Quentin Tarantino: The Life Of A Scandalous Legend | Full Biography (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill)

“When people ask me if I went to film school,   I tell them: No, I went to see  movies. (Quentin Tarantino)   He was a simple guy from a video store, but  he became a cult director. He is known as   a prodigy who appeared out of nowhere and  changed cinema forever; he is a cheeky guy,   a lover of women's feet and violence.  But you can just call him Quentin.   How did a guy with no education manage to break  through to the top of the movie business?   What does he think of Harvey Weinstein? And what moment does he call the   biggest regret in his life? This is the Biographer channel,   get comfortable: the most amazing of all Quentin  Tarantino's stories is waiting for you. Because   he is in the main role. CHILDHOOD AND   YOUTH Quentin Tarantino was born in   Knoxville [ˈnɑːksvɪl], Tennessee, in 1963. Even the origin of his name seemed to hint   that this guy belongs in the cinema. The  boy was named partly after Quint Asper,   Burt Reynolds' [bɜːt ˈrenəlz] character in  the TV series Gunsmoke. The second character,   thanks to whom Tarantino got his name, is Quentin  from Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury".   His parents, nurse Connie McHugh and aspiring  actor Tony Tarantino, could not build a strong   family, so when Quentin was only two years  old, his mother moved with him to Los Angeles.   In an interview, the director usually answers  questions about his father dryly and concisely.   “That’s the thing. I never knew him.”...“He wanted  to be an actor, now he’s an actor only because   he has my last name. But he was never part of my  life. I didn’t know him.” (Quentin Tarantino)   Connie was only 16 when she gave birth to Quentin.  Pregnancy was unexpected for her, and when her   son was born, the woman had to combine sole  custody of him with work and college studies.   In the network you can find a story  about how a mother once left Quentin   with his deranged alcoholic grandmother  in a trailer park in Tennessee. Well,   if this is true, then it explains the presence  of creepy trailer scenes in his films.   But it was thanks to his mother that Quentin  got acquainted with cinema, and this world on   the screen very soon became an integral part of  his life. “I have loved movies as the number one   thing in my life so long that I can’t ever  remember a time when I didn’t,” he said.   Since childhood, Connie has constantly  taken her son to the cinema. It was   cheaper than hiring a babysitter. "Some people think I'm an overly indulgent   mother," Connie once told a journalist, "I  always took Quentin to the cinema with me.   And I never checked his belongings.” Very soon, the boy's room turned into   a repository of posters, newspaper  clippings about movies and comics.   Quentin doesn't remember the first movie  he watched in the cinema. But he remembers   the first movie, after which he thought "Wow!  That's what you can do in the cinema!". It was   the 1948 movie "Bud Abbott and Lou Costello  Meet Frankenstein", which Quentin watched on   TV at the age of 5. Soon he watched one of the  sequels: "Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy",   and this film seemed to him the best of the films  he had seen. Then it seemed to him the top of   cinematic art. A great comedy combined with a  great horror movie - what could be cooler?   Soon after moving in, Connie remarried. Her new  chosen one was the musician Curtis Zastoupil. It   was his last name that Quentin bore throughout  his childhood and youth. "I didn't even know   about the name Tarantino really at that  time. Zastoupil was my name. I was always   known by that.” - Quentin said. The future director changed his   surname to “Tarantino” at the age of 18,  considering it more sweet-sounding.   "It was Italian. Quentin Tarantino sounded  like a cool name. It had nothing to do   with him. It had nothing to do with  the family." (Quentin Tarantino)   Quentin met his own father only once. He told  the WTF podcast: “One day I was in a cafe, I was   ordering something and all of a sudden, he was  just there. And he’s like, ‘Hi. It’s me.’ And I   looked up, and I knew exactly who it was. And I go  ‘Ugh. I knew this day was going to come.’ And he   goes, ‘Yup. That day is today.’ And he goes,  ‘May I sit?’ And I just looked at the table,   and I waved him away with my hand. I looked at  him when I said, ‘Ugh.’ And then I just looked   at my plate and waved him away. Just go, just  go. And he went.” Over time, Quentin regretted   that he decided to take his last name. Before his divorce from Connie in 1973,   it was Curtis Zastoupil who officially adopted  him and brought him up. The new family moved to   Harbor [hˈɑːbə] City, a suburb of Los Angeles. It was in local cinemas that Quentin spent   his childhood. Together with his  stepfather and mother, he went to   film screenings several times a week. The boy always preferred a trip to the   cinema as a birthday gift, rather than a  trip to Disneyland or Magic Mountain.   As soon as Quentin was old enough to go to  the cinema on his own, he started going there   every weekend. If there were no new films,  he would re-watch the old ones. On weekends,   these old movies were shown on TV from morning  to evening, and parents tried in vain to drag   their son away from the screen. "Quentin, you're  a little boy. Go for a walk. - they said, - Play   football, or something else." But he didn't want to play football,   didn't want to assemble model  trains, and do something else.   By the age of eight, Quentin had  rewatched a lot of films of very   different genres — starting with Disney fairy  tales, ending with thrillers and crime films.   “This was during the Seventies, the  high time of great challenging movies,   so at a very young age I was seeing R-rated  stuff like The Wild Bunch and Deliverance.   My mom figured that nothing in the movies  would ever bother me.” (Quentin Tarantino)   Connie didn't mind the variety. Unlike the parents  of his peers, Quentin's mother and stepfather did   not limit him in genres or ratings. “They thought I was smart enough to   distinguish movies from real life on my own,  and they were right. - Tarantino recalled.   At some point, when Quentin realized  that he was watching movies that other   parents did not allow their children to  watch, he asked his mother about it.   “Quentin,” she said, “I'm more  worried about you watching the   news. A movie isn't going to hurt you..”