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Quentin Tarantino

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Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an Academy Award- and Palme d'Or-winning American film director, screenwriter and actor. He rose to fame in the early 1990s as an auteur indie filmmaker whose films used postmodern nonlinear storylines, and stylized violence. His films include Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (Vol. 1 2003, Vol. 2 2004) and Death Proof featured in Grindhouse (2007).

Biography

Early life

Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of Connie Zastoupil (née McHugh), a health care executive and nurse, and Tony Tarantino, an actor and amateur musician born in Queens, New York. Tarantino's father is Italian American and his mother had part Cherokee Native American ancestry. His mother was only sixteen years old when she gave birth to him. Shortly after Quentin's birth, his mother married musician Curtis Zastoupil, with whom Quentin would form a strong bond. In 1971, the family moved to El Segundo, in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, where Tarantino attended Hawthorne Christian School. At the age of 14, he wrote his first script, The Amazing Adventures of Mr. Lee. Dropping out of Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California at the age of 16, he went on to learn acting at the James Best Theatre Company. This proved to be influential in his movie-making career. At the age of 22, he landed a job at the Manhattan Beach Video Archives, a now defunct video rental store in Manhattan Beach, California where he and fellow movie buffs like Roger Avary spent all day discussing and recommending films to customers.

Film career

Tarantino's screenplay True Romance was optioned and eventually released in 1993. After Tarantino met Lawrence Bender at a Hollywood party, Bender encouraged Tarantino to write a screenplay. In January 1992 Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs hit the Sundance Film festival. The film garnered critical acclaim and the director became a legend in the UK and the cult film circuit. Reservoir Dogs was a dialogue-driven heist movie that set the tone for his later films. Tarantino wrote the script in three and a half weeks and Bender forwarded it to director Monte Hellman. Hellman helped Tarantino to secure funding from Richard Gladstein at Live Entertainment (which later became Artisan). Harvey Keitel read the script and also contributed to funding, took a co-producer role, and a part in the movie.

The second script that Tarantino sold was Natural Born Killers. Director Oliver Stone made a number of changes that Tarantino disagreed with. As a result, Tarantino disowned the script. Following the success of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino was approached by Hollywood and offered numerous projects, including Speed and Men in Black. He instead retreated to Amsterdam to work on his script for Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the 1994 Cannes film festival. Pulp Fiction earned Tarantino and Roger Avary Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, and was also nominated for Best Picture.

After Pulp Fiction he directed episode four of Four Rooms, "The Man from Hollywood", a tribute to an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode that starred Steve McQueen. Four Rooms was a collaborative effort with filmmakers Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, and Robert Rodriguez. The film was very poorly received by critics and audiences. He also starred in and wrote the script for Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn, which saw mixed reviews from the critics yet led to two sequels, for which Tarantino and Rodriguez would only serve as executive producers.

Tarantino's third feature film was Jackie Brown (1997), an adaptation of Rum Punch, a novel by Elmore Leonard. An homage to blaxploitation films, it starred Pam Grier, who starred in many of that genre's films of the 1970s. In 1998, he turned his attention to the Broadway stage, where he starred in a revival of Wait Until Dark. He had then planned to make the war film Inglorious Bastards, but postponed it to write and direct Kill Bill (released as two films, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2), a highly stylized "revenge flick" in the cinematic traditions of Wuxia (Chinese martial arts), Jidaigeki (Japanese period cinema), Spaghetti Westerns and Italian horror or giallo. It was based on a character (The Bride) and a plot that he and Kill Bill's lead actress, Uma Thurman, had developed during the making of Pulp Fiction. In 2004, Tarantino returned to Cannes where he served as President of the Jury. Kill Bill was not in competition, but it did screen on the final night in its original 3-hour-plus version.

Tarantino announced in 2005 that his next project would be Grindhouse, which he co-directed with Rodriguez. Released in theaters on April 6, 2007, Tarantino's contribution to the Grindhouse project was titled Death Proof. It began as a take on 1970s slasher films, but evolved dramatically as the project unfolded. Ticket sales performed significantly below box office analysts' expectations despite mostly positive critic reviews.

