Mr. Orange- Reservoir Dogs
Title: Shot to Hell
Author: Bitterfig
Character: Feddy Newandyke aka Mr. Orange
Fandom: Reservoir Dogs
Spoilers: For pretty much the entire film
Warning: To discuss a film you’ve gotta have quotes and if you quote Quentin Tarantino there’s going to be profanity. Also mentions of violence and a personal anecdote that probably reveals much more about the author then you care to know.
Author’s Notes: In this essay I’ve generally referred to the character as Freddy or Freddy Newandyke during those portions of the film set before the heist and as Mr. Orange during the scenes set after the robbery.
Shot to Hell
Saturday June 15, 2002; the day before Father’s Day. I lost my virginity that afternoon. On the way home I stopped at the video store.
I don’t know exactly why I decided to rent Reservoir Dogs that evening. My tastes at the time ran more towards Merchant-Ivory period pieces and the Powerpuff Girls. The only thing I knew about Reservoir Dogs was that it had a reputation for being gratuitously violent, macho, and racist. I had hated Pulp Fiction for all those reasons but I decided to watch it any way. Maybe I realized that the meek and mild girl I was, the good girl who lived with Mom and Dad and went to church every Sunday and retained her virginity for 30 years was pretty much shot to hell.
Funny, when I watched Reservoir Dogs I found myself totally identifying with Mr. Orange. Maybe it was the blood or desperate struggling to survive or the duplicity or the doomed good will or the horrifying vulnerability but Mr. Orange has been sort of my metaphorical alter ego since then.
So at least something meaningful came out of that day.
*
On the 10th Anniversary Special Edition DVD set of Reservoir Dogs there’s an interview with Michael Madsen (Mr. Blonde) where he examines a newly published copy of the movies screenplay script that features the iconic Reservoir Dogs image of a blood soaked Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), gun in hand. “Why is Tim on the cover?” Madsen asks. “If you ask Tim, I think he’s pretty sure that the movie is about Mr. Orange. He thinks it’s about his character. Tim, you’re my dear friend but it’s not about Mr. Orange.”
Reservoir Dogs is very much an ensemble piece and Mr. Orange is unconscious for a good chunk of it. Still, I have to agree with Roth. I’ve always seen Mr. Orange as being central to Reservoir Dogs.
Much of the films tension comes from the viewer’s awareness that Orange is slowly and horribly dying through the whole movie. The tension is racketed up a notch when it is revealed that he’s actually an undercover cop named Freddy Newendyke. Now he’s not only bleeding to death but he’s surrounded by people who will happily kill him when they find out who he is. Not if they find out, when they find out. Discovery seems more and more inevitable as the film progresses.
Still, popular entertainment is full of undercover cops in potentially dangerous situations and none of them have quite the effect on me that Mr. Orange does. The thing I find so fascinating about him is his ambiguity. He’s a cop, in most action movies that would tell you exactly who he. Yet watching Reservoir Dogs I’m not sure who he really is. I get the impression that he isn’t either.
Most of the characters in Reservoir Dogs have very strong, fixed opinions. For instance this bit of dialogue between Mr. Pink and Mr. White:
Mr. Pink: You kill anybody?
Mr. White: A few cops.
Mr. Pink: No real people?
Mr. White: Just cops.
Blonde takes it the furthest. “I’m gonna torture you for a while regardless,” he says to a police officer he’s taken hostage. “Not to get information, but because torturing a cop amuses me.” Crooks don’t like cops.
And cops don’t like crooks. Holdaway, Freddy Newandyke’s superior officer has quite a few colorful terms for criminals. “Fuckin’ scumbag,” “piece of shit,” “no good motherfucker,” and that’s just in one paragraph.
Freddy Newandyke however doesn’t seem to get the dichotomy of the world he moves in. He seems to take everybody at face value. He seems to like everybody. As far as Freddy’s concerned Long Beach Mike, the target of Holdaway’s above remarks, is a “good guy”. Describing crime boss Joe Cabot (who eventually tries to kill him) he says “He’s a cool guy. A real nice, real funny, real cool guy.”
Then there’s Mr. White (Harvey Keitel). Freddy really likes Mr. White. He’s positively smitten with the guy. And this is with the full knowledge of exactly what White is. In a scene cut from the original script Holdaway and Freddy go over White’s various crimes (which may include murdering another undercover police officer). If that wasn’t enough White himself gives Freddy some helpful hints on dealing with uncooperative people during a robbery. “Take the butt of your gun and smash their nose in… If you wanna know something and he won’t tell you, cut off one of his fingers. The little one. Then you tell ‘im his thumb’s next.” White is downright cheerful as he delivers this grotesque monologue and finishes with a casual “I’m hungry, let’s get a taco.” Pretty chilling stuff, especially when one wrong word, one false gesture could put you on the receiving end. Yet somehow that doesn’t stop Freddy from going all starry-eyed every time he looks in White’s direction.
