THE MAIN EVENT WITH 'KILL BILL - VOL. 2,' QUENTIN TARANTINO EMPHASIZES CHARACTER AND NUANCE - AND THE ODD EYEBALL GOUGING.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

The separation, it appears, was for the best.

``Kill Bill,'' Quentin Tarantino's long-awaited return to filmmaking, was ceremoniously sliced into two parts last year, after the ``Pulp Fiction'' auteur claimed he just couldn't fit all the stuff he wanted into one feature-length film.

``I could have maybe - maybe - cut this down to the bone and just made it all compact,'' the 41-year-old movie hound says. ``It wouldn't have been just '1' and '2' put together in a four-hour movie. It might've been 2:50, 3:10, something like that; that really would've been all I'd have been able to do.

``The thing is, while maybe you could've squeezed all that down, and it might have gained something else as far as forward momentum was concerned, that's not what I spent a year and a half writing. All of the little nuances and character touches and grace notes that I think the film is filled with, that would've been all the stuff that would have went away.''

That might sound a little odd to those who've only seen ``Kill Bill Vol. 1,'' with its beautifully but brutally staged homages to the samurai and martial arts mayhem he grooved on as a kid. When it came out last October, Tarantino's defenders as well as his detractors had to wonder why another two hours of carnage was necessary. Cynics even suggested that making two movies out of what was supposed to be one, a brainstorm attributed to Miramax Films chief Harvey Weinstein, was done in order to squeeze twice the profits out of a production that went well over budget and schedule.

More talk, less chop

But ``Kill Bill - Vol. 2'' is a very different cinematic experience from the first installment. Sure, it's got murders, obscure movie references aplenty and gleefully grotesque obsessions (particularly, in this one, with gouged-out eyeballs). Overall, though, the body count is a fraction of the first film's, Tarantino's trademark wayward dialogue is much more prevalent, and the overall tone of the film is one of thoughtful, emotional richness.

How on Earth did that happen?

``I'm really into new experiences,'' Tarantino notes in typical speed-talking form. ``So doing one movie, going all around the world and talking about it, getting introspective about it and talking subtextually about it, seemed like kind of what you're supposed to do now. I rested and kind of screwed around for, like, a month after that. But then, it was back in the editing room, and I felt like Bill Murray in 'Groundhog Day.' It was the same little room with the same group of editors, and I was like, 'OK, here we are again.'

``This actually went a long way toward validating our reason for splitting it in half,'' he says. ``The fact that the two movies are different, and you've had a little bit of time between volumes, now you just want to hear the story, not so much continue the exact same, in-step experience you were having before. In one way, that's actually made this long intermission work quite well.''

The story so far: The Bride (Uma Thurman), having dispatched two of her former colleagues in the Deadly Vipers Assassination Squad, is now out to get the remaining three responsible for the massacre at her wedding rehearsal - Budd (Michael Madsen), Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) and their boss (and the Bride's former lover) Bill (David Carradine) - that left the very pregnant renegade in a four-year coma.

``KB2'' opens with a black-and-white flashback to the day of that mass killing. It also finally shows us the mysterious, contract-killing impresario of the title, who was only represented by shadow, extremities and a few lines of disembodied dialogue in ``KB1.''

Which was a surprise to Carradine when he found out just how aesthetically severe the decision to divide the movie was going to be.

``I went to record a couple of added lines,'' the star of the legendary '70s TV series ``Kung Fu'' recalls. ``Then Quentin goes, 'Oh, incidentally, uh, you're not in the first picture.' Ohhhhkay. But then he did tell me that I was essentially the first thing that happens in the second picture.

``I think that's cool,'' Carradine, 67, says. ``And I think the mysterioso aspect of that is great for the picture, and the anticipation can't hurt me in the long run. There was an awful long period of anticipation, of course.''

A woman's work ...

Besides getting to know Bill, ``KB2'' also gives us much more insight into the Bride. Written for, and sometimes with, his favorite ``Pulp Fiction'' actress, Tarantino's script refracts aspects of Thurman's character through its crazy, pop fiction prism.

``I mean, it's comic-book roadkill,'' notes Thurman. ``It's a very familiar story. What is different is that I am a woman and the person fighting their way back out of the grave, the person seeking revenge, the person taking the beating and coming back for more fearlessly is me, a woman, not your typical man.

