.
• Creator Backlash: Downplayed. Eddie Bunker (Mr. Blue's actor) said in an interview that the heist crew eating in a public diner wearing the suits they intend to wear while carrying out a robbery and working with people you don't know and are unable to trust were bad ideas — and since Bunker was a career criminal before going into acting, he was probably speaking from experience. Bunker didn't seem to hate the film overall, however, as he named his autobiography after his character.
• Deleted Scene:
  • Two alternate angles of the ear-slicing scene, one of which is more graphic.
  • A lengthy sequence concerning a background check on Mr. White (whose full name is revealed to be Lawrence Dimick). This sequence also features a female speaking part (there are none in the theatrical release) played by Nina Siemaszko.
  • A car scene featuring Mr. White, Mr. Pink, and Nice Guy Eddie after they leave Mr. Blonde with the cop and Mr. Orange.
  • Freddie (Mr. Orange) and his partner discuss in more detail the semantics of the undercover operation.
• Descended Creator: Quentin Tarantino was an aspiring actor and originally intended to play the role of Mr. Pink himself. He ultimately took the smaller role of Mr. Brown. The film set the trend of Tarantino casting himself in small roles in all of his films, some smaller than others.
• Enforced Method Acting: While shooting the torture scene, Quentin Tarantino told Kirk Baltz to tell Michael Madsen something that would make him stop torturing him. Baltz knew that Madsen had just had a baby son, so he ad-libbed the line "Stop, I have a son!" Madsen was so shaken that he broke character for a moment and glanced at Tarantino. The moment is still in the film.
• Fake American: The very British Tim Roth plays an American.
• Hostility on the Set: Lawrence Tierney didn't make any friends onset due to his difficult personality. He would often provoke Quentin Tarantino and his younger castmembers, and almost into a fight with Michael Madsen. According to Steve Buscemi in a podcast interview, everyone had a difficult time with Tierney because he was easily distracted and kept forgetting his lines. Tarantino and everyone else were so upset with him that he fired Lawrence on the third day of filming.
• Method Acting: According to an interview on the DVD, Michael Madsen says that Kirk Baltz asked to ride in his trunk to experience what it was really like. Madsen agreed, but decided as he went along that this was time for his own character development. So he drove down a long alley with potholes, and then a Taco Bell drive-through, before taking Baltz back to the parking lot and letting him out. The soda he ordered at said drive-through is the same one he can be seen drinking during his character's first appearance in the warehouse. In a separate interview, Baltz denied this happened, but....
  • All that fake blood that Tim Roth is covered in would actually dry and paste him to the floor, requiring him to be hosed down so the blood could be softened and he could move. Roth said in an interview that he was privately glad when another blood covered actor (presumably Michael Madsen) had to get the same treatment to get off the floor, as he was tired of going through it alone.
• No Budget:
  • The film was originally planned to be shot for just $30,000, until Harvey Keitel saw the script and came on as Mr. White and the executive producer, which increased the budget to $1.2 million.
  • The film's budget was so low that many of the actors simply used their own clothing for their wardrobe, most notably Chris Penn's track jacket. The signature black suits were provided for free by the designer, based on her love for the American crime film genre. Steve Buscemi wore his own black jeans instead of suit pants.
  • The budget didn't stretch to obtaining police assistance for traffic control, so in the scene where Mr. Pink forces a woman out of her car and drives off in it, they had to wait until the traffic lights were green each time.
  • Mr. Blonde's Cadillac Coupe de Ville actually belonged to Michael Madsen, because the budget wasn't big enough to buy a car for the character.
• Reality Subtext: Note that in the opening scene when the gang are discussing Madonna, Nice Guy Eddie keeps out of the discussion. His actor, Chris Penn, deferred from saying anything on screen about his former sister-in-law.
• Role Reprise: Micheal Madsen returned to play Mr. Blonde in the video game, and was the only one of the original cast to do so.
• Star-Making Role: Steve Buscemi had some good performances under his belt prior, but this was the point where most people learned who he was. Ditto for Tim Roth and Michael Madsen.
• Throw It In!:
  • Everything after Mr. Blonde cuts off the ear was ad-libbed by Michael Madsen.