. But what really shocked him was some scenes in   Bambi. Tarantino called it "the film that has  traumatized kids for decades". He believed that   the whole point was that the trailer did not  show the full picture, and could not prepare   young viewers for the fact that something  terrible could happen on the screen.   “I remember my little brain exclaiming  the equivalent in a five-year-old to,   'What the f*ck is going on here?'. In order to list all the films that impressed   Tarantino as a child and shaped his style, you  will need a separate long video. Therefore,   if we ignore something in this video that  Quentin mentioned as a thing that influenced him,   you can write about it in the comments. But  know that we did not seek to cover everything.   Among the genres that played an important  role in the formation of Tarantino,   we would like to single out the exploitation  films, especially the blaxploitation.   Exploitation is low-budget films, the creators of  which, for the sake of quick earnings, attract the   attention of the public with violence, explicit  scenes, drugs, and so on. It's easy to guess that   blaxploitation is a subgenre of exploitation  film, and it focuses on the black audience.   Quentin partly owes this hobby to geography. "I grew up surrounded by black culture," he said,   "and I love it. Especially the  black culture of the seventies.”   Tarantino lived in the South Bay. And not far  away, in Carson [kˈɑːsən], where many Blacks and   Latinos lived, there was a cinema where all the  new exploitation movies were shown immediately,   and mainstream Hollywood films were  released after they were shown in the city.   Tarantino recalled how the audience in the hall  reacted very vigorously to what was happening:   they jumped up, shouted, and when the films  about kung fu were shown , they tried to   imitate fighting techniques. The director sadly  stated that with the advent of video, this magic   of watching movies together has disappeared. There was also the Del Amo Mall theater, where all   the real Hollywood stuff played, and I went there,  too. Basically, I spent my life at the movies....   I grew up going to the grind houses and to the  art houses and loving them both equally. That sort   of defines my aesthetic. I mean, it's not like  I'm some arty guy just getting off on myself. I   think studios are afraid of one thing, and that is  someone's going to make a boring movie. My stuff   may not be obvious, but it's not esoteric, either.  I'll never write a movie about sheep herders   contemplating God and life. (Quentin Tarantino) He was delighted with B movies, especially   the work of Roger Corman, who was nicknamed  “The Pope of Pop Cinema", and "The Spiritual   Godfather of the New Hollywood". Brian  De Palma, Jean-Luc Godard /ɡoʊˈdɑːr/ and   Sergio Leone [ˈsɛrdʒo leˈoːne] hold a special  place in the heart of the young filmmaker.   When Tarantino decided to become a  director, Leone's film "Once Upon   a Time in America" was released. “He was like a book on directing,   a masterfully constructed role model. - Tarantino  recalls. - I clearly understood how the characters   should appear and disappear in the shot.  All these directors were my film teachers.”   The most striking visual solutions and plot moves  from the exploitation film, spaghetti westerns,   the French new wave and many other genres that  Tarantino loved so much in his youth later   received a new life in his own movies. His passion for cinema saved him from   making the wrong choice of his life path. “If I didn't love movies so much and didn't want   to become an actor, I probably would have become  a criminal. I was very attracted to the romance of   this life. When I was a teenager, I was absolutely  sure that I would never grub along from nine to   five in order to earn a Honda. I'll just take  what I want. I've been in the county jail three   times—well, there, for nonsense —but I'd rather  be in jail than pay money.” (Quentin Tarantino)   Apparently, Tarantino had problems  with the law, which he mentions,   already at an older age. He couldn't drive for  a while because of unpaid parking tickets.   When The New York Post investigated and found  no evidence that he had ever been arrested,   Tarantino reacted in his own manner, saying  that the investigation was simply done by bad   journalists who do not know how to do their job. “You can't even imagine the places I grew up and   hung out in. I had to get off that path to  get here.” - admitted Tarantino in an early   interview. "But I wasn't afraid. At that time,  I thought I was the coolest in the world. When   I saw a guy coming at me, I pretended to be  a scumbag and rudely threatened him myself.”   He knew he could get out of any situation. Until  he grew up. The director said that he cared more   about his safety, partly because he has become  a little more civilized. Being the coolest guy   in the world is no longer so important to him. In general, it is obvious that Tarantino could   easily become a bully, and get into big trouble.  But instead he watched the hooligans in the   movies, and also read about them. As a child, in addition to cinema,   Quentin loved comics and horror magazines, and  later pulp paperbacks and movie novelizations were   added to the list of preferences. One day he found  a book from a series about police officers called   “Badge Of Honor" from his parents. He read it  and he liked it and he decided he wanted more.   One day, his love of cinema and reading,  combined with adventurism, was backfired   for him. When Quentin was 15, in the local  Kmart he found a novel called The Switch.   The book was about two ex-cons botching a  kidnapping; the author’s name was Elmore Leonard.   The young Tarantino thought, “Hey, that looks like  it would make a pretty cool movie.” And stole it.   After he’d been arrested, processed and released  by the Torrance Police Department - Tarantino had   to have a long serious talk with his mother.  Connie left him under house arrest for the   whole summer. He was only allowed to leave the  house to go to the Torrance Community Theater,   where he participated in plays like Romeo  and Juliet. Quentin spent most of the summer   thinking about movies and planning  to steal that damn book at all costs.   “I was gonna be damned if I was gonna get  into all this trouble and not get the book.   So I went back to the same Kmart and I stole  the book successfully.” - Tarantino recalled.   It is very symbolic that Quentin chose “The  Switch”, because many years later Elmore Leonard   wrote another book with the participation of some  of his old characters called "Rum Punch". And   this book served as the basis for Tarantino's film  "Jackie Brown". But that's still a long way off.   