The suggestion is that Laura's experiences have a therapeutic value. Although generally friendly with the men she encounters, Laura twice expresses hostility towards other women, once when it is justified (the clinic's receptionist), and once when it is not (her brother's girlfriend, Jerri). Both these women are killed by Ricky, who thus seems to be acting out Laura's desires (compare Oberlus' attack on Diego in Iguana). Laura must learn to reject her masculine aggressiveness and redirect it towards a more appropriate (male) target before accessing that benevolent power (which her grandmother claims can "do good for people") she eventually uses to defeat her nemesis.17 Ironically, it is the complacent psychiatrist who articulates this when he tells Laura, "There's a pool of anger inside of you, and you have to let it go." The notion that Laura and Ricky are in some sense "lovers" (after Laura awakes from a dream screaming Ricky's name, Chris asks if Ricky is her "new boyfriend," while she finally lures the killer to his doom with the seductive phrase "I'm over here, Ricky. Come and play") is both disturbing and extremely resonant. If Better Watch Out! is the second part of a trilogy that began with Iguana, then it makes sense to connect Laura's relationship with Ricky to Carmen's relationship with Oberlus; two sets of male/female "monsters" wherein the woman's unacknowledged impulses are represented in their unrepressed form by a hideous man who desires her. Yet whereas Oberlus took his own life, leaving Carmen's situation unresolved, Laura's killing of Ricky enables her to defeat neurotic forces present within herself. The sense of dynamic progression which distinguishes Hellman's oeuvre has never been clearer.
Chapter 17
In Between Projects, 1989-2002
It's too much for one man. On the other hand what's the good of losing heart now, that's what I say. We should have thought of it a million years ago, in the nineties.
— Vladimir in Waiting for Godot
Although Silent Night, Deadly Night III would be the last film to date on which Hellman stood behind the camera, he was far from idle during the 1990s, his most prominent credit being as an executive producer on Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs: "I became involved early in November 1990. The script had been sent to me by a friend of mine who rented an apartment in a house owned by a friend of Lawrence Bender's. The idea was for me to direct. I met with Lawrence at the home of his friend, and a meeting was set up between me and Quentin. We met at a famous ice cream parlor on Hollywood Boulevard called C.C. Brown's, a few doors from the Chinese Theater. I think Quentin chose the place because it was on the streetcar line more or less direct from Glendale, where he was living. He didn't own a car. On the day we met, Quentin had sold True Romance, and he decided he could afford to hold out to direct Reservoir Dogs himself. He apologized for wasting my time. By the end of our hot fudge sundaes (mine without ice cream), I had agreed to help get the film made. He and Lawrence and I signed an agreement whereby we would be equal partners on the movie, and I would help find the money. I retyped the script onto my computer, correcting spelling and punctuation, and formatting along the way, then sent the script to a number of companies I knew. A couple wanted to do the picture, but had ideas about how it should be made that differed from Quentin's. I delivered it to Richard Gladstein at his home. His first picture as an executive for Live Entertainment had been Better Watch Out! Richard called me within a few hours. He loved the script and asked to meet Quentin. We all met, and made a deal. This was all long before Harvey Keitel had ever heard of the script. Harvey was one of fifteen names that we submitted to Live, any one of which would have been acceptable. I sent the script to Dennis Hopper and a few others. Lawrence got the script to Harvey. I had been going to the Sundance lab for the previous two or three years, and Quentin was invited to the lab. I went along with him and gave him whatever help I could on his trying out his hand at directing for the first time, and a couple of months later we were actually making the movie. Lawrence Bender and I worked with him in getting to do enough preparation so that we were convinced that he would be able to finish the picture on the schedule he had, and so forth. It was a lot of fun. He's really a terrific guy, a great director and great writer, and it was amazing to be there at the beginning."1 With Iguana's Michael Madsen cast in one of the key roles, Reservoir Dogs was shot during the summer of 1991 and released the following year. The film contains a scene in which Tim Roth mentions Baretta, though Hellman insists this was not an in-joke.
In 1991, Hellman appeared in Paul Joyce's documentary Sam Peckinpah: Man of Iron, and the following year was interviewed for the BBC series "The Late Show" (which was running an item on road movies) and Tom Thurman's documentary Warren Oates: Across The Border, as well as writing about his admiration for Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive in the 400th issue of Positif.2 He also worked as an editor on four other films during the 1990s. The first of these was a George Hickenlooper film variously known as Grey Knight, The Killing Box and Ghost Brigade (1993): "I was the original editor. My assistant editor, Jim Makiej, worked on fine-tuning a couple of scenes with George while I worked on other scenes. I believe Hickenlooper's cut restores some footage removed by the producers, but I haven't seen it."3 Next up was William Curran's Love, Cheat and Steal (1993): "I believe most of the work I did on this was changed. I think it was the producers, not the director, who wanted the changes. It wasn't a very good film, and I guess the producers thought someone else might be able to make it better — sort of the reverse to my usual situation of coming on to fix someone else's work. With due respect to (credited editor) Carole Kravetz, I don't think she made it better. I took my name off because it wasn't my work, and because I didn't think it would add in any way to my reputation. To be honest, I did most of these editing jobs in the '90s to bring a few bucks in, and I would have preferred not to have my name on them at all. I do like editing, though, and enjoy the process even on bad films."4 Although he asked to remain anonymous, Hellman is credited with "additional editing" on Love, Cheat and Steal. When I told Hellman about this, his response was, "The bastards cheated me!"5