The interaction between Freddy and White is interesting on several different levels. My filthy mind sees it as homoerotic a more conventional reading is that it’s a father/son or teacher/student relationship (not that those can’t be plenty sexually charged). Either way there’s something in it that mirrors Freddy’s relationship with Holdaway. Freddy Newandyke seems to have a knack for attracting older men, mentors and father figures. Maybe because he seems immature, as much a boy as a man.
Tim Roth was 30 when Reservoir Dogs was made but he looks younger and Freddy Newandyke definitely acts younger. He compares Cabot to Thing from the Fantastic Four. His apartment, with its boxes of Fruit Brute and Captain Crunch cereal and Silver Surfer poster suggests that he’s sort of a kid. “This better not be some Freddy joke,” Holdaway warns him when he brings word that he’s penetrated Cabot’s organization. When Freddy gives himself a pep talk in front of the mirror he reassures himself that he won’t get hurt because he’s “super cool.”
With Freddy the whole thing is a game, an act. Acting tropes abound. “An undercover cop has got to be Marlon Brando,” Holdaway tells Freddy. “To do this job you got be a great actor. You got to be naturalistic. You got to be naturalistic as hell. If you ain’t a great actor you’re a bad actor, and bad acting is bullshit in this job.” “You’re fucking Baretta and they believe every word,” Freddy tells himself, evoking the undercover cop Robert Blake played on a 70’s TV show.
Yet there’s also a part of him that wants almost desperately to succeed. To please Holdaway, later to please White, to be this great crook if that’s what’s required of him. There’s a scene set before the robbery where Freddy, White, Pink and Nice Guy Eddie are in a car going to the warehouse for a meeting. While the other men tell jokes and laugh, the camera keeps going to Freddy’s face and there’s a palpable tension surrounding him during this scene. He’s trying so hard to play it cool he’s practically buzzing with anxiety.
And of course there’s a whole “audition” scene where Freddy tells the commode story. A really extraordinary scene in regards to Freddy’s character development. First because the script Holdaway has given him allows him to describe exactly what he’s feeling-
“Every nerve ending, all of my senses, the blood in my veins, everything I has was screaming, "Take off, man, just take off, get the fuck outta there!" Panic hit me like a bucket of water. First there was the shock of it--BAM, right in the face! Then I'm just
standing there drenched in panic.”
It is also noteworthy that in this scene the events Freddy describes are shown even though they never actually happened. The scene changes around him from the bar where he is to the train station men’s room of his story. The use of this device makes it seem as if Freddy has gotten so into character he might be convincing himself right along with Cabot, White and Eddie that he’s this other person, that he’s one of them.
During the pre-heist scenes, Freddy seems detached from the actuality of what he’s doing and who he’s dealing with. That what he’s really concerned about isn’t so much catching crooks as he is with getting away with something himself. He doesn’t seem to have anything against Cabot or White or the rest of the crew but he’s more then willing to bring them down. They’re part of his rite of passage. If he can deceive them he proves himself.
Of course it’s hard to stay detached when the bullet’s start flying.
Post-heist, even before he gets shot reality and responsibility comes crashing down on Orange. When Mr. Brown (director Quentin Tarantino) is killed he says for the first time a line he will be repeating several more times before the end: “I’m sorry.”
After Orange is shot whatever link there is between he and White becomes central to both of them. For better or for worse they are desperately, clutching joined together. When I watched the movie for the first time, completely unaware that Orange was a cop I was frankly shocked by the way he gives himself over to White in their first scene in the warehouse. “Larry, I'm so scared,” Orange says. “Would you please hold me.” White is combing his hair, caressing him. It’s almost too intimate yet for all that it turns out Orange is holding out. He’s still acting. He’s still trying to pull it off.
He keeps trying as the body count mounts and White goes further and further in Orange’s defense.
.
Mr. Orange and Mr. White are really the only two characters in the film that seem to be in flux. Orange, a young man seemingly trying to prove something and White an older man trying to believe in something. The trajectories of Orange’s blood-soaked rite of passage and White’s criminal crisis of faith finally collide and implode in the film’s final seconds.
White more or less sacrifices himself to save Orange and Orange drops the act. “I’m a cop,” he admits. “I’m sorry.” It gets him killed but it has to be said. White has become more important then getting away with it. Orange has to be accountable for who he is and what he’s done or allowed to happen. Time to grow up Freddy baby, to bad you don't survive it.