He has stated his next film will "probably" be Inglorious Bastards, which is a World War II film, but that he needed to spend another year working on the script before filming. Also, Quentin has divulged information about possible anime prequels to the Kill Bill films. These would probably center around the DiVAS, Bill or The Bride before the events of the first two films. In a recent interview with The Telegraph he mentioned an idea for a form of spaghetti western set in America's Deep South which he calls "a southern". Stating that he wanted "to do movies that deal with America's horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it's ashamed of it, and other countries don't really deal with because they don't feel they have the right to".There have also been rumors of a film about two characters from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Vic and Vincent Vega. This would be The Vega Brothers but this has only been hinted at, along with April Fools rumors posted on the internet about Pulp Fiction 2: The Valley Of Darkness. In 2007 he claimed that the Vega Brothers project (which he intended to call Double V Vega) is "kind of unlikely now".

Among his current producing credits are the horror flick Hostel (which included numerous references to his own Pulp Fiction), the adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Killshot (for which Tarantino had once written a script) and Hell Ride (written & directed by Kill Bill star Larry Bishop). Tarantino is credited as "Special Guest Director" for his work directing the car sequence between Clive Owen and Benicio del Toro of Robert Rodriguez's 2005 neo-noir film Sin City. In 2005 Quentin Tarantino won the Icon of the Decade award at the Sony Ericsson Empire Awards. On August 15, 2007, Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo presented Tarantino with a lifetime achievement award at the Malacañang Palace in Manila.

Tarantino has been quoted as saying "When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'no, I went to films.'"

Television

Tarantino directed the fifth season finale to the hit show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which first aired May 19, 2005. The highly rated episode, entitled "Grave Danger", shared a very similar situation from Tarantino's second Kill Bill film: CSI Nick Stokes is captured and buried alive in a Plexiglas coffin while an Internet camera broadcasts the whole thing to CSI headquarters. (In Kill Bill Vol. 2, the Bride was also captured and buried alive in a coffin.)

The episode was delayed in being shown in the UK as the broadcast date coincided with the terrorist attacks in London and it was felt that the underground theme in the episode would cause offense. This double-length episode was released on DVD on October 10, 2005. Tarantino was nominated for an Emmy for his role in this episode.

Tarantino also directed an episode of ER called "Motherhood" that aired May 11, 1995, an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, and an episode of then-girlfriend Margaret Cho's show. Tarantino was also featured as a guest judge on the televised singing competition American Idol for one episode during its third season. His reputation for creating memorable movie soundtracks was cited as qualifying him for the role.

Tarantino also directed the season 20 (1994–1995 season) episode of the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live hosted by John Travolta (musical guest: Seal), which featured a sketch called "Quentin Tarantino's Welcome Back, Kotter" a hybrid of the 1970s sitcom, Welcome Back, Kotter (which starred John Travolta) and Tarantino's film Reservoir Dogs and hosted an episode of SNL in season 21 (1995–1996 season) with musical guest The Smashing Pumpkins.

Tarantino was originally slated to direct an episode of the X-Files, but was prevented from doing so by the Directors Guild of America. The episode, titled "Never Again," features Scully heading to Philadelphia (with Mulder on vacation) to talk to a man who claims his tattoo is talking to him. The episode was written specifically for Tarantino to direct. As a result, both the tone and character dynamic stand out as being slightly out of step with the series. The DGA contended that Tarantino (who is not a member) failed to compensate the union for lost revenue as a result of his directorial work on ER.

Acting

Although Tarantino is best known for his work behind the camera, he starred in his own movies Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Death Proof as minor characters, and co-starred alongside George Clooney in From Dusk Till Dawn. He has also appeared on the small screen in the first and third seasons of the TV show Alias. Tarantino once played an Elvis impersonator on an episode of The Golden Girls (as a non-speaking extra. He can, in fact, barely be seen). He also played cameo roles in Desperado (directed by his friend Robert Rodriguez), and Little Nicky (as a crazy, blind, apocalypse preacher). In November 2006, an episode of the Sundance Channel's Iconoclasts features Quentin Tarantino interviewing and spending time with singer Fiona Apple. Tarantino also has a brief appearance in the beginning of Spike Lee's film Girl 6. In April 2007, Tarantino has substantial screen-time in Grindhouse's double-features, Death Proof and Planet Terror, where he respectively takes on the roles of Warren, a bartender, and The Rapist, an infected member of a rogue military unit. He also starred as Johnny Destiny in the film Destiny Turns on the Radio.

Work

Aesthetics

Tarantino's movies are renowned for their sharp dialogue, splintered chronology, and pop culture obsessions. His films have copious amounts of both spattered and flowing blood that are graphically violent in an aestheticized sense. His depictions of violence have also been noted for their casualness and macabre humour, as well as for the tension and grittiness of these scenes.

