At first Quentin Tarantino wanted Kill Bill to be a small homage to samurai films, a modest vehicle for his Pulp Fiction star Uma Thurman. She would play the Bride, a sword-wielding assassin who rises from her deathbed to carve up hundreds of villains standing between her and the mysterious Bill.

Just as in a Tarantino movie, though, strange twists were in store. Somewhere between original concept and final production, Kill Bill, Tarantino's first feature in more than five years, became an epic. After nine months of shooting, a budget that surpassed $50 million (compared with the $8 million he spent on Pulp Fiction) and three hours of final footage, the decision was made to slice Bill into two freestanding movies that will hit theaters in quick succession. It's a risky, groundbreaking, in-your-face move, and that's exactly how the boy wonder of arthouse violence likes it.

Tarantino forever will be known for Pulp Fiction. That gloriously bloody follow-up to Reservoir Dogs had far-reaching impact, way beyond winning Tarantino the Palme d'Or at Cannes and an Oscar for best screenplay and beyond making Tarantino the indie-film equivalent of a rock star who spawns a legion of imitators.

Pulp Fiction instantly turned John Travolta from a has-been into a $20 million-a-picture superstar. More significantly, it transformed Miramax from an art-house haven into a major studio. Tarantino's impact on Miramax has been so profound that studio chief Harvey Weinstein has likened it to Mickey Mouse's on Disney. Weinstein gives Tarantino more artistic freedom than just about any other Hollywood director. Who else but Tarantino could have gotten the notoriously tough Weinstein to say yes to casting the long-forgotten David Carradine as Bill in Kill Bill?

Born in Tennessee and raised in Torrance, California, Tarantino dropped out of school in the ninth grade. After jobs that included working as an usher in a porn theater, he got the equivalent of a film degree working behind the counter of a video-rental store in Manhattan Beach, California. He watched thousands of movies belonging to every imaginable genre before finding his own voice writing the films True Romance, From Dusk Till Dawn and Natural Born Killers and directing Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

Still, it has been six years since Tarantino followed Pulp Fiction with his critically and commercially disappointing Elmore Leonard novel adaptation, Jackie Brown. In the interim he's annoyed critics by starring in numerous films and a Broadway play, and he has become renowned for a series of highprofile celebrity brawls. It was clearly time to get back to work.

Kill Bill is based on Tarantino's first original screenplay since Pulp Fiction. He met with Variety columnist Michael Fleming on several nights in Hollywood, once coming from a screening of his favorite film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, another time from the editing room where he was putting the finishing touches on a Kill Bill fight scene so huge it cost nearly as much as the entire budget for Pulp Fiction. Despite a bad-boy image, Tarantino was charming and disarming, no matter who interrupted him. He was even polite to a woman who tried to engage him in a long-winded discussion of numerology.

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