So far, he had to go to school, which he was far  from enthusiastic about. Tarantino would later   say that it was the worst institution ever  imposed on him. According to his own words,   he was a boy with a very limited outlook. Most of  the subjects were difficult for the guy. But it   was not difficult to remember the dialogue from  the film, the names of the actors and the crew.   Instead of poring over textbooks, Quentin  preferred to spend his time honing his   writing skills. He always liked to make  up stories. One Mother's Day, he wrote a   story for Connie in which she died at the end  like Queen Lear. “You don’t really mean it,   do you, Quentin?” she asked him. “Of course not,  Mom,” he replied. “I feel real bad about it, but   that’s just the way the story turned out. You’re  still the greatest mom, even if you had to die.”   Quentin wrote his first script at the age of  14. It was called Captain Peachfuzz /piːtʃfʌz/   and the Anchovy [ænˈtʃəvi] Bandit and was  inspired by the comedy Smokey and the Bandit.   It was about a pizza delivery robber who had  an affair with a woman who joined him. But   her father was convinced that she was  simply abducted by an Anchovy Bandit,   and he asked the police to follow the lovers. All this, of course, was great, but there was   a small problem: the young talent was engaged  in his first scripts to the detriment of his   studies. After the teacher caught Tarantino  writing a script right during class,   the mother gave her son a serious reprimand. In the middle of her tirade , she said: "Oh, and   by the way, this little 'writing career” - with  the finger quotes - “This little ‘writing career’   that you’re doing? That s**t is f***ing over!” Young Quentin was deeply hurt by this sarcastic   statement, and he thought: “OK, lady. When I  become a successful writer, you will never see   one penny from my success. There will be no  house for you. There’s no vacation for you,   no Elvis Cadillac for mommy. You get  nothing. Because you said that.’   And he will keep his promise. “Yeah. I helped her out with   a jam with the IRS. But no house. No  Cadillac, no house." (Quentin Tarantino)   Quentin firmly believes that  there are consequences for   your words as you deal with children. In the end, Connie finally accepted that her   son was not going to devote himself to obtaining  academic knowledge. When Quentin was 16 years old,   his mother allowed him to drop out of school,  but on the condition that he would find a job.   Tarantino's first jobs were very peculiar. After that, Quentin got a job as an usher in   a cinema called Pussycat Theater, where adult  films were shown. He was 16 at the time, and   the guy had to lie about his age to get this job. "I've never been particularly interested in porn   movies," he said. - “I just needed a job.” Quentin was working there for about a year.   Then he was selling over the phone and had other  similar jobs, and studied acting on weekends.   Although he was passionate about writing,  for a long time he planned to become not   a screenwriter or director, but an actor. Tarantino was studying acting for about six   years. His first teacher was actor James Best. Surprisingly, I have met people who, at twenty,   twenty-five or more, did not know what to do  in this life. I've always known that as long   as I remember. As a child, I wanted to become an  actor, because if you love movies, that's what   attracts you. Acting is something that I have only  learned in my life, and from very good teachers.   But gradually Tarantino began to realize that  he was different from his fellow students,   because his idols were not actors, but  directors like Brian De Palma. Then he   decided that he wanted not only to act in  films, but also to direct them personally.   Nevertheless, he did not give up acting.  His next teacher was actor Allen Garfield.   “I still wanted to play and was a rabid fan  of his. - Tarantino recalled, - I could stage   scenes in his classes, it was so cool. He  asked me, "Quentin, do you want to be a   director? Whenever you are engaged in a scene,  it seems to me that it has already been staged."   This school has given me a lot. He's my mentor.” Alas, attempts to become an actor were not   particularly successful. Quentin didn't even  always get to audition. The most outstanding   achievement in his early acting career was  a short appearance in the TV series “Golden   Girls” as a double of Elvis Presley. Who knows, maybe he got this role due   to the fact that in those years he tried  to look a little like a cult artist.   “I had a pompadour, my hair was dyed black  and I had sideburns. I don’t know how much I   looked like him, but I was trying to look  like him!” - the director recalled.   Despite the fact that acting didn't  work out, Tarantino believed that   acting school taught him everything he  knew about screenwriting and directing.   “I didn't attend any film schools, but  I studied acting. Most directors don't   know shit about acting.” (Quentin Tarantino) In class, Quentin had to show various acting   sketches. And instead of choosing classics  like Shakespeare's plays, or Tennessee Williams   /ˌtenəsiː ˈwɪljəmz/, he acted out favorite scenes  from movies. Moreover, he rewrote the dialogues   for himself, changing them as he saw fit. This became his working method:   take something you like, set it down, get  inside it, find the rhythm of a scene,   then follow the dictates of intuition. Once Tarantino staged a scene from the movie   “Marty” with his neighbor and classmate Ronnie  , the script for which was written by the famous   Oscar winner Paddy Chayefsky. /ˌtʃaɪˈ(j)ɛfski/ Tarantino had written out the script and given   it to Ronnie to run the dialogue. As it  happened, though, Ronnie actually had the   original to hand. So he’d read Chayefsky’s  script and he liked it. Then he’d read his   roommate’s version and he liked it more. Later, chatting with Ronnie over a bottle of beer,   Quentin admitted: ‘Oh, you know, I actually  think this process, it’s kind of making   me not bad at dialogue writing. I think I’m  getting better and better.’ To which Ronnie,   in all seriousness, said: ‘What are you talking  about? You’re better than Paddy Chayefsky.’”   “That was the first time anyone had ever  complimented me or given me any encouragement   about my writing and from that day on I started  taking it more seriously.” - Quentin admitted   afterwards. But despite this compliment, he still  did not really understand what to do next. Looking   back, Tarantino admitted that the period from 18  to 22 years was the most unhappy in his life.   “I’m sure I was hideous to women, I felt it. And I  was really by myself in the world. I’d quit school   a little too early, so I didn’t have any friends.  I was really at odds in the world. I had kind of   stopped going to my acting classes that brought  me some joy at that time. My best friend at that   time was a guy in even more, worse doldrums  than me. And we literally were very pathetic,   and we just kind of kept each other company in  our own pathetic-ness.” (Quentin Tarantino)   At one point, figuring his face might be the  problem, he went to a plastic surgeon to see   about getting his jaw shortened, but the surgeon  persuaded him that he had a “characteristic   look” and should leave it alone. The only thing that brought him joy   was the movie. Therefore, Tarantino, as  usual, spent all his free time in cinemas.   Quentin's morale improved significantly when, at  the age of 22, he got a job at a relatively small   video rental store in Manhattan Beach called  Video Archives. According to the director,   “It’s not really what he wanted to do, but it was  connected enough to what he wanted to do that it   actually gave him joy. And his personality  really flourished at this video store.”   THE KING OF VIDEO RENTAL Working in a video store   became something like studying in college for  Tarantino. But not because he learned a lot of   important things about cinema there - Tarantino  had a decent amount of knowledge before and could   confidently call himself a movie expert. “If you don’t have your college experience,   you usually find yourself working at a place  where you get your college experience. - he   explained, - And maybe you don’t learn as much as  you would learn in college, but you have the whole   social aspect of it. All of a sudden I had some  friends, and I was working in a video store.   Tarantino worked there for about 5  years, receiving a minimum wage. The guy,   who seemed to have watched all the films in the  world at that time, became a guide to the magical,   charming world of cinema for clients. He advised  them not mainstream films, but what he liked   himself, tried to instill in them a taste for  his favorite genres. A person could come to the   store for standard Hollywood romcoms, and come out  with films by Godard and Éric Rohmer. [ˈroʊmər]   “It was the best job I had until I  was a director.” (Quentin Tarantino)   In a new place, Tarantino finally had a  like-minded person. Roger Avary, [ˈavəɹi] who   would later become a director and screenwriter,  became famous for his film Killing Zoe,   worked in the same video archive. At first,  they were a bit competitive in who knew more   about cinema. But in the end they realized  that although they were different people,   they had the same tastes. It was fate. Tarantino and Avary quickly became   friends and spent days discussing cinema and  fantasizing about shooting their own films.   The video rental workers and their regular  visitors have become something of a family.   I practically lived there for several years,"  Tarantino recalled, "We finished work,   locked up the shop and watched movies all  night long. Sometimes Roger and I and our   mutual friend Scott divided the new supplies  into parts in order to have time to watch   everything. We took everything, no matter  what it cost us, and then brought it back.   "Quentin was always a big talker,"  Avary recalled. — The only difference   is that everyone is listening to him now. Tarantino calls his first relationship with   a colleague Grace Lovelace [ˈlʌˌvleɪs] the most  wonderful memory of his time working at the video   store. In general, Quentin hired her to work  in the store precisely because he liked her.   Grace became the first girlfriend Tarantino  fell in love with, and who fell in love with   him back. They dated from 1989 to 1991, and  Tarantino still fondly remembers his ex.   “That time at Video Archives, in a weird way,  almost became a primer to some degree of what   it would later be like to become famous. - the  director said, - Because in Manhattan Beach,   where the store was, we were famous. … I’d walk  down the street and people would drive by: “Hey,   Quentin, hey, hey, hey, hey.” Everyone  knew me: I was the Video Guy.”   Director and producer John Langley,  known for the television show Cops,   was among the regular customers of the video  archive. One day he decided to give promising   guys a chance. He invited Avary and Tarantino to  work as production assistants on a Dolph Lundgren   workout video, “Maximum Potential". According  to Tarantino's memoirs, it was fun, despite the   fact that the operator was very mean to him. Tarantino forever remembered the moment when   he and Avary had to pick up dog shit from  the lawn where the shooting took place.   Next according to Tarantino: “We’re scooping  up the dogshit and the crew is f*cking around,   and me and Roger are going, “This is literally a  shitty job.” We start talking about how we want   to be directors one day and I go, “The day when  I’m a director, man, I’m gonna be out there with   the PAs, scooping up the dogshit right with  them!” Cut to Pulp Fiction. We’re out there   shooting something and sure enough, there’s  a bunch of grass and some dogshit on it. And   they grab a couple of PAs and go, “Clean that  shit up.” And I go “Okaaaay...” I joined them,   I grabbed a shovel and I did a couple  of scoops. I had a debt to pay.”   Another important acquaintance of Tarantino  in the early 80s was a meeting with Cathryn   James. She agreed to work as his  personal manager and gave Quentin   advice on what to do to become a director. Cathryn James said, “For someone with no contacts,   make your own low budget film and write  at least three strong scripts.”   Tarantino did just that. In 1983, he first tried himself as a director.   Together with his friend Scott Magill, he wrote  the script and began shooting the short film   “Love Birds In Bondage". However, the movie was  not destined to see the world, obviously because   its creators were disappointed with the work. It  is said that Magill solemnly burned the film.   But Tarantino did not despair. His friend  Craig Hamann [kreɪɡ ˈhɑmən], whom Quentin   met at drama school, brought him  sketches of the script for "My Best   Friend's Birthday." And Quentin decided to act. In 1984, the 22-year-old Tarantino borrowed a 16mm   camera from a friend, gathered friends  (including Avary, who took the position   of cinematographer) and began shooting  a film based on the script he edited.   