  • In his Hot Fuzz commentary with Edgar Wright, Tarantino reveals the gesture Mr. Brown makes at the end of the opening scene is not from the character at all, but Tarantino the director, telling everyone to just leave after finally getting a good take out of Lawrence Tierney.
  • Chris Penn’s squib was accidentally triggered early in the Mexican Standoff, and so he dropped at the same time as the other two. Tarantino liked the effect and kept it in, despite it not really making much sense.
• Wag the Director: In the original script, Mr. Orange's response to Marvin's cry of "I'm fuckin' deformed" was a calm "And I'm dying." Tim Roth argued that he should say the line in a screaming Freak Out to show how much pain and fear Mr. Orange was trying to keep under control.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Quentin Tarantino was originally just going to write and act in the film — the person he actually wanted to direct, and did initially agree to take on the job, was Monte Hellman, who had a long career as an independent film director going back to the 1960s. During the development process, Tarantino decided he wanted to direct it himself, and Hellman gave him his blessing to take over the director's chair, staying on as executive producer and advising Tarantino during the shoot.
  • Samuel L. Jackson auditioned for the role of Mr. White, and then for Freddy's contact/handler — being cast as Jules Winnfield was a favor for not getting either part. One would expect that the naming scene would have included some objections over a black man getting the name Mr. White.
  • Tarantino wanted James Woods to act in the film, but Woods' agent turned it down without consulting Woods himself, for which he was fired. It's not clear which role Tarantino had in mind, though most fans suspect it was Mr. Orange.
  • David Duchovny auditioned for Mr. Orange as well. According to Duchovny, Tarantino told him "I like what you do, I just don't know if I want you to do it in my movie."
  • George Clooney read for the role of Mr. Blonde/Vic Vega but was turned down. Matt Dillon and Christopher Walken refused the same role.
  • Tarantino was considering using "Ballroom Blitz" by Sweet as an alternate song for the "ear" scene.
  • The first draft script called for Pink Floyd's "Money" where "Little Green Bag" is now. It was later changed because Tarantino heard "Little Green Bag" over the radio and became extremely nostalgic.
  • In the script, it was Mr. White who doesn't tip, not Mr. Pink. Also, it was Mr. Pink who had the first lines about "Like a Virgin". This was when Tarantino still intended to play Mr. Pink himself.
  • Viggo Mortensen auditioned for a role. He read the part as a Hispanic character for a take where he was performing against Harvey Keitel. More than twenty years later, Quentin offered him a role in The Hateful Eight, but Viggo couldn't commit due to scheduling conflicts.
  • Dennis Hopper was offered the role of Mr. Pink by Tarantino and Keitel, but he was unavailable. Jon Cryer was offered the role, but he turned it down. He admitted that he did not understand the script and would not have gotten the part. Tom Sizemore was also considered.
  • Nicolas Cage was considered for Nice Guy Eddie.
  • Robert Forster was considered for Joe Cabot.
  • Ving Rhames was considered for Holdaway.
  • Tom Waits auditioned. Tarantino had him read Mr. Brown's speech about Madonna "just so I could hear Tom Waits say those lines."
  • In the script, the wounded Mr. Orange is laid down on a mattress, instead of on the wooden ramp in the warehouse.
  • For basically his whole career, Tarantino intended to do a remake of this movie as his final film, demonstrating how all his experience changed how he told this story. It also would have had an all-black cast. But then he decided to retire after Once Upon a Time in Hollywood due to feeling it was the best note he could go out on.
  • According to Michael Madsen, during the sequence where Mr. Orange shoots Mr. Blonde, there were going to be shots of Mr. Blonde taking bullets and being thrown into the hearse, pilars, etc. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time to shoot anything that extensive, so he requested, and got, the final shot of Mr. Blonde, after taking numerous hits, holding himself up on the trashcan before the trashcan tips over and he finally succumbs to his wounds.
• Word of God: Quentin Tarantino says that the briefcase from Pulp Fiction was originally supposed to have contained a cache of diamonds, before Tarantino decided that keeping the contents of the briefcase ambiguous made it more interesting. Since Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs take place in the same universe (Vic and Vincent Vega, major characters in both films, are brothers), it's been theorized that the briefcases in both films are actually the same briefcase, which would mean that someone in the criminal underworld sold the diamonds to Brett and his gang before the police could return them to their rightful owners.

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