Influences

In the 2002 Sight and Sound Directors' poll, Tarantino revealed his top-twelve films: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Rio Bravo; Taxi Driver; His Girl Friday; Rolling Thunder; They All Laughed; The Great Escape; Carrie; Coffy; Dazed and Confused; Five Fingers of Death; and Hi Diddle Diddle. A previous top-ten list also included Blow Out, One-Eyed Jacks, For a Few Dollars More, Bande à part, À bout de souffle, Le Doulos, They Live By Night, GoodFellas and The Long Goodbye.

Tarantino also credits Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, and George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead as strong influences. He is also a huge fan of the Japanese director Kinji Fukasaku, whose influence can be found in Kill Bill. He owns a rare 35 mm copy of Manos: The Hands of Fate, which he cites as his favorite "comedy". He is known as a Godzilla fan. He has also been a supporter of Kevin Smith's work, being that Smith hit success with Clerks around the time Tarantino released Pulp Fiction. Tarantino also cited Smith's Chasing Amy as his favorite movie of 1997. In one of the Train Wreck making-of shorts for Smith's Clerks II, we see that he invited Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to a private screening of the film at the View Askew offices.

In August 2007, while teaching a four-hour film course during the 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival in Manila, Tarantino cited Filipino directors Cirio Santiago, Eddie Romero, and Gerry de Leon as icons of his in the 1970s: He could hardly contain himself from raving over De Leon's "soul-shattering, life-extinguishing" movies on vampires and female bondage, particularly Women in Cages. "It is just harsh, harsh, harsh," he said, and described the final shot as one of "devastating despair".

He has been quoted as saying that Rio Bravo is his favorite movie. He said "When I'm getting serious with a girl, I show her Rio Bravo, and if she doesn't like it, it's over."

He also credits Brian De Palma and Howard Hawks as two of his favorite directors in a 1994 interview.

Music

Tarantino often makes references to and features music from cult movies and television. He often features a character singing along to a song from the soundtrack: Mr. Blonde, "Stuck in the Middle With You" — Stealers Wheel; Butch, "Flowers on the Wall" — The Statler Brothers; Mia Wallace, "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" — Urge Overkill; Elle Driver, "Twisted Nerve" — Bernard Herrmann; Max Cherry, "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)" - The Delfonics; Jackie Brown, "Across 110th Street" - Bobby Womack; Butterfly, "Down In Mexico" - The Coasters; Jungle Julia and her friends, "Hold Tight" - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.

He often incorporates a scene in which music is heard to fade out completely before fading back in again (Diegetic music):

  • Reservoir Dogs (the ear scene) - Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen) walks to his car, then back inside (Stuck in the Middle With You — Stealers Wheel)
  • Pulp Fiction (the gimp scene) - Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) escapes upstairs and then returns with a katana (Comanche - The Revels)
  • Jackie Brown (Beaumont Livingston's death) - Beaumont Livingston (Chris Tucker) is in the trunk of a car driven by Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). The radio is playing and the car drives off before performing a U-turn and heading back toward the camera. (Strawberry Letter 23 - The Brothers Johnson)
  • Death Proof (revving the engine) - while more of a jarring halt than a fade out, "Hold Tight" goes dead when Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) swerves his '70 Nova into the right lane of the highway, kills his headlights, and revs his engine, waiting for his moment to strike

Criticism – racial epithets

Tarantino has come under criticism for his use of racial epithets in his films, particularly the word nigger/nigga in Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Death Proof, and Reservoir Dogs, most notably from black American director Spike Lee. In an interview for Variety discussing Jackie Brown, Lee said: "I'm not against the word... and I use it, but Quentin is infatuated with the word. What does he want? To be made an honorary black man?" Samuel L. Jackson, who has appeared in films directed by Tarantino and Lee, defended Tarantino's use of the word. At the Berlin Film Festival, where Jackie Brown was being screened, Jackson responded to Lee's criticism by saying, "I don't think the word is offensive in the context of this film. ... Black artists think they are the only ones allowed to use the word. Well, that's bull. Jackie Brown is a wonderful homage to black Exploitation films. This is a good film, and Spike hasn't made one of those in a few years."

