A Tarantinoesque retrospective. The early years...

"When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'no, I went to films.'" - Quentin Tarantino

Violence, sharp humor, shady characters, original dialog… a few traits that define Quentin Tarantino's work.

You can hate him or you can love him… but one thing is sure… no other author filmmaker has the box office impact he does. No other filmmaker has been so influential and copied over the years. After his first film “Reservoir Dogs” came out, you could not turn your head without seeing a movie with a group of guys in black suits.

However he was not always the hollywood darling he is today...

Let’s have a look at the early years of Tarantino, the hight school drop out that became a major Hollywood player.

Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee , but moved to California with his mother when he was 4 years old. He is an only child and never really knew is father (a struggling musician). He soon developed an extraordinary interest in movies. His mother a young single lady, would take him to the movies regularly and sometimes they would see adult movies. “Carnal Knowledge” is often used by Quentin as an example. The movies he saw during that time would be an immense influence for the rest of his life. And he watched everything, from “Rio Bravo”, to european movies, Asian cinema, Shaw Brothers low budget Chinese kung fu flicks, Blaxploitation, Australian films… every single kind you can think of, he would devour them. He was particularly obsessed with Brian De Palma.

While young Quentin was failing in all school subjects (except History) he would go to the movies and remember everything about it. I am not talking about knowing the writer and director's name, but actually who was the costume designer, the make up artist and so on…

Still has a child, he decided his life would be spent around movies. He started by wanting to become an actor. (Something very common in children who decide they want to be involved in cinema) If you are that young and want to be involved, what you see are the actors. However his mother used to say that he would become a director.

In his teens he decided he wanted to quit school and become an actor. His mother told him that he need to find a job. Guess what job he had? A movie theatre usher… his dream job… but guess where?… in a porno theatre. ( Porn being probably the only style of “film” Quentin was never interested in. He remembers it with some irony. “ For me, the best job anyone can ever have is being a usher in a film theatre… you get to watch movies everyday for free… and I ended up being one in a theatre where I could not care less about the films and was totally bored by it”

Eventually he got a better job in a video store. “Video Achieves” the most famous video store in Los Angeles. (Later he would become the owner of one of the world's biggest film prints collections) This is when Quentin became Mr. critic for the customers. He was recommending movies for people to watch, getting his voice heard and respected, he loved it. This is when he met “Scott Spiegel” a filmmaker that would become important in Quentin’s journey.

He was taking acting classes but he decided to make movie by himself. And so he did for a couple of years he would rent equipment in the weekends and he did it. The movie is not particularly good to the point that, when “Reservoir Dogs” was starting to get made, one of the Producers asked him if he had done anything before. Yes he replied. Can I see it, asked the producer and "No", was the answer.

After many years of struggling and poverty he finished his first feature script. It was a peculiar love story with lots of violence. It was pretty good but there was a problem… it was around 500 pages long (usually a script is around 90 to 120 pages) So he divided it into two scripts. “Natural Born Killers” and “True Romance”

He was able to sell “Natural Born Killers” for “the least amour of money they could legally pay me”. Around ten thousand dollars US. With that pay check he decided to quit his job. (That was his standard of living at the time)

The only problem was that Tarantino hated the movie. Oliver Stone directed it and change it a lot. In the end the film was totally different than the script and the conflict between Quentin and Oliver began.

“He might have made a masterpiece, but I will never be able to appreciate it. If he wanted to make my movie he should have made my movie” - Tarantino on ”Natural Born Killers”

( Personally, I consider the movie a masterpiece indeed and it has been one of the most influential films of my life)

He then sold the script for “True Romance”. Tony Scott directed it and it was well received. It is a classic with an extremely ivy league cast. ( We can even see a pre Tony Soprano, Gandolfini in a small role) or ( Samuel Jackson in a 2 minute role) . Tarantino liked the movie.

He was then asked to write a low budget vampire film for a low budget producer, and so I did. However the finance for the movie collapsed and the script ended up being in Quentin’s archive for some time. Years later this low budjet vampire script ended up being the cult classic “From Dusk Till Dawn”, directed by Robert Rodriguez (by then Quentin’s best friend.) It was also the movie that got George Clooney out of mediocre television and lunched his film career. The film, turned into the trilogy and now it is also a loved Tv series.

By this time he had two produced scripts, but still he wasn't a filmmaker. (with no film degree behind him) This is when he met Lawrence Bender, his partner. They stated talking and Quentin mentioned an ideia he had. A group of criminals inside a warehouse...

Legend as it that he wrote the script in two weeks. Lawrence loved it and gave it to a girl in his dancing class and using 6 degrees of separation the script got to Harvey Keitel. He loved the script and offered to be a producer while also starring in it.

Lawrence managed to get a million dollars for the production and the rest is movie history…

“And that was the beginning of my life… part 2” - Quentin Tarantino