Mr. Orange/Reservoir Dogs fandom links:
Becoming by debchan
orange_white
resdog_fic
Author: Bitterfig
Character: Feddy Newandyke aka Mr. Orange
Fandom: Reservoir Dogs
Spoilers: For pretty much the entire film
Warning: To discuss a film you’ve gotta have quotes and if you quote Quentin Tarantino there’s going to be profanity. Also mentions of violence and a personal anecdote that probably reveals much more about the author then you care to know.
Author’s Notes: In this essay I’ve generally referred to the character as Freddy or Freddy Newandyke during those portions of the film set before the heist and as Mr. Orange during the scenes set after the robbery.
Shot to Hell
Saturday June 15, 2002; the day before Father’s Day. I lost my virginity that afternoon. On the way home I stopped at the video store.
I don’t know exactly why I decided to rent Reservoir Dogs that evening. My tastes at the time ran more towards Merchant-Ivory period pieces and the Powerpuff Girls. The only thing I knew about Reservoir Dogs was that it had a reputation for being gratuitously violent, macho, and racist. I had hated Pulp Fiction for all those reasons but I decided to watch it any way. Maybe I realized that the meek and mild girl I was, the good girl who lived with Mom and Dad and went to church every Sunday and retained her virginity for 30 years was pretty much shot to hell.
Funny, when I watched Reservoir Dogs I found myself totally identifying with Mr. Orange. Maybe it was the blood or desperate struggling to survive or the duplicity or the doomed good will or the horrifying vulnerability but Mr. Orange has been sort of my metaphorical alter ego since then.
So at least something meaningful came out of that day.
*
On the 10th Anniversary Special Edition DVD set of Reservoir Dogs there’s an interview with Michael Madsen (Mr. Blonde) where he examines a newly published copy of the movies screenplay script that features the iconic Reservoir Dogs image of a blood soaked Mr. Orange (Tim Roth), gun in hand. “Why is Tim on the cover?” Madsen asks. “If you ask Tim, I think he’s pretty sure that the movie is about Mr. Orange. He thinks it’s about his character. Tim, you’re my dear friend but it’s not about Mr. Orange.”
Reservoir Dogs is very much an ensemble piece and Mr. Orange is unconscious for a good chunk of it. Still, I have to agree with Roth. I’ve always seen Mr. Orange as being central to Reservoir Dogs.
Much of the films tension comes from the viewer’s awareness that Orange is slowly and horribly dying through the whole movie. The tension is racketed up a notch when it is revealed that he’s actually an undercover cop named Freddy Newendyke. Now he’s not only bleeding to death but he’s surrounded by people who will happily kill him when they find out who he is. Not if they find out, when they find out. Discovery seems more and more inevitable as the film progresses.
Still, popular entertainment is full of undercover cops in potentially dangerous situations and none of them have quite the effect on me that Mr. Orange does. The thing I find so fascinating about him is his ambiguity. He’s a cop, in most action movies that would tell you exactly who he. Yet watching Reservoir Dogs I’m not sure who he really is. I get the impression that he isn’t either.
Most of the characters in Reservoir Dogs have very strong, fixed opinions. For instance this bit of dialogue between Mr. Pink and Mr. White:
Mr. Pink: You kill anybody?
Mr. White: A few cops.
Mr. Pink: No real people?
Mr. White: Just cops.
Blonde takes it the furthest. “I’m gonna torture you for a while regardless,” he says to a police officer he’s taken hostage. “Not to get information, but because torturing a cop amuses me.” Crooks don’t like cops.
And cops don’t like crooks. Holdaway, Freddy Newandyke’s superior officer has quite a few colorful terms for criminals. “Fuckin’ scumbag,” “piece of shit,” “no good motherfucker,” and that’s just in one paragraph.
Freddy Newandyke however doesn’t seem to get the dichotomy of the world he moves in. He seems to take everybody at face value. He seems to like everybody. As far as Freddy’s concerned Long Beach Mike, the target of Holdaway’s above remarks, is a “good guy”. Describing crime boss Joe Cabot (who eventually tries to kill him) he says “He’s a cool guy. A real nice, real funny, real cool guy.”
Then there’s Mr. White (Harvey Keitel). Freddy really likes Mr. White. He’s positively smitten with the guy. And this is with the full knowledge of exactly what White is. In a scene cut from the original script Holdaway and Freddy go over White’s various crimes (which may include murdering another undercover police officer). If that wasn’t enough White himself gives Freddy some helpful hints on dealing with uncooperative people during a robbery. “Take the butt of your gun and smash their nose in… If you wanna know something and he won’t tell you, cut off one of his fingers. The little one. Then you tell ‘im his thumb’s next.” White is downright cheerful as he delivers this grotesque monologue and finishes with a casual “I’m hungry, let’s get a taco.” Pretty chilling stuff, especially when one wrong word, one false gesture could put you on the receiving end. Yet somehow that doesn’t stop Freddy from going all starry-eyed every time he looks in White’s direction.