An oft-cited example is a scene in Pulp Fiction in which a character named Jimmie Dimmick, portrayed by Tarantino himself, rebukes Samuel L. Jackson's character, Jules Winnfield, for using his house as "dead nigger storage", followed by a rant that uses the word profusely. As a side note his ficticious wife that is supposed to arrive home appears to be a black woman, although her face is never shown. Lee makes direct reference to this in his film Bamboozled when Thomas Dunwitty, a white executive who admires black athletes and entertainers and has married a black woman, states: "Don't get offended by my use of the quote-unquote N-word. I got a black wife and three biracial children, so I feel I have the right. I don't give a damn what that prick Spike Lee says. Tarantino is right, nigger is just a word."

Tarantino has defended his use of the word, arguing that black audiences have an appreciation of his blaxploitation-influenced films that eludes some of his critics, and, indeed, that Jackie Brown, another oft-cited example, was primarily made for "black audiences":

To me the film is a black film. It was made for black audiences actually. It was made for everybody, but that was, pretty much, the "main" audience. If I had any of them in mind, I was thinking of that because I was always thinking of watching it in a black theatre. I didn't have audiences ridiculously in mind because I am the audience, but that works well for that too because I go to black theatres. To me it is a black film.

Borrowing or plagiarism?

Tarantino has also been criticized for using concepts, scenes and dialogue from other films. For example, the climax of Reservoir Dogs is similar to that of Ringo Lam's City on Fire. Stanley Kubrick's The Killing is a direct influence on the fractured narrative structure (Lionel White, author of the novel Clean Break which The Killing was based on, was given a dedication in the end credits of Reservoir Dogs) while the idea of the color-coded criminals is taken from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. The infamous ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs resembles a scene in Sergio Corbucci's 1966 Spaghetti Western classic Django, in which a man's ear is cut off and fed to him before he is shot dead.

The Don Siegel version of The Killers played an influence on Pulp Fiction, and the events of the adrenaline-injection scene closely resemble a story related in Martin Scorsese's documentary American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince. The line about going "to work on homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch" is similar to "You know what kind of people they are. They'll strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch" from another Don Siegel film, 1973's Charley Varrick.

The dancing scene in the diner is inspired by a scene in Godard's "Band of Outsiders", the film which Tarantino named his production company after, though it bears very little resemblance to it at all. The misquoted bible verse Samuel Jackson recites in Pulp Fiction can also be found in the movie Karate Kiba (a 1970s Japanese action film starring Sonny Chiba, also known as The Bodyguard), which Tarantino has mentioned in interviews with The New York Times and Positif. The title crawl of the movie contains the line:

The path of the righteous man and defender is beset on all sides by the iniquity of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper, and the finder of lost children. And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious anger, who poison and destroy my brothers; and they shall know that I am Chiba the Bodyguard when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

The cases of plagiarism/homage are carefully documented in Mike White's two short documentary films, Who Do You Think You're Fooling? and its sequel You're Still Not Fooling Anybody.

The intro titles to Jackie Brown are a careful homage to the intro titles to The Graduate.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 is heavily influenced by the 1973 Toshiya Fujita film Lady Snowblood. The fighting scene where The Bride duels as back lit silhouettes is almost a direct copy of a similar scene in the 1998 Hiroyuki Nakano film Samurai Fiction. The Superman monologue delivered at the end of Kill Bill Vol. 2 was inspired by a passage from Jules Feiffer's 1965 book, The Great Comic Book Heroes, which Tarantino confirmed in a 2004 interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Much debate has been sparked on when such references cease to be tributes and become plagiarism. Tarantino, for his part, has always been open and unapologetic about appropriating ideas from films he admires. When confronted about using ideas from dozens of movies, he stated, "I lift ideas from other great films just like every other great filmmaker."

On September 22, 2007, Tarantino joked about using ideas from others whilst guest announcing on British TV Show Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway when he claimed he'd stolen a concept from Byker Grove, a TV show which made Ant & Dec popular in the early 1990s.

Personal life

Tarantino worked in a video rental store prior to becoming a filmmaker, paid close attention to the types of films people liked to rent, and has cited that experience as his inspiration for his directorial career. Tarantino has been romantically linked with numerous entertainers, including Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino, directors Allison Anders and Sofia Coppola, actresses Julie Dreyfus and Shar Jackson and comedians Kathy Griffin and Margaret Cho. There have also been rumors about his relationship with Uma Thurman, whom he has referred to as his "muse". However, Tarantino has gone on record as saying that their relationship is strictly platonic. He has never married and has no children.

