Hacker Cinema
Four Rooms
1995 · Film · 98 min
Directed by Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino
It's Ted the Bellhop's first night on the job...and the hotel's very unusual guests are about to place him in some outrageous predicaments. It seems that this evening's room service is serving up one unbelievable happening after another.
2 positive2 neutralfrom 4 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
4 comments on Hacker News
To quote the movie Four Rooms: "The less a man makes declarative statements, the less apt he is to look foolish in retrospect."
> So you think he took an academic approach?
After a fashion, yes. He took a research-heavy approach, in the same way that many unconventional, outsider thinkers do.
And no, I'm not post-rationalising it.
You can see that work in the films, in the way they reference and invert cinematic tropes, in the choice and timing of lines, and even in the way they rip up stereotypes.
He's an obsessive, but he has definitely studied. For example you can see a deep understanding of B-movies, exploitation movies, and of films like The Taking of Pelham 123.
There's huge evidence of studying, of thinking through the logic and the flow of cinema. He didn't just watch films and luck out. It's much more considered than that. There's clearly an element of an unwritten manifesto in it all (most clearly to me this appears early on in his influence over Four Rooms, which could almost have been the foundation of a Dogme 95 type movement, had they all chosen it)
> Me and you disagreeing is proof enough we have no idea where this stuff comes from.
I think you're assuming magic where in fact there is considerable evidence of effort. Is Tarantino a maverick brat who grew up within the landscape of cinema? Yeah. But it doesn't mean he doesn't work at it, or defend his opinions with study.
Four Rooms is a great example of Roald Dahl's work..
Four Rooms is a 1995 American anthology comedy film directed by Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino, each directing a segment of it that in its entirety is loosely based on the adult short fiction writings of Roald Dahl, especially Man from the South which is the basis for the last one, Penthouse - "The Man from Hollywood" directed by Tarantino. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Rooms
Someone Like You https://www.amazon.com/Someone-Like-You-Roald-Dahl/dp/0140030743 is a great collection of these short stories and a used copy may be had cheap!
Non-authorative suggestion: 1995 movie "Four rooms" and the phrase "room for improvement"