How RZA met Quentin Tarantino
RZA is a man of many talents. Not only was he the driving force behind Wu-Tang Clan, plus a bunch of other musical projects from over the years, but he also became deeply involved in film, be it as an actor, writer or director. His feature-length directorial debut, The Man with the Iron Fists, came out in 2012, and, while he was working on it, he enjoyed the support and guidance of the most enviable ally imaginable: Quentin Tarantino.
RZA and Tarantino have been friends and collaborators for a long time now, though they’re not necessarily the most likely of pals. But, in an interview with IGN in 2004, RZA himself elaborated on how they crossed paths in the first place. RZA, a keen kung-fu movie fan, was asked by the production company Miramax to help promote a re-release of the classic kung-fu film Iron Monkey in 2001. One of the people behind that re-release was Tarantino, so, one day, while they were both doing promo for the film at a press junket, they crossed paths.
Also there that day was the actor, filmmaker and martial artist Donnie Yen, who RZA was a big fan of. “He’s the best out [there],” RZA told IGN, “but he doesn’t know his own movies.” This meant that, even though RZA was happily enthusing about Yen’s work, listing off some of his favourite Yen movies, the man himself didn’t really know what he was talking about.
“And then Quentin [jumped in and] was like, ‘You know, the one where you… man, you don’t even know your own movies!’” recalled RZA. “Then Quentin and I just started talkin’ about movies and next thing I was like, ‘Did you see…?’ And he’d say, ‘No, but did you see…?’ And it started being like a little baseball card flip-off and we wound up promising to get each other copies of the films we’d been talkin’ about.”
It’s quite a heartwarming image, these two world-famous masters of their crafts reduced to giddy fans. A friendship was established, and, from that point on, it only grew. “The next time I was in LA,” explained RZA, “he invited me up to check out some movies. He had a print of a rare movie and was like, ‘You want to come check it out?’ I said, ‘Sure, why not?’ We just became friends like that and after about 8-9 months I wound up gettin’ on the project with him.”
The project in question was Kill Bill, Tarantino’s two-part martial arts action film that RZA composed the score for. The pair were now collaborators as well as friends, and Kill Bill soon led to another project. RZA had made sure to pay attention and to learn from Tarantino as he directed Kill Bill, and, with those lessons in his head, he set out to make his own movie, The Man with the Iron Fists.
Throughout the long development process, Tarantino encouraged RZA to do the score himself, which he was initially reluctant to do. Plus, he also agreed to “present” the film, which, practically, just meant tying his name to it, but that, presumably, was a huge marketing boost. There were even plans for a crossover, in which RZA’s character from The Man with the Iron Fists would show up in Tarantino’s movie Django Unchained. A scheduling clash meant that never came to pass.