How to Tell a Story: Reservoir Dogs
In the movie Reservoir Dogs, Holdaway (played by Randy Brooks who is pictured below) gives advice to Mr. Orange (played by Tim Roth) on how to go undercover as a cop and gain the trust of an organized crime cell. What follows is Quentin Tarantino’s tribute to the art of storytelling. Warning: explicit language follows. Though necessary to the character depictions and the plot of the movie, it contains offensive language.
Use the commode story.
What’s the commode story?
It’s a scene. Memorize it.
A what?
An undercover cop has to be Marlon Brando, right? To do this job you got to be a great actor. You got to be naturalistic. You got to be naturalistic as hell. Because if you ain’t a great actor, you a bad actor and a bad actor is bullshit at this job.
What is this? [reading a piece of paper]
That’s an amusing anecdote about a drug deal.
What?
Something funny that happened to you while you doin’ a f—–’ job, man.
Damn. I gotta memorize all this? That’s over four f—–’ pages of this shit here.
Look man, just think about it like it’s a joke right? You memorize what’s important. The rest you make your own, alright? You can tell a joke, can’t you?
Nope.
Pretend your Don Rickles or some f—–’ body and tell a joke, alright? The things you gotta remember are the details. It’s the details that sell your story. Now this particular story takes place in a men’s room. So you got to know all the details about the men’s room. You got to know if they got paper towels or a blower to dry your hands with. You got to know if the stalls ain’t got no doors or not, man. You got to know if they got liquid soap or that pink granulated powder shit they used to use in high school. Remember? You got to know if they got hot water or not. If it stinks.
If some nasty, low life scum-ridden motherf—– man sprayed diarrhea all over one of the bowls. You got to know every detail there is to know about this commode. So what you got to do is take all them details man and make them your own. And while you doin’ that you got to remember that this story is about you and how you perceived the details that went down. The only way to do that my partner is to keep saying and saying it and saying it and saying it and saying it.