According to the plot, a disc jockey  organized a surprise party for his friend,   who was left by a girlfriend, but everything  went wrong and the invited prostitute fell in   love with the DJ, not the hero of the occasion. Tarantino had to cut out money for filming from   his meager salary. He spent weekdays at the  video store, and on weekends he shot his film.   The shooting lasted about 3 years. There was so  little money that during all this time Tarantino   could not develop the film. When he finally did  it, he was unpleasantly surprised by the result.   This got on top of him for a while. Of course,  imagine: you've been barely making ends meet   for three years, shooting a film that should be  your debut, a ticket to a bright future. But in   the end, you realize that there is no point  even finishing the video editing. There was   a legend that part of the film was 'lost in  a lab fire'. But according to Avary, in fact,   Tarantino just lost interest in the film. Recovering from this blow, Quentin looked at   the situation from a different angle. He found  that the scenes shot in the last year of filming   were better than those he had shot before. He  took this as a sign that he was getting better   and knew what he would have to do on his next  film. This became Tarantino's film school.   Tarantino thinks it's better to spend six thousand  dollars on a movie than sixty thousand dollars   on a film school. This way you will learn  how to shoot and get out of any situation.   He didn't see any benefit from directing  books either. “I didn’t buy into any of   that. - Tarantino admitted, - I tried to read  technical books about lenses and stuff, but   they only confused me, gave me headaches. I did  read books on how to form limited partnerships,   how to get people to give you money.” Failure did not cool his desire to be a   director. He sat down for new scripts, and soon  "True Romance" came out. After some more time, the   first draft of “Natural Born Killers" appeared. No matter how great it was working at the video   store, Tarantino wanted more. He began  to realize that it was time to move on.   “And eventually my ambitions started pushing  me out of there. But habits are strong. You   are comfortable in familiar conditions. It's  murderous. You realize that you are already   thirty years old and you still work in a video  store... This is a situation that most people   my age are in. People of my generation in  some way went on about the living wage.”   In 1989, Tarantino left the  video archive and was able   to get a job as a screenwriter at a small  Hollywood film company Cinetel. In 1990,   an important event occurred in Quentin's  career. He was offered to work on the script   "From Dusk Till Dawn". It was the first time  he was offered money for writing. The fee was   $1,500. Tarantino also worked on the reworking  of the script of the TV movie "Past Midnight",   which was released on cable TV in 1992. Around the same time, he finished the script   of "Reservoir Dogs" /ˈrezərvwɑːr/ and continued  trying to make way for his scripts to some studio.   None of the producers liked “True Romance”  and it received rejection after rejection.   Cathryn James sent it to more than a hundred  studios, and at best it received a sluggish   response, and at worst, a furious rejection. Another rejection letter from a representative   of one studio said: “Dear Fucking Cathryn,   How dare you send me this fucking piece of  shit. You must be out of your fucking mind.   You want to know how I feel about it? Here’s  your fucking piece of shit back. Fuck you.”   And yet, it's worth remembering the saying: “knock  and the door will be opened to you". Tarantino   and his manager did not give up trying to put the  script in good hands. In the end, "True Romance"   drew the attention of Tony Scott. The director saw  potential in it and bought the rights for $50,000.   As for “Natural Born Killers”, Tarantino really  wanted to make this film himself. But he couldn't   find investors, and I sold this script too. “I have always considered that with all the   setbacks I had, the fact that I didn’t give  up is maybe the one thing in my life that   I am most proud of,” ..“I just knew I  would live a life of unfulfillment if   I didn’t keep trying.” (Quentin Tarantino) What Quentin was always good at, even before   he proved himself as a talented director, was the  ability to make acquaintances. In the early 1990s,   he became friends with Scott Spiegel, whom you  may know as the co-author of "The Rookie" with   Clint Eastwood. One day Scott invited Quentin to  a barbecue, where another important acquaintance   took place - with actor Lawrence Bender. It was from this moment that a new chapter in   the life of Quentin Tarantino began. Reservoir Dogs   During the barbecue, Quentin told  his new friend the idea of the film,   which appeared to him about 8 years ago. The  main action was to unfold at the meeting place   of the robbers after the crime was committed. Bender liked it, and he asked Tarantino for   a script. Quentin had to explain that it still  needed to be written. Just three and a half weeks   later, the first draft was on Bender's desk. After reading the script of “Reservoir Dogs”,   Lawrence became eager to produce  the film. He wanted to find good   financing and make a full-fledged studio film. But Tarantino did not share his enthusiasm. He   tried unsuccessfully to reach out to producers and  studios for years. Therefore, desperate, he was   going to shoot a camera film on a 16-millimeter  camera himself, using the money received for the   sale of “True Romance” and “Natural Born Killers".  And I wanted to take his friends as actors.   That is why the plot mostly takes place in  the same location - the script was written   with the expectation of a small budget. Lawrence did not back down: “Give me a year.   If after that time I can't interest anyone  in this script, okay, I'll help you make an   amateur movie.” Tarantino gave him three months. During this short time, Lawrence managed to find   people who liked the idea. However, the conditions  they set did not suit the novice director at all.   The first investor promised $500 000 if Mr. Blonde  was played by his girlfriend. Another one was   ready to give $1.6 million, but on condition  that Tarantino would change the denouement.   Another person who was interested in the film was  director Monte /ˈmɒnti/ Hellman. Tarantino was a   big fan of his work, and Monte, after reading  the script, offered his candidacy for the role   of executive producer. He helped to edit the  script and reach out to larger investors.   One of the problems in obtaining funding was  that the film was a bit like a play due to the   fact that most of the scenes take place in one  room. People read the script, and said “Well,   this isn’t a movie, this is a play, why don’t  you try and do it in an Equity Waiver house?”