One of Tarantino's closest friends is fellow director Robert Rodriguez (the pair often refer to each other as brothers). Their biggest collaborations have been From Dusk Till Dawn (written by Tarantino, directed by Rodriguez), Four Rooms (they both wrote and directed segments of the film), Sin City and Grindhouse. It was Tarantino who suggested that Rodriguez name the final part of his El Mariachi trilogy Once Upon a Time in Mexico, as a homage to the titles Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon A Time In America by Sergio Leone. They are both members of A Band Apart, a production company that also features directors John Woo and Luc Besson. Rodriguez scored Kill Bill: Volume 2 for one dollar, and the favor was returned in kind, with Tarantino directing a scene in Rodriguez's 2005 film Sin City for the same fee. Rodriguez was also responsible for introducing Tarantino to digital film. Prior to this, Tarantino was a vocal supporter of using traditional celluloid film.

Tarantino is also good friends with The RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan who composed the musical score for Kill Bill.

Tarantino is a friend of Japanese director Takashi Miike, whom he asked to perform a cameo in Eli Roth's film Hostel. As a favor for Miike doing so, Tarantino appears in the opening action sequence of Miike's movie Sukiyaki Western: Django, released in August 2007.

Tarantino has a foot fetish, and caressed the feet of Tyra Banks on her talk show.

In a recent Playboy interview, he talks of smoking cannabis and using ecstasy while filming Kill Bill.

Casting

As is becoming a trend among several contemporary directors, Tarantino frequently casts actors he has worked with on previous movies:

Actor My Best Friend's Birthday (1987) Reservoir Dogs (1992) True Romance (1993) Pulp Fiction (1994) Four Rooms (1995) From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) Jackie Brown (1997) Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004) Death Proof (2007)
Michael Bowen
Steve Buscemi
Rosario Dawson
Kathy Griffin
Sid Haig
Brenda Hillhouse
Samuel L. Jackson
Linda Kaye
Harvey Keitel
Michael Madsen
James Parks
Michael Parks
Chris Penn
Tim Roth
Uma Thurman
Bruce Willis

Trademarks

See Directorial Trademarks of Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino presents...

In recent years, Tarantino has used his Hollywood power to give smaller and foreign films arguably more attention than they would otherwise have received. These films are usually labeled "Presented by Quentin Tarantino" or "Quentin Tarantino Presents". The first of these productions was in 2001 with the Hong Kong martial arts film Iron Monkey which made over $14 million in the United States, seven times its budget. In 2004 he brought the Chinese martial arts film Hero to U.S. shores. It ended up having a #1 opening at the box office and making $53.5 million. In 2006 the latest "Quentin Tarantino presents" production, Hostel, opened at #1 at the box office with a $20.1 million opening weekend, good for 8th all time in January. He also presented 2006's The Protector, and is a producer of the (2007) film Hostel: Part II.

Rolling Thunder Pictures

In addition, in 1995 Tarantino formed Rolling Thunder Pictures with Miramax as a vehicle to release or re-release several independent and foreign features. By 1997, Miramax shut down the company due to "lack of interest" in the pictures released. The following films were released by Rolling Thunder Pictures: Chungking Express (1994, dir. Wong Kar-Wai), Switchblade Sisters (1975, dir. Jack Hill), Sonatine (1993, dir. Takeshi Kitano), Hard Core Logo (1996), Mighty Peking Man (1977), Detroit 9000 (1973), The Beyond (1981) and Curdled (1996).

Books

Tarantino is currently writing a book about the history of independent films from the Philippines, titled Bamboo Gods, Iron Men and Wonder Women.

Projects

At the moment, Quentin Tarantino is working on a war movie called Inglorious Bastards which could be starring Tim Roth and Michael Madsen. He finished the script in 2007 and will be filming it this year. The film would be an homage to The Dirty Dozen. Before this project, Tarantino was thinking about making The Vega Brothers : the film would have starred Michael Madsen and John Travolta reprising the roles of Vic (Mr. Blonde) from Reservoir Dogs, and Vincent from Pulp Fiction, respectively. He decided to abandon the project because of the age of the actors.

Filmography

Director

Feature films

Possible future projects

Abandoned Projects

Shorts and TV

Collaborative films

Writer

Actor

Producer

Presenter

See also

  • QT's Diary, a hoax purporting to be Tarantino's blog.
  • Quentin Tarantino Film Festival, a film festival in Austin, Texas hosted by Tarantino.
  • Who's Quentin?, a Luxembourgish, low-budget homage to Quentin Tarantino's directing style
  • Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy. Ed. Richard Greene and K. Silem Mohammad. Chicago: Open Court Books, 2007. ISBN 0812696344.

References

External links



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