No Time to Try: The Quantum of Quentin (Humor)
A humor piece by Scott Fivelson
Uma Thurman stood next to Bond.
If she ever thought she’d find herself playing a Bond girl, if you’d asked her now, she might have quoted Bond himself, “I don’t think I ever had a choice.” After pulping fiction and killing Bill, twice mind you, she’d learned not to question what’s next.
“What’s next?” snarled the villain, the greatest Bond villain of all time. “Oh, you’ll find out what’s next, Mr. Bond, and believe me, you’d already know what’s next, if you’d worked as long as I did at Video Archives!”
The villain laughed maniacally.
Bond knew him as Phil Spectre, the ridiculously named new head of international crime organization, Spectre. But Uma knew him by his real name.
“Quentin… Let us go. Please.”
“If you never make a 10th film, Tarantino, it won’t exactly be the end of the world,” said Bond.
“Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong!” said Quentin, eyes ablaze with a fervor matched only by his love for Hong Kong cinema. “My eagerly awaited 10th film isn’t simply going to be a movie. Oh no, no, no, no, no! My 10th film is going to be the end of the world!”
Like every Bond supervillain before him, Quentin warmed to hearing the sound of his own voice.
“That is why, Mr. Bond, my 10th film – it has been so… delayed, shall we say. Held at arm’s length for dramatic effect. The big finish… not just for my filmography… but for the human race!”
Now that the madman’s plan was out in the open, a capper to his career that would be a full-stop end for all of humanity, the director realized he had always known it would all have to come to this, ever since the Michael Madsen does-his-little-dance scene in Reservoir Dogs.
Uma, who understood the new Grand Poobah of Spectre better than anyone, with the possible exception of Samuel L. Jackson, now tried to reach the Quentin she once knew, before the pressure of developing “my last film” had led to this psychotic break.
“Quentin, I know what’s bothering you. It’s not just the death of celluloid and the degrading of the movie theatergoing experience…”
“Listen to the Bond girl, playing for time,” observed The Bride’s one-time director, who cackled maniacally as supervillains do.
Bond, who reflected that after the debacle of No Time to Die, the franchise would never be stupid enough to kill him again, was more debonair than ever in the face of apocalyptic danger.
“Come, come, old man,” said Bond.
Serving Her Majesty as an agent in the double-O Section of MI6, Bond generally didn’t spend enough time watching YouTube to know that these words would be a hot-button for the maker of The Hateful Eight.
“You see? All of you – you already think I’m too old to make another masterpiece. In his last years, Kurosawa couldn’t hit a stand-up double. Ten films and I’m out!”
The clock was ticking, the shredded concept for his would-be last film, The Movie Critic, haphazardly strewn in the violence-prone cinema trickster’s wake, along with the bright idea for a likewise canceled Star Trek sequel, which had never been anything more than a brilliantly orchestrated distraction, and the Oscar winner of a writer that Tarantino still was knew this had been a really long sentence.
“For bloody sake, get on with it,” said Bond.
“Alright… I’m going to count to 10,” said Quentin. “Reservoir Dogs… Pulp Fiction… The one with Pam Grier… The Kill Bills… Grindhouse, my half… Inglorious Basterds… Django… Hateful Eight… Once Upon a Time in Hollywood… Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and a half… Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and two-thirds… Once Upon a Time in Hollywood AND THREE QUARTERS…”
The whole world held its breath and waited for Quentin Tarantino, genius and the ultimate Bond villain, to get to 10.
Video: Quentin Tarantino Scrapping ‘The Movie Critic’ as Final Film
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Scott Fivelson is an award-winning screenwriter, fiction writer, songwriter, and director. His credits include a satire of the multi-generational family saga – the comedy novel, Tuxes – and the one-act mysteries, Dial L for Latch-Key and Leading the Witness. He was co-writer/producer of a popular dramedy about the music biz, American Reel, starring the legendary David Carradine, Michael Maloney, and Mariel Hemingway. Fivelson wrote and directed his latest film, Near Myth: The Oskar Knight Story, starring Lenny Von Dohlen as legendary director, Oskar Knight.
(Cover photos of Uma Thurman and Daniel Craig, per Instagram)
Posted by Richard Webster, Ace News Today
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