Fenster writes:

Over at iSteve, Steve Sailer speculates on a possible next project for Quentin Tarantino film: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion National Park.

In late 2008, following the horrifying defeat of gay marriage at the polls in California, fiances Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Madsen (the ear-cutting Mr. Blonde from Reservoir Dogs) uncover the secret plot by which Utah Mormons control the California media. In response, Jackson-Madsen assemble a team of gay lovers denied their sacred right to marry (couples hoping to head to the altar include Harvey Keitel-Robert DeNiro, Bruce Willis-Robert Forster, Steve Buscemi-Bo Svenson, Tim Roth-Eli Roth, Kurt Russell-Mickey Rourke, and Danny Trejo-Rutger Hauer). In a 75-minute finale that has audiences cheering wildly, the AR-15-toting heroes gun down each of the 360 members of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir execution-style, pausing only for long, insightful discussions about the old Kung Fu TV show.

That reminded me of a film with Tarantino roots still in the can from some years back, unreleased and maybe unreleasable.

Marimekko Gekko  (1998)

Director: Andre Gregory (stage)  Louis Malle (film)

Based on “Reservoir Dogs”, an original screenplay by Quentin Tarantino

Adapted for the stage and translated to Finnish by Aalvar Kaukkonen

Translated back to English by Dennis Hopper

Cast:

Mr. White              Dennis Hopper

Mr. Blonde            Dennis Hopper

Mr. Orange            Dennis Hopper

Mr. Brown             Dennis Hopper

Mr. Pink                 Dennis Hopper

Eddie                      Quentin Tarantino

Joe Cabot              Wallace Shawn

Policeman             Mark Fuhrman

After the success of Pulp Fiction and the award of the Nobel Prize to literature to the author, Quentin Tarantino, the following year, demand steadily grew for a stage adaptation for Tarantino’s earlier masterwork, Reservoir Dogs.  Tarantino refused to grant permission for such adaptations, with the result being underground stage versions and translations circulating around the globe for use in theater productions, usually outside the US (although the now-famous “bust” of an illegal Florida production starring Burt Reynolds is now legend).

Of all the bootleg versions, the most “buzz” was heard about one of the earliest translations, into Finnish.  (Aalvar Kaukkonen’s original Marimekko Gekko is still playing to packed houses in Helsinki).  Tarantino finally relented at the urging of his friend Dennis Hopper, who subsequently reconfirmed his Renaissance Man reputation by retranslating the play from the Finnish and adapting it for the US stage.

The result—an uncut filming of a dress rehearsal of the stage play mounted at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles— is both a must for Hopper fans and a marvel of modern theater technology as Hopper plays virtually all of the parts in the play/movie.  Mark Fuhrman is stunning as the captive policeman taunted by Mr.  Blonde (Hopper).  The fact that Fuhrman’s own ears were sliced off by Rodney King in a bar fight shortly before the production opened  lends a touch a pathos to his stage predicament, to say nothing of the plus in terms of verisimilitude (that word again!)

Joint Academy Award for Best Director went to Gregory and Malle in their finest stage/film collaboration since Batman—the Movie of the Play of the Movie of the Comic Book (1997).