Quintessential Tarantino

Edwin Page

• Publisher: Marion Boyars
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780714531168
• eBook ISBN: 9780714521909
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

From Reservoir Dogs in 1992 to the Kill Bill series of films, the films of Quentin Tarantino have always provoked a reaction from critics and audiences alike - many attracting a cult-like following. Edwin Page discusses each of the eight films written and directed by Tarantino, and explores the complexity behind Tarantino's 'guns and gangsters' style. Films discuseed include Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Natural Born Killers, Pulp Fiction, From Dusk Till Dawn, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2. A book for film students and media studies, in which the reader can discover how Tarantino went from video store clerk to director of major movies.

1. Quentin Tarantino: The Man and his Movies

‘When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them “No, I went to films”’

– Quentin Tarantino1

Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born on March 27^th 1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee, USA. His association with film apparently started immediately, his mother, Connie, naming him after Quint, Burt Reynold’s character in Gunsmoke (Juran, 1953).2

He was brought up in suburban Los Angeles by Connie, who took the young Tarantino to the cinema regularly. At the age of eight he saw Carnal Knowledge (Nichols, 1971) and at nine he saw Deliverance (Boorman, 1972).3 He was allowed to go and see whatever movies were showing at local theatres, and these included most of Sam Peckinpah’s movies5, which remain some of his favourite films. These cinema visits became a habit of his and he has always treated himself to a movie on his birthday.

PULP FACT

Tarantino never went to film school.4

Tarantino dropped out of the ninth grade at junior high and is proud to have achieved what he has despite his lack of education. He’d hide in his house until Connie, a nurse, went to work. Then he’d spend the day watching television or looking through his comic collection, gaining an education of a different kind which would prove useful in later life. This love of movies and comics is clear in his films, and the two combine most notably in True Romance. Who would ever have thought that skipping school could have turned out so well?

At the age of sixteen Tarantino took acting classes while working at porno cinemas. It was during this time that he started writing film scripts.

PULP FACT

Tarantino wrote his first screenplay – ‘Captain Peachfuzz and the Anchovy Bandit’ – in 1985.

He got a job in Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California, when he was twenty-two. It was at Video Archives that Tarantino and Roger Avary, who wrote parts of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, spent all day watching, discussing and recommending videos.6

Lance Lawson, manager of the video store where Tarantino worked has said that he ‘read an extreme amount of thrillers and comics, loved Elvis…and always celebrated his birthday by going to the movies’.7 Tarantino’s early life is reflected in a number of his films. The most notable example is in True Romance, which is arguably the most autobiographical of Tarantino’s scripts, probably because it was one of his earliest. In it Clarence always goes to the movies on his birthday, his hero is Elvis, and he loves comics.

Tarantino’s wide knowledge of cinema no doubt arose from his regular cinema visits and his video store job. Without his particular upbringing and the job at Video Archives it is unlikely that Tarantino’s films would have the referential nature that we know and love.

PULP QUOTE

‘Half of my inspiration is from life and the other half is from those movies I watched’8 – Tarantino

In 1986 Tarantino made his first film, My Best Friend’s Birthday, which remained unfinished. He then wrote the script for True Romance a year later. His second script, Natural Born Killers, was written by 1988 and he sold True Romance in 1990 for $50,000, intending to use the money to produce his third script, Reservoir Dogs.

Tarantino left Video Archives and started doing rewrites for a small Hollywood production company called CineTel, where he met Lawrence Bender, who was to produce all of the feature films both written and directed by Tarantino, even appearing in three of them. He also produced and made a brief appearance in Four Rooms.

Bender, through contacts from acting classes, managed to get the Reservoir Dogs script to Harvey Keitel, and Keitel was sufficiently impressed to raise some more funding, act in the film and help Tarantino cast the main roles. This story of how he got to direct his first film and what followed is described by Tarantino as ‘my American-dream story’ 9. The rest, as they say, is history.

Reservoir Dogs showed at the Sundance Film Festival early in 1991 and was released in 1992. It received critical acclaim and soon established itself as a cult film. Prior to the release of Reservoir Dogs Tarantino was an unknown, but he did a lot of self-promotion when the film came out, both in the US and globally, which helped to put him in the media spotlight. Along with this promotion was the fact that the violence contained in the film caused quite a stir, attracting further media attention, especially in relation to the ‘ear-slicing’ scene (to be discussed in Chapter Two). All of this helped in building his reputation as a new, fresh and somewhat maverick filmmaker.

With the release of Pulp Fiction (1994), the second film both written and direct by Tarantino, his notoriety went through the roof and he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay along with his writing partner Roger Avary. The film also won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, the equivalent of Best Picture at the Oscars. With this time-twisting film, Tarantino’s reputation as a great and original writer/director was sealed.

PULP QUOTE

‘A Tarantino film wouldn’t be one without at least some of his encyclopaedic video-geekiness finding its way onto the screen.’10

Pulp Fiction cemented and substantially increased his reputation, and was the largest grossing independent movie of its time. It also had a major effect on Miramax, the studio that backs all the films written and directed by Tarantino. Pulp Fiction effectively turned Miramax ‘from an art-house haven into a major studio’.11 In fact, Tarantino’s impact on th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Quentin Tarantino: The Man and his Movies
• 2. Reservoir Dogs
• 3. True Romance
• 4. Natural Born Killers
• 5. Pulp Fiction
• 6. Four Rooms
• 7. From Dusk Till Dawn
• 8. Jackie Brown
• 9. Kill Bill Volume 1
• 10. Kill Bill Volume 2
• 11. ‘ER’ & ‘CSI’
• 12. That’s a Wrap
• Appendix Films: Main Cast and Crew
• Copyright