For his first major project after Pulp Fiction—excluding his forgettable segment in Four Rooms—Quentin Tarantino made the eccentric choice to star in From Dusk Till Dawn, a modest genre exercise taken from one of his early screenwriting efforts and directed by Robert Rodriguez, another independent-film superstar known for his colorful background. Produced by Miramax, the company behind From Dusk Till Dawn, Full Tilt Boogie is a documentary about the making of Dawn, although those seeking an intimate glimpse into the lives of Tarantino or Rodriguez will come away disappointed. Full Tilt Boogie's marketing plays up the involvement of Tarantino, Rodriguez, and stars George Clooney and Juliette Lewis, but each turns in little more than an extended cameo, as the film's bulk is devoted to the nuts-and-bolts work of Dawn's cast and crew. It's a world director Sarah Kelly knows well—her biggest pre-Boogie credit was as a production assistant on Pulp Fiction—but it's not especially interesting. The marquee players turn up periodically to ham it up for the camera, but, in a misguided show of egalitarianism, minor crew members snag most of the screen time, which wouldn't be that irritating if they had more to say than how much they like each other and their jobs. About halfway through, Full Tilt Boogie shifts focus when a union attacks the filmmakers for working with a non-union crew. Kelly then tries unconvincingly to turn the film into a David vs. Goliath story, with the wealthy and powerful filmmakers playing the unlikely roles of independent iconoclasts battling the brutish, authoritarian unions. At one point, Full Tilt Boogie even threatens to turn into, of all things, an anti-union Roger & Me, as Kelley and her non-union crew attempt to ambush a union negotiator at a convention. Various forces behind Dawn offer unconvincing arguments for their use of non-union labor, and Kelly makes only the faintest pretense of challenging their views. She manages a few nice moments, but the scenes that stand out—Juliette Lewis squealing her way through a karaoke version of 4 Non Blondes' "What's Up," a barely comprehensible Harvey Keitel interview late in the film—do so for all the wrong reasons. Clearly intended as a valentine to the spunky spirit of independent filmmaking, Full Tilt Boogie comes off as a dull, self-serving love letter to itself and its powerful benefactors.
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