The interaction between Freddy and White is interesting on several different levels. My filthy mind sees it as homoerotic a more conventional reading is that it’s a father/son or teacher/student relationship (not that those can’t be plenty sexually charged). Either way there’s something in it that mirrors Freddy’s relationship with Holdaway. Freddy Newandyke seems to have a knack for attracting older men, mentors and father figures. Maybe because he seems immature, as much a boy as a man.
Tim Roth was 30 when Reservoir Dogs was made but he looks younger and Freddy Newandyke definitely acts younger. He compares Cabot to Thing from the Fantastic Four. His apartment, with its boxes of Fruit Brute and Captain Crunch cereal and Silver Surfer poster suggests that he’s sort of a kid. “This better not be some Freddy joke,” Holdaway warns him when he brings word that he’s penetrated Cabot’s organization. When Freddy gives himself a pep talk in front of the mirror he reassures himself that he won’t get hurt because he’s “super cool.”
With Freddy the whole thing is a game, an act. Acting tropes abound. “An undercover cop has got to be Marlon Brando,” Holdaway tells Freddy. “To do this job you got be a great actor. You got to be naturalistic. You got to be naturalistic as hell. If you ain’t a great actor you’re a bad actor, and bad acting is bullshit in this job.” “You’re fucking Baretta and they believe every word,” Freddy tells himself, evoking the undercover cop Robert Blake played on a 70’s TV show.
Yet there’s also a part of him that wants almost desperately to succeed. To please Holdaway, later to please White, to be this great crook if that’s what’s required of him. There’s a scene set before the robbery where Freddy, White, Pink and Nice Guy Eddie are in a car going to the warehouse for a meeting. While the other men tell jokes and laugh, the camera keeps going to Freddy’s face and there’s a palpable tension surrounding him during this scene. He’s trying so hard to play it cool he’s practically buzzing with anxiety.
And of course there’s a whole “audition” scene where Freddy tells the commode story. A really extraordinary scene in regards to Freddy’s character development. First because the script Holdaway has given him allows him to describe exactly what he’s feeling-
“Every nerve ending, all of my senses, the blood in my veins, everything I has was screaming, "Take off, man, just take off, get the fuck outta there!" Panic hit me like a bucket of water. First there was the shock of it--BAM, right in the face! Then I'm just
standing there drenched in panic.”
It is also noteworthy that in this scene the events Freddy describes are shown even though they never actually happened. The scene changes around him from the bar where he is to the train station men’s room of his story. The use of this device makes it seem as if Freddy has gotten so into character he might be convincing himself right along with Cabot, White and Eddie that he’s this other person, that he’s one of them.
During the pre-heist scenes, Freddy seems detached from the actuality of what he’s doing and who he’s dealing with. That what he’s really concerned about isn’t so much catching crooks as he is with getting away with something himself. He doesn’t seem to have anything against Cabot or White or the rest of the crew but he’s more then willing to bring them down. They’re part of his rite of passage. If he can deceive them he proves himself.
Of course it’s hard to stay detached when the bullet’s start flying.
Post-heist, even before he gets shot reality and responsibility comes crashing down on Orange. When Mr. Brown (director Quentin Tarantino) is killed he says for the first time a line he will be repeating several more times before the end: “I’m sorry.”
After Orange is shot whatever link there is between he and White becomes central to both of them. For better or for worse they are desperately, clutching joined together. When I watched the movie for the first time, completely unaware that Orange was a cop I was frankly shocked by the way he gives himself over to White in their first scene in the warehouse. “Larry, I'm so scared,” Orange says. “Would you please hold me.” White is combing his hair, caressing him. It’s almost too intimate yet for all that it turns out Orange is holding out. He’s still acting. He’s still trying to pull it off.
He keeps trying as the body count mounts and White goes further and further in Orange’s defense.
.
Mr. Orange and Mr. White are really the only two characters in the film that seem to be in flux. Orange, a young man seemingly trying to prove something and White an older man trying to believe in something. The trajectories of Orange’s blood-soaked rite of passage and White’s criminal crisis of faith finally collide and implode in the film’s final seconds.
White more or less sacrifices himself to save Orange and Orange drops the act. “I’m a cop,” he admits. “I’m sorry.” It gets him killed but it has to be said. White has become more important then getting away with it. Orange has to be accountable for who he is and what he’s done or allowed to happen. Time to grow up Freddy baby, to bad you don't survive it.
Mr. Orange/Reservoir Dogs fandom links:
Becoming by debchan
orange_white
resdog_fic