.   And Quentin constantly had to explain, “No,  no, no, trust me, it'll be cinematic.”   “..оne of the things I get a big kick out of in  Reservoir Dogs is that it plays with theatrical   elements in a cinematic form—it is contained, the  tension isn’t dissipated, it’s supposed to mount,   the characters aren’t able to leave, and the  whole movie’s definitely performance-driven. ”   Tarantino very skillfully took advantage  of the need to save on locations, creating   a feeling of claustrophobia and paranoia  that can arise when characters who have   reasons not to trust each other are locked  in a confined space and unable to leave.   And somewhere in the same period, a new important  character appeared in our history - actor Harvey   Keitel. He was one of Tarantino's most  beloved actors, and the director did not   even dream of getting him in his film. It  was just so fortunate that Lawrence Bender,   through mutual acquaintances, was  able to give the script to Keitel.   And just a few days later, Tarantino was  already on the phone with the actor.   As a result, this whole company of enthusiasts,  after long negotiations, was able to convince   Richard Gladstein, [ˈɡlædˌstaɪn] a producer from  Live Entertainment, to give the green light to the   newcomer director. Due to the fact that Gladstein  was a big fan of Harvey Keitel, Tarantino and Co   managed to sign a contract with the studio,  and get a budget of about $ 1.3 million.   Keitel was the only actor who didn't audition.  Tarantino claimed that it was a pleasure to work   on creating an acting ensemble when you had  a wonderful actor and you selected others for   him. The main thing was to make no mistake. So  Steve Buscemi /buːˈsɛmi/, Tim Roth, /ˈrɒθ/ and   others got into the project. "They ask me: "Were you not afraid   to work with such actors?" How could I be afraid?  I would be scared to work with bad actors, because   then the movie would come out crappy. It would  seem that it doesn't matter which actor to take on   the role of a nonentity — good or bad, but it will  be much easier for you with a good one, because he   will do everything perfectly” (Quentin Tarantino) Tarantino recalled the day when, before filming   casts, he and Bender gathered for dinner  at Harvey Keitel's house. The director then   looked at all those actors, and thought:  “Sh*t. If I keep this movie in focus,   i`ve got a terrific movie” And then he drove home  by car for a long time, and began to realize that   the dream of the guy from the video store began to  come true finally, after many years of failures.   But before starting filming, Tarantino went  to improve his skills in directing at the   Sundance Institute program for independent  film directors. His “Reservoir Dogs" script   was accepted for participation. As part of  a 2-week seminar, Tarantino was engaged in   the creation of a demonstration short film, using  the advice of experienced filmmakers. This became   a kind of escape for Tarantino, an opportunity to  distract himself from the pre-production process,   which at that time was gaining incredible  momentum, and did not give the director the   opportunity to finalize the script. Not all mentors were thrilled with   Tarantino's script. They were especially confused  by the non-linear narrative. Stephen Goldblatt,   an experienced cinematographer who has "Lethal  Weapon", "Batman Forever" and "The Help" on his   account, Tarantino bluntly told: "If you do this  in real life, they're going to fire your ass."   But director Terry Gilliam /ˈɡɪliəm/ was  more supportive of the newcomer. He liked   Tarantino's energy and his willingness to  defy conventions. It's just that Tarantino, in   Gilliam's opinion, needed a little embellishment. Of course, the resulting 11-and-a-half-minute   short film was still very raw and  clumsy, but even then Tarantino's   special style, his talented dialogues and  presentation were already noticeable.   “This is where, I think, the Sundance Lab  was a very useful thing because he had all   this energy and all his ideas, this big  chance to show everything he could do,   and he did it all in these short sequences,”  - Terry Gilliam recalled later.   If you think that Tarantino felt confident after  going through all this long preparatory way,   then you are mistaken. Deep down, he worried  that he didn't know enough about filmmaking   to be a director. Fortunately, Gilliam gave him  valuable advice that cheered him up. А director,   he assured Tarantino, doesn’t have to know  how to properly light a shot or which fabric   to use in a costume or any of the other  numerous technical details that go into   making a movie. A director must instead hire  the right people, and articulate what’s in his   head. If you can do that, you can direct. So, we can say that the main thing for a   director is to be able to tell the film crew a  good, understandable story in all details. And   Tarantino was able to tell stories all his life. Filming started at the end of the summer of 1991,   and lasted 5 weeks. Andrzej Sekuła  agreed to become the cameraman, who,   thanks to his experience, helped the novice  director a lot. Tarantino didn't do storyboards   because he doesn't know how to draw, and he didn't  want anyone else to do them, since he wouldn't be   able to line up the shots correctly. Therefore,  the director made notes in which he described   everything in detail. He and Sekula discussed each  scene, then the cameraman arranged everything on   his own, and Tarantino gave his comments. Since the budget of the film was limited,   most of the clothes worn by the characters were  the personal clothes of the actors. Tarantino   really wanted all the characters to wear black  shoes, but Madsen, who played the role of Mr.   Blonde, did not have them, so he put on black  boots. So there was a scene with a razor,   which Madsen took out of his boot. For most of the movie, Mr. Orange,   played by Tim Roth, lay in pools of blood. On the  set, a real paramedic was assigned to the actor,   who checked that the amount and constancy of  the character's blood loss were realistic.   Fake blood caused discomfort to Roth and the  whole team. Since the liquid often dried out   and stuck to all surfaces, the actor had  to be literally lifted off the ground.   Interestingly, the scene of the diamond theft,  because of which the characters got into trouble,   was not in the film. Tarantino explained the  decision primarily by the fact that the absence   of this scene kept the production within budget.  