Quentin Tarantino only shot one take of every scene when he directed an episode of ER. The long-running NBC medical drama was created by the late Michael Critchton and follows the lives of the emergency room staff at a Chicago hospital. The series premiered in 1994 and ran for fifteen seasons, featuring a multitude of cast members over the course of its run including George Clooney, Anthony Edwards, Julianna Margulies, John Stamos, Angela Bassett, and Linda Cardellini. The show became a ratings hit, becoming the second longest-running primetime medical drama in television history, behind Grey's Anatomy.
One of the most successful seasons of the show was its first, when Steven Spielberg was attached as a producer and the cast included Edwards, Clooney, Margulies, Sherry Stringfield, Eriq La Salle, and Noah Wyle. The show had some of its most memorable episodes and immediately took off as a ratings juggernaut, coming in with almost 35 million viewers per episode by the end of the season. At the same time, Tarantino had recently released his defining cult hit, Pulp Fiction, and was considered the next hottest director and signed on to direct an episode towards the end of the first season.
According to IndieWire, Margulies revealed that Tarantino had his own method when shooting his episode of ER, only shooting one take for each scene. A lot of the cast members got together for a reunion to help support the nonprofit organization, Waterkeeper Alliance, where cast member Gloria Reuben serves as president. Tarantino had just come off his Oscar win for writing Pulp Fiction and directed the penultimate episode of the first season titled, "Motherhood". Tarantino revealed to Margulies his reasoning for shooting only one take would be so that NBC would have no option but to use his take. Margulies' comment can be read below:
When Quentin Tarantino came to direct us, he was such a big fan of the show, he only did one take. So they didn’t have a choice to edit. We would rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. We would do one take and he would go, ‘Great, let’s move on!’ And I asked him why he was doing that and he said, ‘It’ll be my cut no matter what.'
Because ER is a fast-paced, hour-long network drama with a full season order of 25 episodes in its first season, the show has different directors to helm each episode and each director's method is different. ER is also known for having long shots of scenes with characters moving a patient to different rooms in the hospital and doing numerous medical tasks while following cues and saying their lines. Therefore, shooting a scene has to be planned out accordingly, while also maintaining the continuity of the show and the characters from previous episodes.
Of course, Tarantino is now considered one of the most influential and meticulous directors working and being a fan of ER, most definitely did a lot of preparation for his episode before shooting a scene so it would only have to be one take. He has also since gone back to television directing the fifth season finale episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in 2005, for which he was nominated for an Emmy Award. Tarantino has been vocal about his intention to retire after making his upcoming tenth film, but still has plans to return to television.
Source: IndieWire