When I heard Michael Madsen died, the thing I remembered was his voice on the phone.
The year was 2009. He was making a lot of movies. Small, international, barely-released, barely-existent. Madsen loomed large for anyone my age, though. He had been the coolest man in Reservoir Dogs, one of the coolest movies of its time. In my high school friend group there was a serious conversation around whether Reservoir Dogs was better than Pulp Fiction, because none of us were old or sad enough to really understand Jackie Brown.
In 2009, I was a blogger for Entertainment Weekly. Actually, I was an intern whose official job was helping maintain the Entertainment Weekly website. The internship offered infinite unofficial chances to pitch blog ideas. I noticed Madsen had a lot of movies on his IMDB page listed for 2009. Like: A lot. Either 25 or 28. (Right now his IMDB lists only 17 projects that year; I’m sure there are logical explanations, but maybe it’s best to imagine that some films really do vanish.) I suggested we should talk to him. Somehow I got him on the phone. The post is still up here.
It is not an especially deep conversation, because I was a rookie idiot reporter. But Madsen was an interesting man who had a million stories and more than a few demons. Reading his words today broke my heart twice. First, when he talked about his frantic output: “I’m only good when I’m busy. When I’ve got nothing to do, I’m useless. I just go to Montana and sit on my front porch.” The second thing that really got me was Madsen talking about the curious history of Budd’s hat from Kill Bill.
That hat is important to me. Budd is important to me. Kill Bill is important to me. Michael Madsen will always be important to me. Combine all those things together and you get the short piece I just wrote for Cinepunx. They got a bunch of awesome film writers (and me) to write memorials for Madsen. I hope you’ll read them all here, especially because Ryan Luis Rodriguez finds wonderful things to say about Madsen’s low-key role in the ludicrous Die Another Day. Here’s my own celebration of what I consider Madsen’s finest hour:
Budd in Kill Bill: Vol 2 (April 16, 2004)
The cowboy sits in a trailer in the desert. Spitting tobacco into a coffee tin. Day-drinking schnapps from the bottle. Laughing about selling his priceless katana in El Paso for 250 dollars. “I’m a bouncer in a titty bar,” he says. Michael Madsen is Budd. Budd is a loser.
Shocking stuff in 2004, when Kill Bill: Vol 2 arrived. 12 years after Reservoir Dogs, Mr. Blonde was still an obvious Top 3 pick for Coolest Quentin Tarantino Character. The actor’s raspy behemoth cool was earning him series-lead gigs on broadcast networks, a James Bond bit part, a Grand Theft Auto III voice role. Kill Bill’s epic first half climaxed with a massive battle in an awesome night club. Budd never fights anyone. No choreography, no duels. His shotgun just fires rock salt. People call him a “shitkicker” and “a bushwacking scrub alky piece of shit.” He is a penniless man in an empty strip club. He has a mullet.
Uma Thurman will bring action, blades, horror homage, cultural dissertation. For ten marvelous minutes, though, Kill Bill is the greatest Michael Madsen star vehicle a filmmaker ever lovingly curated for Michael Madsen. He looks noble in a tank top, grand in a parking lot. He makes David Carradine, Bill’s majestic Bill, seem rather fretful or desperate. Budd doesn’t run from guilt. “That woman deserves her revenge,” he says, “And we deserve to die.”
This guy’s no good. He will bury the Bride alive. Still, you love him. Madsen’s low-key humanity carves soul into Kill Bill’s aesthetic hysteria. This killer has layers, mystery. (Why does he lie about his Hanzo sword?) I’m convinced when Budd nails the Bride into a coffin, he knows she’ll escape. His offer of a flashlight is a coded message, maybe a respectful challenge.
I’ll never forget the ruined look on Madsen’s face when the strip club boss tells Budd to take off his Stetson. That white hat tells you who Budd wants to be, like his Johnny Cash record and his Charles Bronson poster. Madsen could go there: Tough, smirkish, cynical, Bad Ass. In Kill Bill, he’s all that — and he’s fixing toilets. It’s the saddest performance in any Tarantino movie, maybe the loneliest. But Madsen’s got a twinkle. His eyes shine bright and secret, like the light glinting off an old sword in a golf bag in a trailer in a ruined place called the West.