Modelled after the grindhouse movies of the ’70s, From Dusk till Dawn is a gross, violent, horror film full of exploding bodies, breasts, guns, blood, and long speeches about pussy. The trick with Rodriguez and Tarantino’s passion project is that it was cheap. Or Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, made for 44 million and grossed just 3. When he was riding high he threw his weight around and made his dream project, Toys, a $43 million flop. At the time it seemed as though these two guys had seen success go to their heads, which happens a lot in Hollywood. Tarantino has moved from crime movies onto huge, violent genre pictures and Rodriguez followed up Dusk with The Faculty and then made a bunch of Spy Kids, Machetes and Sin Citys.
Today, if either of these filmmakers started talking about making a vampire movie it would be normal. Next year he’ll be Batman, but we’re not going to talk about that. What became quickly apparent was that these two young filmmakers were heavily influenced by grindhouse movies, midnight screenings, exploitation movies, and horror flicks, and with Miramax’s backing and blossoming reputations they had thought, fuck it, let’s make a crazy-ass, bloody, ridiculous vampire movie disguised as a crime movie and just see what happens.
If you remember, this is 1996, and George Clooney will still be on ER for another three years after this movie comes out. Especially not a vampire movie starring Tarantino and George Clooney, an actor from a TV show. What would these two filmmakers create? The last answer anyone was expecting was a vampire movie.
Hayek will next be seen in How to Be a Latin Lover, in theaters April 24.Both men had made their names with crime movies that sparkled with wit and bravado, so when it was announced they were making a movie together there was much rejoicing. George Clooney was like, ‘How come she doesn’t look at us?’, ‘Because I’m the writer.'”
“Where of course he makes me dance only for him. “So I did it and from that dance, Quentin wrote me the part in From Dusk Till Dawn,” Hayek explained. “He said, ‘Just put a bathing suit on, and we won’t see your face.'” He and Tarantino were working on the anthology film Four Rooms (1994) and needed a stripper, so Rodriguez reached out to his Desperado star on the day of filming. Hayek was recruited to the project after doing a favor for friend Rodriguez. Because you can’t choreograph a snake, we don’t know what she’s going to do!” I had to go on trance to do the dance… And there was no choreography. “So it was good because I had to overcome my greatest fear. To prod the actress, Tarantino claimed that Madonna was interested in the role, and that she would have no problem being wrapped in python. It’s my greatest fear,‘” Hayek recalled (watch above).
“Quentin told me, ‘Oh, by the way, you’re dancing with a snake.’ I said, ‘I can’t do that, I can’t do that. Hayek said at multiple points during our recent Role Recall interview that her memories of filming the scene were blurry because she had gone “on trance” due to some serious ophidiophobia. But she doesn’t remember all that much about the actual filming. Salma Hayek remembers how she got the role of a snake-dancing stripper vampire in the Quentin Tarantino-penned, Robert Rodriguez-directed thriller From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).