Music being such an integral part of a Quentin Tarantino movie, you'd expect that when he gets together with one of the biggest names in rock it would be a proper meeting of the minds. In Lars Ulrich's case, that wasn't really true.
The initial bonding sounds like it went pretty well, with the pair having dinner in a San Francisco restaurant in 2001.
“Having Q.T. six inches from my face, eyes dancing, intensely animated, explaining in intricate detail how he had written and choreographed the two main fight scenes in the film to the Metallica songs 'Enter Sandman' and 'Sad But True'. Fists would impact faces on accents. Kicks would land on cymbal hits. Bodies would twirl along with the rhythm of the music. Tarantino’s next-level movie magic married to Metallica music, all turned up to 11,” Ulrich told the San Francisco Examiner .
The film? Kill Bill Vol. 1 .
However, it's when Ulrich read the 180-page script that things started to go wrong.
“Page by page, I realised that most of this was written in a language that was outside of my realm of understanding. I had never encountered a narrative like this, set in, to me, a very foreign culture of martial arts and Asian myths. I just couldn’t wrap my thick Danish head around it,” the rock star admits.
“I championed his movies, loved him as a person, but at the end of the 180 pages, I sat there somewhat bewildered and felt very uncool for not getting it. I wasn’t capable of appreciating its brilliance.”
Sad but true indeed.
Ulrich, described turning down the Kill Bill soundtrack as, “the single biggest mistake I’ve made in the creative department.”
“Of course Kill Bill turned out to be above and beyond brilliant, as have his subsequent movies, which have all been a significant part of my life in the 2000s. To this day I still worship the ground Q.T. walks on,” he added.
