Quentin Tarantino‘s Kill Bill was originally planned and filmed with the intention of releasing it as one long movie. At a certain point in post-production the decision was taken to release it as two separate films, which allowed Tarantino to include more material in each one rather than be forced to make cuts to shorten the running time at the studio’s request.

The longer cut, known as The Whole Bloody Affair, has long been on many film fans’ wish lists of ‘unreleased alternative cuts of films they’d love to see’ and until last year it had only been screened once, at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006. In March 2011 the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles (check the billboard), which is owned by Tarantino, screened TWBA and allowed fans of the film to finally catch this elusive version. A report from that screening can be read here.

The first showing coincided with Tarantino’s birthday and people on his production team decided they’d put together a secret present for him in the form of a specially commissioned poster by the team at Mondo. Ace artist Tyler Stout was given the opportunity to illustrate his take on the film and the result is one of his best posters yet, in my opinion. As with his Akira print I wanted to interview Tyler about its production. He kindly agreed to answer my questions and also sent along a series of alternative images that were changed during production.

The article can be read here.

Yes, this is the film where Vincent Gallo drives a motorbike around looking glum, crying occasionally and meeting random women before receiving an un-simulated blowjob from Chloë Sevigny. Gallo plays racer Bud Clay who is on a cross country trip to a track in California and is trying to repress memories of his one true love, Daisy (Sevigny), by meeting different women along the way. The actor was also the film’s director, screenwriter, editor and took care of almost all of the other technical details.

The film’s first cut was roughly 25 minutes longer than the one that was eventually released worldwide. Its re-editing was as a result of the savaging it received at the Cannes Film Festival. Legendary critic Roger Ebert declared the film to be the worst in the history of the festival, which saw him and Gallo enter into a war of words, with the director calling Ebert a ‘fat pig with the physique of a slave trader.’ The critic responded by paraphrasing a statement attributed to Winston Churchill, saying that ‘one day I will be thin, but Vincent Gallo will always be the director of The Brown Bunny.’ When the new cut was released in the US Ebert surprised many by giving it his signature thumbs up.

For a cool $1,000,000 you can actually purchase the main man’s little swimmers, should you want to birth the next generation Gallo, whilst $50,000 will net you a night with him (ladies only).

This is the American one sheet for the original 2004 release of the film into a limited number of smaller cinemas. There’s also a one sheet that features a similar image but is mostly white (no yellow) and is often referred to as the teaser.