But there was another, more interesting reason.   The director explained that in this way the  details of what happened remained ambiguous.   “I always liked the idea of never seeing it, and I  kept that. - Tarantino said, - For the first half,   you wonder if you'll ever see  the heist. In the second half,   you realize the movie is about other things." That is, already in this film we can see   Tarantino's love for the deconstruction  of genres - he does not show us a   robbery in a film about a robbery. The understatement was also evident in   the fact that Tarantino never explained  the meaning of the title of the film.   In order for potential investors to get off him  with their questions, Tarantino told them that   “Reservoir Dogs” was a gangster term from French  films like Breathless and Bande à Parte and that   it meant “rat”. But that wasn't true. So you  can offer your explanation of the origin of the   name of the film in the comments - we will read  everything and like the most interesting ones.   Perhaps everyone will agree that the scene  in which Mr. Blond tortures a cop is the most   creepy in the movie. Of course, Tarantino knew  what he was doing when he turned on cheerful   music at this moment, which completely did  not fit what was happening in the scene.   Under the driving hits of the 70s, the film  entered the Sundance Film Festival in January   1992. It was the first time Quentin was  in the north and saw snow. “Reservoir   Dogs” made a lot of noise at the festival. The  reviews were mixed. Someone admired the film,   someone hated it fiercely, but absolutely  everyone was talking about it. Quentin   was immediately known in film circles  as a promising talented self-taught.   “It was,” he said, “the complete  utter payoff of perseverance.”   Despite the fact that his brutal and audacious  debut became a sensation, the film did not receive   any awards. “It hurt my feelings,” Tarantino  admitted later, “I was sad, I was mad. When it   was over, I did a slightly less drastic version  of storming out [saying] ‘F*ck all you!’”   The consolation was the awards that the film  received at other festivals, including the Toronto   Festival prize for best first film and Sitges  festival awards for best script and director. And   of course, the fame that he instantly gained. —   Richard Gladstein recalled how the head of  Carolco Pictures called him and said that   they had gathered a lot of famous directors on  the yacht, and everyone wanted to meet Quentin.   During the screening of the movie at the  Sundance Film Festival, film critic Jami   Bernard of the New York Daily News compared the  effect of "Reservoir Dogs" to the effect of the   1895 film "Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat [la  sjɔta]", when the audience on the screen saw a   train that was moving right at them and thought  it was real. Bernard said that "Reservoir Dogs"   has a similar effect and people were not ready  for it. The violence in the film was especially   criticized. Since then and to this day, Tarantino  is one of those directors who are associated with   cruelty and a sea of blood in the shot. The director says that, in his opinion,   scenes of violence perform the same function  in a crime film as dance scenes in musicals.   He loves violence in movies, and  says that if you don't like it,   it's as if you don't like tap dancing or gag  comedy. Just because you don't like them doesn't   mean they don't need to be shown in a movie. 'To say that I get a big kick out of violence   in movies and can enjoy violence in movies but  find it totally abhorrent in real life — I can   feel totally justified and totally comfortable  with that statement. I do not think that one   is a contradiction of the other," he told the  Observer in 1994. "Real life violence is real   life violence. Movies are movies. I can watch a  movie about the Hindenburg disaster and get into   it as a movie but still feel it's a horrible real  life tragedy. It's not the same thing at all."   “My violence will not leave you indifferent. Go  to any video store, to the horror or action movies   section, and nine out of ten films will present  you with much more colorful scenes of violence   than my picture, but I try to make you worry.  In my film, this happens to real, live people.”   The only thing he would never want to see  in a movie is the deaths of animals or   insects that were killed for the scene for  real. “Movies are about make-believe. - he   said, - I don't think there's any  place in a movie for real death."   Tarantino recalled that during the screenings  people stood up and left at the moment of the   most violent scene in “Reservoir Dogs”. It  got to the point that at some moment the   director started counting the number of those  who left the hall. Once he counted 33 people.   And yet, in an early interview, Tarantino  claimed that he never cared that the   audience was leaving. This meant only  one thing: the episode was working.   During one of the screenings at another  film festival, Tarantino recognized the   cult horror director Wes Craven, and a  special effects artist in horror films,   Rick Baker, among the 15 people who left. Later at the meeting, Baker explained to the   director: “Quentin, I left your film, but I  want you to take it as a compliment. You see,   I do science fiction. Werewolves and vampires  don't exist. And you're doing real violence,   which I don't want to have anything to do with.” Many opponents of “Reservoir Dogs” called them   second-rate, because they found a lot  of borrowings from other films. It was   another claim that haunted absolutely  every Tarantino film in the future.   “The fact is that no one has noticed the shots  that I really stole yet... When you make films,   you are standing on a foundation that  was built earlier and you can use it   in any way you want… I want to make movies  about movies with real-life interweaves.”   After the screening of the film at the Cannes  Film Festival, Miramax Films agreed to become   the film distributors of “Reservoir Dogs”.  Thus began Tarantino's long collaboration   with the infamous producer Harvey Weinstein. "Reservoir Dogs" was a success in Europe, and   people talked a lot about it. However, in America,  despite the good box office, it was waiting for   the fate of arthouse films. So, at least not  yet. After Tarantino gained great popularity   thanks to “Pulp Fiction”, many rushed to watch  other works of the director, and “Reservoir Dogs"   became very popular on dvd. It was said that  when Madonna, whose song was discussed by the   main characters at the beginning of the film,  watched “Reservoir Dogs”, she sent Tarantino a   copy of her album with the message “To Quentin.  