Reservoir Dogs is a 1992 thriller about a simple jewelry heist gone terribly wrong, where the surviving criminals begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant.
Uncle Bob’s Pancake House is the perfect place to meet with friends to perhaps discuss the complexities of your favourite Madonna song or before you head out on that big bank job. Just remember to tip your waitress.
“Let me tell you what “Like a Virgin” is about.” – Mr. Brown
It’s with this opening that a unique talent was unleashed on the movie going public as the former video store clerk Quentin Tarantino chose to open his directorial debut Reservoir Dogs – not with a title card but instead with an 8-minute sequence set around a diner table as his colour code named gangster (a nod to The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) talk not about the job they are going to do but instead argue about the meaning of the classic Madonna single in the now much-discussed monologue before moving onto the issue of tipping. This of course is far from what many expected from a heist thriller, much less one were you never get to actually see the heist.
Shot on location at Pat and Lorraine’s which can be found at 4720 Eagle Rock Boulevard, Eagle Rock, northeast of downtown Los Angeles, it is one of the few locations from the film which still remains, with the warehouse where the surviving members reunite now sadly demolished to make way for a car park. The location itself is nothing unique from any other diner and more so when we compare it to the other memorable locations from Tarantino’s back catalogue such as Jack Rabbit Slims or the House of Blue Leaves perhaps due to budget restrictions, which keeps the film more grounded compared to the ones that followed. But then dialogue is cheap to shoot and its this element in particular which really makes this location so special. Of course Tarantino wasn’t the first director to tap into the power of dialogue like this as Richard Linklater certainly showed with his own debut Slacker, which in turn inspired Kevin Smith to do the same with his debut Clerks. Tarantino though was the one who made it cool and while critics and detractors were keen to highlight the violence of his films, he was at the same time receiving just as much praise for his smart and often highly quotable dialogue.
Interestingly though, the Madonna monologue had originally been scripted for Steve Buscemi’s character Mr. Pink who Tarantino had originally written for himself to play before Buscemi’s was cast and to this extent no doubt explains why Mr. Pink gets most of the best lines in the film. For some reason, though despite demoting himself to playing Mr. Brown, Tarantino still choose to hold onto the Madonna monologue. Of course the question could also be asked why “Like A Virgin”? Especially when pretty much any song could have been put in its place, perhaps lacking the crude explanation for its lyrics. So should we consider that perhaps Tarantino is making a reference to his own experience as a director? After all, at this point he had only directed the unfinished My Best Friends Birthday and wrote the script for True Romance, which in turn Tarantino used to fund the production of this film and for many this was their first introduction to his work. As a fun side note, Madonna upon viewing the film sent Tarantino a signed copy of her Erotica album signed “To Quentin. It’s not about dick, it’s about love. Madonna.”
Here around this diner table, Tarantino lays down the first rules of his cinematic universe in which characters can talk about everyday subjects, in particular movies and music which they often use in relation to their situation and here seeing the dogs sitting around the table they could be any group of people as there is no sense that once they finish breakfast they are going to go and pull off a jewel heist. There is no discussion of the job they are going to do or any kind of showboating as to their previous victories. Instead, we are treated to pop culture dissection and the anti-tipping ethos of Mr. Pink.
During the sequence we never see any part of the diner table which the Dogs are sitting around, noteworthy for being a round table as much like King Arthur’s. It can be read that they must be seen as equal to each other with the exception of Joe (Lawrence Tierney) and Nice Guy Eddie (Chris Penn) who are cast as being different due to them not being dressed in the now iconic suits which the dogs wear. Ex-career criminal turned writer Edward Bunker, who here plays Mr. Blue, would later reveal in an interview that he considered the opening to be unrealistic, especially as a distinctively dressed group meeting in public and having breakfast would be easy to remember for onlookers. Still, viewed with on a surface level here amongst the ranks of the dogs, every one of them is the same of the man next to them, something further reinforced by Joe giving them all colours in place of their names, which not only protects their identities, especially in the case of a rat amongst the group, a concern well-founded as we discover that one of them might not be who they say they are. By removing their names and making them all dress identically, they are also stripped off their personal identities and hence once again, equal.
True, during this scene, we might not see much of the table, we do certainly get to take in the various members of the group as Tarantino constantly keeps the camera moving around the table looking over the shoulder of characters like the audience trying to find a seat among them. He focusing on the character who is talking but also tracking the reactions of the group to the conversation happening around them. By doing so we also get snippets of their various characters personalities which for characters like Mr. Brown and Mr. Blue really gives them their biggest contributions to the film and perhaps knowing how pushed to the background Brown seemingly only further influenced Tarantino’s choice to give him the opening monologue.
What’s most significant about this location though is that in these eight minutes, it could almost be seen as a test reel for his directing style as here the scene includes tracking shots, pop culture references, quotable and explicit dialogue (including two hundred and seventy two uses of the word “F*ck”) and memorable characters more so here as we are briefly with these characters and yet we come away from the scene with the feeling that we know something about each of their personalities and their motivations. Tarantino would go on to replicate this scene in many of his following films, most noticeably during the opening of Pulp Fiction, this opening scene still remains one of his most memorable and quotable so that even while other aspects of the movie perhaps don’t have the same shine to them as they originally did, this still remains as fascinating a scene as when it was first released.