Distigustipated. That’s how I feel (not that you asked). I really thought I was friends again with My Sensei, Mr. Quentin Tarantino. He not only apologized for calling me a “faggot rent boy chicken” at the wrap party for the reshoots of the film that would come to be known as The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth. He was wasted out of his mind on sake and Belgian beer—nostalgic for Inglourious Basterds? Then why no challah?—and he knows what he said. “I’m sorry, Benny,” he tells me now, “I knew it was wrong. But I was with my friends. In certain parts of Japanese culture, it’s considered very rude not to join in and mock someone when everyone else is doing it. It’s like peer pressure, but it’s not, it’s different. There’s honor to it.” What’s honorable about making fun of your friends? “Well,” he says, “we’re not exactly close.”
Not exactly close. Not exactly close. Not… exactly… close? I ate in this man’s trailer for six months. I travelled with him to Bali. I brought him coffee, spirits, trinkets, good luck charms from Inglewood… yeah, okay, you know, I realize that all of this makes me sound like a PA. Well, I wasn’t a PA. I didn’t even get paid that much. PA’s don’t get paid at all. Besides, can’t a bird just help someone out because they’re nice? Why is there so much contempt for friendly and/or tortured individuals? I’m just a bird, and My Sensei abused that trust. Rooster and his bitch wife Monica get on my nerves daily (even when we’re not on the same continent), but they understand me. They’re family. They try not to understand me, and when we go out in public, Monica insists that I refrain from using the Quibbits name (“Just say your name is Bennington Doe. Got it? Bennington Doe.”) She wants me to say my name is Bennington Doe. But I’m not a doe. I’m a rooster—full grown!
You may have heard that My Sensei is releasing a new book this December. It’s called The Adventures of Cliff Booth. It’s not a novelization of The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth (contrary to the press release), but rather a novelization of the original screenplay that became the movie The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth. Before collaborating with Mr. David Fincher, My Sensei hadn’t allowed another director to use his material since 1996, and if you ask me, From Dusk Till Dawn is a fine way to end your writer-for-hire career. Make it with your best friend, write yourself a leading role, just have fun and be yourself (vampires all).
Turns out I was right. My Sensei and I got drunk one night, after the faggot incident but before I was shipped back home to Massachusetts. “Benny, I have to tell you something.” He really looked bad. Not sick, not high, just incredibly sad. Sorrowful. Not usually the look you see on Quentin. But I knew it was real. “I shouldn’t have written this movie,” he told me, “I should’ve just published it as a novel. Fincher took what I gave him and turned it into shit—no, less than shit, nothing. This is a nothing, nothing movie, and you can’t even see anything because it’s so dark. And digital… I don’t know why I thought I could divest myself from this and let him do his thing. I still think we’re the two best directors alive. It’s just that I’m better than him.”
I gave him a pat of the wing and some feather of bird (amphetamine—trust me, he needed it). Yesterday I received a galley copy in the mail. Monica almost got to it first, but I elbowed her out of the vestibule and made sure my package didn’t “accidentally” find its way down the garbage disposal. I took it up to my room and opened it. No cover, just the title page, the copyright page, and the dedication… “For Benny.”
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