It is a feat of massive proportions to create just one film that pleases studios, ticket-buying audiences, critics and artists of other mediums. To do it, time and time again -- that's the stuff of legends.
Quentin Tarantino and Joel & Ethan Coen have mastered the trick over the past two decades, turning out celebrated pictures that have earned them a legion of dialogue-repeating, tribute-happy superfans. Films such as "The Big Lebowski" and "Pulp Fiction," amongst so many others, serve as partial dictionaries to the modern day pop culture lexicon, and to celebrate their accomplishments, Spoke Art Gallery in San Francisco has been hosting a show that allows fans to pay tribute with their own works of art.
One of the artists, Josh Budich, is debuting his third piece, based on Tarantino's film, "Reservoir Dogs," the 1992 film starring Harvey Keitel.
'"Reservoir Dogs' is one of those films that either speaks to you entirely, or the point of it is entirely forgettable," Budich wrote in a statement exclusively to The Huffington Post. "I had the benefit of seeing this Tarantino classic when I was at the height of my impressionable teenage-boy years. So, of course, I loved it! 'Reservoir Dogs' oozes with an inherent coolness that Tarantino is a master at. Slow motion landscape-pan, cigarette dangling from the character's lip, a hint of a poorly concealed gun peeking out from underneath the trademark black suit."
Coming back to the film as an older, trained artist, he had another inspiration.
"As I re-watched [the film] to research this piece, I couldn't help but notice the relative simplicity of the film as a whole," he said. "Barely more than a few sets combined with a handful of memorable characters. You could easily throw this entire production on a stage in a small high school auditorium and successfully reenact the movie with no problem at all. That is what I love about it, and that's what I wanted to capture in my homage."
His first two, based on "Kill Bill" and "Pulp Fiction," sold out of their limited prints within minutes, and the likelihood is that this will do the same. Click over to Spoke Art Gallery's website at 8pm EST to try your luck at buying the piece. And check out this video of the opening night of the gallery to get an idea of what else is there.
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