27 Things You Didn't Know About Reservoir Dogs

16. The Sundance Premiere Was A Total Disaster

Reservoir Dogs premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 1992, and by Tarantino's own admission, the screening was the exact opposite of what any unknown filmmaker could possibly want.

He said, "That was a disaster. That's kind of famous actually...At our very first public screening they didn't have a scope lens for the projector, and it's a scope movie. And I let them show it anyway because I didn't know that you couldn't. So it looks like caca all the way through. That would be bad enough, but then it gets to the final climax, where everyone is yelling at each other in the final chapter, and all of a sudden the lights come up. And somebody realizes, 'Oh s**t what's going on.' So they bring the lights down. Then finally everyone has their guns pointed on everybody else and almost, as if on purpose, as far as suspense is concerned, right at the height of that scene there's a power outage, and all the power goes out. So I was like, 'OK this is what it is like to watch your movie in public.' It was a f**king disaster."

Thankfully another screening was held a week later with a massive industry turnout, and a colossal tidal wave of buzz quickly followed.