``In regard to expanding the emotional universe of the character, that's sort of what we do, especially, as women,'' she adds, most evidently in reference to ``KB2.''

``In this case, it's a very rich character but yet so streamlined and so physical and there's so much less time for expression than your average drama. Because (women's) parts are always underwritten actually, we kind of try to take whatever we get and fill it up and make something out of it.''

Although they dreamed up the initial idea for the film nearly a decade ago, it wasn't until years later that Tarantino actually got to the nuts-and-bolts writing stage. By that time, Thurman had had a daughter, Maya. Production of ``Kill Bill'' was delayed until she recovered from the birth of her son, Roan, in January 2002.

Tarantino says that observing Thurman in such maternal circumstances affected the course of ``Kill Bill's'' story line.

``It was only toward the last four or five months of the writing process that it became more than just straight revenge,'' he explains. ``I was living in New York, hanging out with Uma. I was getting to know her all over again. And during that time it's like, Uma was a mother, that's what she did. So that's what you take away.''

If you're starting to worry that ``KB2'' may end up a little too domesticated, be assured that we're talking Tarantino family values here.

``It's a movie about mother love brought to its fiercest manifestation,'' says the director, himself raised by an action-flick-loving single mom. ``Which is quite appropriate when you go into the jungle, into the wild.''

Taking its lumps

Which is where some critics of ``KB1's'' ultraviolence acted like it came from - and felt it belonged. Although the first movie's stylized blood geysers and lopped-off limbs would have seemed commonplace to anyone familiar with the way things are done in Japanese movies, some over here complained - as they had when ``Pulp Fiction'' and the filmmaker's first feature, ``Reservoir Dogs,'' came out - that the director had gone too far. Snake attacks, premature burials and a bathroom-busting girl fight could lead to similar carping about ``KB2.''

``If you want movies to be sterilized and moral, then you probably don't like Quentin Tarantino's movies, which is totally up to you, the viewer,'' Thurman, 33, reckons. ``What I find interesting about him as a creative person is that he doesn't approach his material from the point of view of 'I have a moral and I'm going to build you a nice little tale to feed you my moral.' He is very organic, a very kind of dreamlike, unconscious creative person. He's a very dangerous artist in that way. He's not somebody who's run everything through 10 bleach cycles before it hits you.''

Hard as Tarantino's job might have been, it was no easier on the actors, who had to train at Olympic-level intensity - even if most of their confrontations wound up in the kinder, gentler ``KB2.''

``I mean, I way overtrained,'' says Hannah. ``I know all of this samurai stuff I never got to use. I know all this wire work I never got to use. I have kicks and punches in me that no one's seen yet. But the thing is that he would do things like change a fight scene the day before we filmed it, and because we had all this training, I could go with it and have that flexibility.''

And Tarantino believes that the decision to go with two movies instead of one gave him the creative flexibility he needed. Of course, the film geek extraordinaire plans to see the entire opus released in one long cut someday. And he knows that those who can't wait are going to watch it all back-to-back at home by year's end (not remotely coincidentally, the ``KB1'' DVD hit stores earlier this week).

Never one to lack confidence, Tarantino is certain that the temperament shift will work just fine without a six-month intermission.

``The thing is, after you've had the big, 'Apocalypse Now'-style battle at the House of Blue Leaves, then we go back at the start of 'Vol. 2' to the wedding chapel scene, which takes you back in time and clears your palate,'' he explains. ``I am dealing with all these different genres, so the first half was more a pop samurai/Shaw Brothers Hong Kong movie with spaghetti Western undertones. The second half is much more spaghetti Western, with kung fu and Japanese undertones. And by their very nature, spaghetti Westerns can be more emotional; it's more operatic and less viscera for viscera's sake. The stirring music is supposed to be raising emotions, and this is the part where the tragedy of the story comes in.

``I think that's just good, epic storytelling.''

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover - color) Uma Thurman

(2) David Carradine faces off against Uma Thurman in ``Kill Bill - Vol. 2'' in a confrontation movie fans have been anticipating for months.

(3) Uma Thurman, left, on director Quentin Tarantino, center (with David Carradine, right).