Grindhouse is "awesome" & "flawless"

[axlish]

MZ, with all due respect, I think you are clinging to very little here. The first two reels are scratchy, from a beat up print. The third reel is from a black and white print, and the final two reels are from a pristine print. I doubt anyone has ever combined 5 reels from 5 different prints. At least a couple of reels would stick together over the years, if not 3 or 4. As for the Thunderbolt title, it was merely changed for alternate advertising. It is not uncommon for films from the 1970s to go through title changes for better publicity (Black Christmas/Silent Night, Evil Night for instance). To propose that the title change suggests a combination of two different films is a reach that I don't think Shaq could grab ahold of. Again, the multi-sourced print was from Q.T.'s mouth. It isn't speculation on my part. Bassman, the black and white sequence was not in the Grindhouse cut.

[MinionZombie]

I know, I was saying that the 'combined prints' thing wasn't a part of my theory regarding a 'two Mike movies combined' ... it could be used in conjunction with the other, much stronger, arguments whilst you were at it, but it's certainly not what the theory hangs upon. There is only one portion of black and white in the whole movie, and that's the scene with the girls hanging out at the Mustang by the convenience store, I wasn't saying it was speculation about taking a chunk from another print to fill a missing gap in a different print - I know about that bit already, QT has talked about it frequently. What he has talked about in the past, but for some reason hasn't mentioned/been asked about over the years, is the 'two Mike movies' angle. I distinctly remember seeing QT say about the 'theatre owner's cut' angle, but it was so long ago that I don't know where it was (I would have thought he'd go on to mention that repeatedly, yet strangely he hasn't). Two sets of girls, two entirely different qualities of prints from one set of girls compared to the other, two entirely different sets of sexual politics from one half to the other. The title change could be either a retitling for advertising purposes (I know that many of these films had multiple titles, such as Last House on the Left, as they searched for the winning title and advertising style that clicked with audiences), or it could just as equally be to rename the movie for a theatre owner's cut - the 'two Mike movies' theory. I'm not saying that 100% my theory is correct, but that's how I've always seen Death Proof and I feel there's plenty to back up the theory.