I Talked to RZA About How to Forge the Greatest Weapon Ever

I guess I'm a music journalist, and I'm supposed to keep up an air of quiet nonchalance and cool as I jadedly flick ash in my vinyl-filled apartment, but I'm going to level with you guys: I'm cripplingly, embarrassingly star-struck by the RZA. As the prime mover behind the best hip-hop band that's ever blessed this dangerous, dying sphere, RZA has built an empire around his Midas touch; nearly everything this man touches turns to solid, boom-bap gold. So when I finally got him on the phone the week of his directorial debut, I got so nervous on the phone that I accidentally broke my favorite pen.

This week, RZA can add "film director" to his already impressive resume. The martial arts bricolage bloodfest The Man With the Iron Fists comes out today. The film was directed, scored, and written (with a little help from Eli Roth) by Bobby Digital himself. We had a nice chat on the phone about Quentin Tarantino, his burgeoning directing career, and his theories on using various alloys to forge "the greatest weapon ever."

Noisey: So I've seen Quentin Tarantino's name all over this film. How did you meet him, anyway?
RZA: I met him around 2001. He had just bought a film called I Am Monkey and he was presenting it to the world. Mirimax hired me to promote it, and I was at a press junket next to Quentin, and we became immediate buddies.

What's he like?
The guy's a walking encyclopedia of genres. We originally bonded over Kung-Fu films. I think it happened when I was at his house in 2002, when he was working on Kill Bill. It was watching movies that brought us together. We started watching like four movies a night.

Did he ever school you on some filmmaker who you hadn't known much about?
So much shit man. You know Paul Mazursky?

Sorta.
We watched all of his movies. Quentin has them all on 16-millimeter prints, so we'd just watch them on the wall. I'd have my girl over, maybe he'd have a girl over, and we would break day doing that shit.

Read the rest over at NOISEY.