The Mandalorian actor, Bill Burr, reveals that Rick Famuyiwa referenced Quentin Tarantino’s film, Reservoir Dogs, to pitch his first episode.
Bill Burr recently revealed that The Mandalorian director Rick Famuyiwa pitched his debut episode as being Reservoir Dogs but with bounty hunters. The Mandalorian began airing in 2019 and recently concluded its second season in December of last year. Famuyiwa directed two out of the sixteen episodes aired so far (Chapter 6 and Chapter 15), with both episodes featuring Burr in the role of a bounty hunter named Migs Mayfeld. Although Burr is most famous for his career as a comedian, critics and audiences alike praised his unexpectedly poignant performance in the latter episode.
In Chapter 6 of the series, the titular Mandalorian (Pedro Pascal) takes on a job that finds him teaming up with Mayfeld along with three other bounty hunters. The mission objective is simple: infiltrate a New Republic prison ship and break out a mysterious target. However, at the episode’s climax, the bounty hunter team betrays the Mandalorian, leaving the armored protagonist stranded in a prison cell. Luckily, he is able to set himself free, and the episode concludes with the Mandalorian taking the bounty for himself while locking up the rest of the team (including Mayfeld) in a prison cell.
Bill Burr recently appeared in an episode of Your Mom’s House Podcast, where he briefly discussed his experience working on the Star Wars spinoff show. He tells host Tom Segura that director Rick Famuyiwa pitched the episode as “a Reservoir Dogs sort of style thing” with bounty hunters. Check out the actor’s full comment below:
And then I lucked out in a second way: […] Rick Famuyiwa was the director [of Chapter 6] and he wanted to do like a Reservoir Dogs sorta style thing with like these bounty hunter guys – and woman.
The Mandalorian is very overt in its parallels to classic cinema, just like George Lucas was with his original six Star Wars films. The series’ main source of inspiration comes from western films, such as its portrayal of the Mandalorian as a “man with no name” archetype akin to Clint Eastwood’s westerns from the 1960s. However, the series has also paid homage to other genres and films as well; notably, Bryce Dallas Howard’s Chapter 11 borrowed imagery from Apollo 13 which was directed by her own father, Ron Howard. Given that these references are typically subtextual, it’s interesting to hear Burr explicitly confirm one of Famuyiwa’s inspirations for his episode.
Prior to his involvement with The Mandalorian, Burr was notoriously cavalier about his disdain toward Star Wars; he has since clarified that his previous jabs at the franchise and its legions of diehard fans were in jest. Burr’s surprisingly nuanced performance in the penultimate episode of season 2 proves that the actor isn’t just phoning it in. With The Mandalorian season 3 coming in the next year – along with a host of other spinoff shows like The Book of Boba Fett – hopefully Mayfeld will return in some capacity in the near future.
Source: Your Mom’s House Podcast