#americandiners

CRIMINALS AT THEIR LAST BREAKFAST.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on one of the most memorable opening/diner/breakfast/ restaurant scenes in all of film history, the opening café-breakfast scene from Quentin Tarantino's debut, breakthrough, critical and commercial success, "Reservoir Dogs" (1992), written & directed by Q.T.

"In a 1994 interview with "Film Comment" Magazine, Quentin Tarantino spoke about the process of filming the diner scene of "Reservoir Dogs." Specifically, he spoke about how the camera movement is some of the most notable of the entire movie:

"[The diner scene] has one of the most pronounced camera moves in the whole movie, that slow-moving 360 where people get lost, and then you find them again. But while I've got this big camera thing happening — and believe me, it was a big pain in the ass to shoot that — at the same time, the camera is just catching whoever it happens to catch at the time."

The difficult camera work is an interesting contrast to the mundane happenings at the diner table. The meandering nature of the camera almost mimics the flow of the conversation, easing you into this world and setting the metaphorical table, only so Tarantino can yank the tablecloth off later when the heist goes wrong. He explained that he was aiming to make the opening scene feel naturalistic while also showing the dynamic between this group of strangers before their big heist:

"It's not choreographed so that it's on Mr. Orange, and it hits Mr. Pink as he says his line and then finds itself on Mr. Blonde as he says his line — no, it's not doing that at all, people are talking offscreen, and the camera's just doing its own independent thing."

-- SLASH FILM, ""Reservoir Dogs" opening diner scene was A Pain for Quentin Tarantino to Shoot," by Ernesto Valenzuela, October 25, 1992