Quentin Tarantino

INTRO

Are you bored with dull and boring movies? Does it seem to you that Hollywood is more concerned these days with pumping out a lot of films rather than creating quality?

Assuming your positive answers I decided on continuing the film industry presentation theme and have prepared some interesting information on the life and the movie heritage of my favourite director - Quentin Tarantino.

"I don't think there's anything to be afraid of. Failure brings great rewards in the life of an artist."
-- director Quentin Tarantino, on the pressure to repeat the smash success he had with "Pulp Fiction."

Let’s get to the nitty-gritty then...

EARLY LIFE (BITS OF HISTORY)

Whether it’s starting a family or starting a career, the Tarantino’s like to begin early. Quentin Tarantino was born to Tony Tarantino, an actor and amateur musician from Queens, and Connie Zastoupil, a health-care exec and nurse who was just 16 years old at the time she gave birth to the would-be auteur.

By the time Quentin was 16 years old, he had already dropped out of Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California, to study acting at the James Best Theatre Company. At 22, he landed a job recommending (and restocking) films at the Video Archives in Hermosa Beach, which is where he developed his encyclopaedic knowledge of film alongside fellow filmmaker Roger Avary, with whom he wrote Pulp Fiction several years later.

FILM CAREER

FIRST STEPS

After Tarantino met Lawrence Bender at a Hollywood party, Bender encouraged Tarantino to write a screenplay. He directed and co-wrote a black and white amateur film called 'My Best Friend's Birthday' in 1987. The project started in 1984, when Hamann wrote a short 30-40 page script about a young man who continually tries to do something nice for his friend's birthday, only to have his efforts backfire. Tarantino became attached to the project as co-writer and director, and he and Hamann expanded the short script into an 80 page script. The original cut was about 70 minutes long but due to a fire only 36 minutes of the film survived. The 36 minute cut has been shown at several film festivals. Tarantino has referred to this film as his "film school". Although the film was by his own admission very poorly directed, the experience gained from the film helped him in directing future films. Even though the final reel of the film was almost fully destroyed in a lab fire that broke out during editing its screenplay would go on to be the basis for 'True Romance'.

Over the years Quentin has been working as: a film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. What many people don’t realise though is that one of Tarantino’s first acting roles was as an Elvis impersonator. Quentin frequently makes cameos in his own movies and in movies directed by friend and fellow filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, but one of his first real acting gigs came in 1988 when he played an Elvis impersonator on the popular television show 'The Golden Girls'. Despite performing in the back row of the 10-man “Elvis ensemble,” Quentin still manages to stick out like a sore thumb. Quentin Tarantino has also appeared in four episodes of 'Alias' in addition to his several cameos in feature films.

@ True Romance: The famous scene in True Romance where Dennis Hopper explains Christopher Walken's ancestry.

RESERVOIR DOGS

By 1988, Tarantino had written his second script, 'Natural Born Killers' and in 1990 he sold the script for 'True Romance' for $50,000. He decided to use this money to make his third script, 'Reservoir Dogs' on 16mm and in black and white with his friends in the leading roles. It was around this point that Tarantino left the video store to do rewrites for CineTel, a small Hollywood production company - it was at this time he met Lawrence Bender and struck lucky. Bender was attending acting classes with Peter Flood, who was divorced from acting teacher Lily Parker and knew Harvey Keitel from the Actors Studio. Keitel saw the script and was impressed enough to raise some more finance, act in the film and help Tarantino cast the main roles.

'Reservoir Dogs' is the debut film of Tarantino as a director and a writer. The film deals with the meeting at a pre-planned rendezvous of a group of robbers who have been involved in an attempted jewelry heist. The robbery has been organized by Joe Cabot with his son Nice Guy Eddie who have put together a team of six men, each with a different role to play and each with a pseudonym chosen by Joe. The robbery has gone wrong although the participants have still managed to get away with a quantity of diamonds. The protagonists believe that one of their number is a police informer and the film deals with the recriminations that arise from this.

• What is the meaning of the title 'Reservoir Dogs'?

When Tarantino worked in a video store, he referred to the French film 'Au Revoir Les Enfants' as 'the reservoir film' because he couldn't pronounce the title. He combined this with 'Straw Dogs', a Sam Peckinpah film from 1971, to produce the title 'Reservoir Dogs'. Although Quentin chooses to remain quiet about this, this story has been confirmed by Quentin's mother and Roger Avary, among others.

The movie incorporates many themes and aesthetics that have become Tarantino's hallmarks: violent crime, pop culture references, memorable dialogue, profuse profanity, and a nonlinear storyline. The film has become a classic of independent film and a cult hit. It was named "Greatest Independent Film of all Time" by Empire.

• Which films influenced Quentin Tarantino in the making of this film?

1. In the 1974 American film, 'The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3', the four hijackers of the subway train are all dressed alike (hat, glasses, moustache, big overcoat and machine gun) and had the pseudonyms of Mr Blue, Mr Green, Mr Brown and Mr Grey.
2. The scene which runs over the credits near the beginning of 'Reservoir Dogs' showing the characters walking in slow motion is a homage to a similar scene in Sam Peckinpah's 1969 film, 'The Wild Bunch'.
3. Jean Pierre Melville is also a great influence on Tarantino, he was the director of several stylish gangster films in France in the 1950's and 1960's which deal with honour and gangster ethics and are set in a bleak urban environment where everybody is cynical and impeccably dressed. The 'three way stand-off' appears in Melville's film, 'Le Samourai'.
4. Other influences include 'Rififi' from 1955 directed by Jules Dassin and 'The Killing' directed by Stanley Kubrick in 1956. The films of Hong Kong director John Woo are also a great influence on Tarantino.
5. However, City on Fire, a Hong Kong action movie directed by Ringo Lam in 1987 is by far the biggest influence on Reservoir Dogs. Tarantino has used a number of ideas in the film and these are worth outlining:
6. Just before the robbers in City on Fire rob a jewelry store, one of them says 'Let's go to Work'.
7. The relationship between Chow (the undercover cop) and Fu (the gangster) is mirrored by that of Orange and White.
8. One of the gang members kills a shop girl in the jewelry shop for setting off the alarm.
9. There is a scene where Chow is shot by a cop and kills him (Orange is shot by a woman and kills her) while Fu is shooting cops in a car by shooting at them with two guns.
10. In the warehouse there is a Mexican standoff.
11. A dying Chow tells Fu that he is a cop.

@ Reservoir Dogs: The greatest credit intro to a film, without a doubt.

And that would be all for now I suppose.

Please share your thoughts on the film scenes I preselected and linked. I'm curious if you've recognised them - I'm a big fan of Tarantino's works, so I know these dialogues almost by heart :) Also, give me a heads up if the article is going into the details of film-making too deeply.

Cheers, Michał.