Natural Born Killers (1994)

Dir. Oliver Stone
Story: Quentin Tarantino
Screenplay: David Veloz
Screenplay: Richard Rutowski
Screenplay: Oliver Stone

IMDB Synopsis: Two victims of traumatized childhoods become lovers and psychopathic serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by the mass media.

The synopsis is not wrong but it barely touches on the power and impact of the film. It was controversial when it opened and it remains controversial to this day. It received an NC-17 rating by the MPAA. When Stone asked what scenes needed to be edited to receive an R rating, the MPAA’s response was that the “tone” of the film was inherently violent and so there was no one “thing” to cut. The movie at its heart was too graphic.

One thing to note – this moment in time, the time of NBK – there was no internet to speak of. The cable channels were limited and so Inside Edition was like a daily explosion of American Hate and Violence. During Stone’s release of the film JFK they really piled on him.

There was a sense of a boiling pot and seething rage throughout the US and Stone tapped into it with Tarantino’s script. He brought in a few other scriptwriters and let them loose to write… anything. The crazier the better. There seemed to be no guardrails on this one.

And this created another controversy as Tarantino railed against the rewrite of his screenplay. At the time of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino has two of his screenplays optioned by Hollywood – True Romance that went on to be directed by Tony Scott, and the second being Natural Born Killers picked up by Oliver Stone. The issues and lonstanding soap opera that resulted in Tarantino losing control of two of his scripts is the stuff of legend and deserves its own write-up. The reports back in the day stated that a production has to re-write more than 50% (Half!) of a writers work to receive the screenplay credit. It is unclear how that all really works but suffice it to say a Tarantino script was so rewritten that his credit was adjusted to “Story” rather than “Screenwriter”.

Regardless, the storytelling and dialogue within Natural Born Killers moves about the ring like a psychotic drunken master; fierce, manic, bloodthirsty, unpredictable, and brilliant.

The “I Love Mallory” sequence was shocking in upon first viewing in the theaters and drove viewers scrambling for the exits. Rodney Dangerfield has never felt more dangerous and real, as if he were exercising long dormant demons never discussed in his comedy (if that is even possible). And the laugh track feels like rusted razors on the conscious – we are so trained to laugh at TV “laughs” – it catches you at a game we didn’t even know we were involved in.

And then there is the wonderfully passionate dialogue at play between our psychotic lovers, Mickey and Mallory, kudos to whoever bled this onto the page –

     Mickey: The whole world’s comin’ to an end, Mal!

     Mallory: I see angels, Mickey. They’re comin’ down for us from heaven. And I see you ridin’ a big red horse, and you’re driving them horses, whippin’ ’em, and the’re spitting and frothing all ‘long the mouth, and they’re coming right at us. And I see the future, and there’s no death, ’cause you and I, we’re angels…

     Mickey: I love you, Mal.

     Mallory: I know you do baby, and I’ve loved you since the day we met.

There is a great documentary, Chaos Rising: The Storm Around “Natural Born Killers” where Stone admits to being the chaos-minded ringleader, pushing the crew and the actors to hit the apex at every turn, riding as close to the edge as possible in front of and behind the camera.

Stone channeled not just the crazy of the day, he seemed to have presaged the coming speedrun of exponential information, data, and opinions firing society like a scattergun into the future – many cannot hack it – it is a wildly uncomfortable farcical movie.

I think it is Stone’s best – and that’s saying something.

Much like Apocalypse Now – I believe Natural Born Killers will grow in popularity and respect among the cinephiles willing to take the ride.