Quentin Tarantino Did Endless Takes To Keep An Old-School Condom Trick In Kill Bill

Tarantino was committed to sticking with his old-school condom trick, even when things started to look hopeless on set.

“We kept doing it again and doing it again,” the filmmaker recalled. “Take 22, Take 23 — we’ve changed her clothes three different times. So now she’s off for the fourth change and walking by myself. One of those dark moments of the soul,” he said. But just when things were looking bleak, the “Pulp Fiction” director caught a second creative wind.

“I swear it was as if Chang Cheh came to me and he said, ‘Quentin hang in there,'” Tarantino claimed. “‘It’s going to happen — it has to happen one way or it. You’re due. It’s going to go up at some point. You can’t quit hang in there. Do it six more times, see what happens.’ And then like you know maybe the fifth time or so then it finally did it the right way.” All told, that single shot took 34 takes.

Chang Cheh is the late director of the 1970 kung fu movie “Vengeance,” which Tarantino has cited as a major influence for “Kill Bill,” per Time. The film guided his choice to use practical effects instead of digital ones.

“That s*** looks good, but it looks like a computer did it,” he said of CGI in a 2002 interview. “I’d rather have it look good and look like a cool ’70s thing.”