Reservoir Dogs - Production

Production

Quentin Tarantino had been working at Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California, and originally planned to shoot the film with his friends on a budget of $30,000 in a 16 mm format with producer Lawrence Bender playing Nice Guy Eddie. When actor Harvey Keitel became involved and agreed to act in the film and co-produce, he was cast as Mr. White. With Keitel's assistance, the filmmakers were able to raise $1.5 million to make the film.

Reservoir Dogs was, according to Tarantino, influenced by Stanley Kubrick's The Killing. Tarantino said: "I didn't go out of my way to do a rip-off of The Killing, but I did think of it as my Killing, my take on that kind of heist movie". The film's plot was suggested by the 1952 movie Kansas City Confidential. Additionally, Joseph H. Lewis's The Big Combo inspired the scene where a cop is tortured in a chair. Tarantino has denied that he plagiarized with Reservoir Dogs instead claiming that he does homages. Also, the main characters being named after colors (Mr. Pink, White, Brown, etc.) was first seen in the 1974 film The Taking of Pelham One Two Three.

Of his decision to not show the heist itself, Tarantino has said that the reason was initially budgetary, but that he had always liked the idea of not showing it and stuck with that idea. He has said that the technique allows for the realization that the movie is "about other things". He compared this to the work of a novelist, and has said that he wanted the movie to be about something that is not seen and that he wanted it to "play with a real-time clock as opposed to a movie clock ticking".