Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair, the full uncut version of Quentin Tarantino’s epic, finally gets its theatrical release this week, more than two decades after the original release of Volume 1. Executive producer Harvey Weinstein had deemed the film too long, and Tarantino opted to divide it into two parts rather than cutting scenes he considered essential. While the uncut version did get a showing at Cannes Film Festival in 2006, it had yet to receive a broad theatrical release.
Tarantino spent months prepping and shooting martial arts action sequences at the historic Beijing Film Studio. The House of Blue Leaves, where Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo (Uma Thurman) has a blood-splattering showdown with the Crazy 88, was constructed on a soundstage there.
And the studio’s back lot was used for a now infamous scene, cut from the original release, where Michael Jai White (with dubbed New Zealand accent) and his gang confront Bill (David Carradine) while he is out for a casual stroll with his disciple (Thurman). Bill begrudgingly accepts the challenge while Kiddo watches from a doorway off to the side. The deleted scene was later made available online and as a DVD extra, as covered on the blog here previously.
Kill Bill was one of the last films to be shot at the Studio’s original location, near Beijing’s university district, before it was slated for demolition. Opened in 1949 as a central state-run production facility, the studio was responsible for classic films such as New Year’s Sacrifice (1956), Song of Youth (1959), and Rickshaw Boy (1982). It was also the first mainland Chinese studio to open up to international co-productions with Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor in 1987. Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine (1993) made use of the studio’s back lot, filming on the same set that would later be used for Kill Bill.
I first visited the site over a decade ago, when it had already been abandoned. Sections of original back lot and Qing era streetscape remained but had been long neglected and were rapidly deteriorating and overgrown with weeds. Photographs of the site appear in my photobook Once Upon a Time in Shanghai, and I have previously written about and shared images from the fascinating history of the Studio and its afterlife here and here.
While the structures hung on for a while longer, it was only a matter of time before the historic set disappeared forever. On a recent visit to Beijing, I was saddened to see that the site has been completely razed, leaving only an empty lot. As Beijing continues to grow at a rapid pace, limited attention is given to preserving history.