27 Things You Didn't Know About Reservoir Dogs

By Jack Pooley / August 5, 2019

20. Harvey Keitel's Involvement Raised The Budget From $30,000 To $1.5 Million

Tarantino was originally planning to make Reservoir Dogs guerrilla-style with just $30,000, a 16mm camera and a cast and crew of his friends.

However, that all changed when Tarantino received a call from Harvey Keitel, who had read the script after producer Laurence Bender gave a copy to his acting teacher's wife, who knew Keitel.

Keitel asked Tarantino if he could both star in and produce the film, and his involvement alone helped raise a total budget of $1.5 million from investors.

Unlike most of the cast, Keitel was already an established name at the time of the film's production, and so his attachment bolstered confidence that it could be a commercial success - as, obviously, it eventually was.