Megan Stielstra's Blog

Dear The American Motion Picture Association,

Can you please start producing more double features? ‘Cause that was the first time in a VERY long time that I’ve walked out of a theater thinking, ‘I LOVE spending nine dollars on a movie!' ('cause if you do that math it was probably four dollars a movie and twenty-five cents per fictional preview which, like--what a STEAL!)

Dear Richard Rodriguez,

We just saw your movie Planet Terror and Oh my God it was awesome!!!!!! I love zombie movies!!!!! Especially ones where the strippers have machine guns for prosthetic legs and also they can fly and the guy from Six Feet Under back-flips off the wall to Kung Fu that dead guy and the nurse, she had a thigh holster full of poisoned needles and also there’s motorcycles and convertibles and green smoke and brain suckers and bubbly pus-filled growths coming out of people's heads and it was soooo super cool!!!!!

Dear Quentin Tarantino,

We just saw your movie Death Proof and—[POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT] okay. That car chase ROCKED MY ENTIRE WOLRD and I’m a girl who’s into the car chases, you know? My favorites are the highway scene from the 2nd Matrix and the whole LeeLou-in-the-back-of-the-cab part in Fifith Element and also that scene in James Bond where Bond is handcuffed to a motorcycle with Michelle Yeoh and also, The Rock (that Hummer just tore UP San Fransisco!) and also Mad Max and also Ronin and the first Gone in Sixty Seconds (the remake sorta made me want to puke in my mouth) and, of course, OF COURSE, Steve McQueen in Bullit but what you did with Zoe Bell on the hood of that Dodge Challenger just about killed me, like, you know how you walk out of a theater at the end of a movie and some employee is standing there passing out mints asking how you enjoyed the show? I said, “It was f’ing AWESOME!” ‘cause I had all that adrenaline from watching Zoe slide all over that car and then—THEN! When they took off after the guy with that big-ass lead pipe I CHEERED OUT LOUD and it was just great, is what I’m saying, GREAT GREAT GREAT!!!!!

That said, I have a bone to pick, Quentin Tarantino. Here’s the thing: I like the ‘dialogue about nothing’ thing you do. I liked it in the beginning of Reservoir Dogs when they’re talking about Madonna and I liked it in Pulp Fiction with the whole Royale with cheese thing and I liked it in Four Rooms when Bruce Willis was talking about whatever he was talking about before they made that bet, like, what I’m saying is, I’m WITH you, you know? I GET it—that’s how people really talk, just jabber jabber jabber about not so much of anything and it helps the audience identify with these characters who do really horrible things, like I’m sitting there thinking, “Why yes, Mr. Pink, I TOO felt ‘Like a Virgin’ was a metaphorical song,” or “Thank you, Mr. Blonde, for sticking up for waitresses,” and what happens is I’m empathizing with these guys so when they do all sorts of horrible/stupid things later in the film, I already have that whole ‘Hey, I like that guy!’ kind of connection. HOWEVER—and this is a really big however, Quentin Tarantino—I’m really mad about all that jabbering the girls do in Death Proof and here’s why: YOU CUT VANESSA FERLITO’S LAPDANCE. And not ONLY did you spend nearly twenty minutes of film time building up to that lap dance, so not ONLY was it like the focal point of the whole story, and not ONLY did those girls spend EONS of time babbling about boys that had zero relevance and never showed up ANYHOW, BUT ALSO VANESSA FERLITO IS REALLY HOT. IN A ‘IF I WENT THAT WAY’ SORT OF WAY, OR MAYBE EVEN IN A ‘I’D CONSIDER GOING THAT WAY’ WAY. AND I WANTED TO SEE HER DO A LAPDANCE. AND NOW I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL THE DVD COMES OUT, WHICH MAYBE WAS PART OF YOUR PLAN, QUENTIN TARANTINO, BUT I HAVE NOT SO MUCH OF THE PATIENCE. THEREFORE I’D APPRECIATE IT IF IN THE FUTURE YOU WOULD NOT WASTE MY TIME BUILDING UP STORYLINES YOU DON’T USE AND ALSO LET ME SEE VANESSA FERLITO DANCE SUGGESTIVELY. THANK YOU.

Dear Vanessa Ferlito,

I really enjoyed your performance in Grindhouse and look forward to seeing more of your work in the future.

Dear Zoe Bell,

To Hell with this writing thing. I want to be a stuntwoman. Specifically, I want to be you.