It’s not about d*$%; it’s about love. Madonna.”   Breakthrough After the success   of "Reservoir Dogs", letters and calls from  major studios were showered on Tarantino.   In particular, he was offered to work on  such films as “Speed” and “Men in Black".   But Tarantino had different plans. In the middle  of 1992, having packed a suitcase of sinister   crime novels, he flew to Amsterdam to write  the script of his new film. He had never been   to Europe before, so he dreamed of going there  immediately after the end of Reservoir Dogs.   The director claimed it was a cool writing  existence. Probably for the first time, he   didn't have to worry about money. In the morning  he could walk around Amsterdam, after which he   drank a cup or two of coffee and started working. In an interview in 1992, just in his short   Amsterdam period, he admitted: “Now everything is  going wrong in Los Angeles, so Amsterdam is just   a paradise for me. No one knows me, and it's  wonderful to just sit in my apartment, look   at the channels out the window and write”. That's  how the first draft of “Pulp Fiction" appeared.   Tarantino spent 3 months in a studio apartment  without a phone and fax, alone with his numerous   notebooks and notes. He did not use a  computer or a typewriter in principle.   When I'm going to write a script, I go to the  stationery store and buy a notebook with eighty   or a hundred pages strung on a spring from which  it is convenient to tear them off. And I say to   myself: "Well, there is a notebook. I'll write  Pulp Fiction or something in it." Then I buy   three red and three black markers. I'm making  a big ritual out of it. This is psychology.   According to Tarantino, he is pretty bad at  spelling and punctuation, and his first drafts   look like “the diaries of a madman,". Therefore,  at the beginning of his career, he gave the   manuscript to those friends who understood his  scribbles so that they would type out them.   Quentin's girlfriend Linda Chen, who helped him  type out Pulp Fiction, recalled: “His handwriting   is atrocious. He’s a functional illiterate. I  was averaging about 9,000 grammatical errors   per page. After I would correct them, he would try  to put back the errors, because he liked them.”   While Tarantino was poring over his  new story, projects shot according   to his scripts were released on cinema. In  1993, the romantic crime film True Romance,   directed by Tony Scott, was released. The  plot told about a lonely guy Clarence,   who worked in a comic book store and was a fan of  Elvis. On his birthday, he met a spectacular young   woman named Alabama in a cinema. They spent the  night together and fell in love with each other.   But then the terrible truth about Alabama was  revealed, and banned substances, two corpses and   a showdown with the mafia appeared in the story. Tarantino has said more than once that all his   films are very personal and always express  his state in which he was at the time of   writing the script. But “True Romance" in his  opinion is his most autobiographical scenario.   According to Tarantino, he has a lot  in common with the main character,   and his friends from the time of work at the  video store even feel melancholy after watching   "True Romance". The film takes them to the past.  Tarantino had a strange feeling when he saw this   movie for the first time. It was like watching a  big-budget version of your home movie or memoir.   “When I wrote ‘True Romance,’ I’d never had  a girlfriend,” he said. “I always wanted a   girlfriend but never had one. Alabama” —  the heroine of “True Romance” — “wasn’t   my dream girl, per se, but she was the  kind of girl I always hoped I’d meet,   a girl who would give me a chance and realize  that I was really cool. Also, there was that   whole dynamic of a girl who’s your pal. That  was a very important thing to me back then.”   “To this day I get people asking me, ‘Would  you ever do a romantic movie?’ I have:   ‘True Romance.’ And they say no, I  mean a really romantic movie. Well,   I think that’s a really romantic movie! And  they go, O.K., well, one without violence. I go,   well that’s not what you said! I’m not  getting agitated. I just don’t get it.”   And what could be more romantic for such an avid  cinephile as Tarantino than love, which originated   in a cinema during a movie about kung fu? Tarantino was not on the set of "True   Romance" and did not interfere in any way in the  production process, but this was not required:   Tony Scott made minimal changes to the script.  He made only the ending different. Initially,   Tarantino was unhappy with this decision, but  when he saw the film, he changed his anger to   mercy. He agreed that this ending was more  suitable for the film directed by Scott.   After ”True Romance”, another film was released,  the script for which Tarantino wrote. Only that   time the director was so dissatisfied with the  result that he disowned the film and asked to   remove him from the credits. After the success of  “Mad Dogs”, Tarantino tried to regain the rights   to the script of “Natural Born Killers”, which,  as we remember, he sold a few years earlier. But   after a long dispute between the copyright holders  and agents, the script ended up at Oliver Stone.   The director, who has always been known for  his socio-political statements in films,   significantly revised the script. First of all,  he changed the structure. But Tarantino was   annoyed not so much by this as by the refocusing. In Stone's hands, a fervent story about a couple   in love who traveled around America, killing  everyone they didn't like for some reason,   turned into criticism of the media, which  turned mass murderers into idols of youth.   As a result, Tarantino was mentioned in the  credits only as "the author of the plot". He   could not calm down for a long time, and even  tried to publish his version of the script in   the form of a paperback book. But the producers  of "Natural Born Killers" filed a lawsuit against   Tarantino, claiming that when he sold the script  to them, he had forfeited the publishing rights.   The situation became so heated that violence  became real. There was talk that once,   Tarantino punched one of the producers of  "Natural Born Killers" a couple of times,   after running into him in a restaurant. In the end, he was still allowed to publish   his script. When the director shared it, he was  finally able to come to terms with the film,   because he was most worried that the audience  would attribute something to him that he had   nothing to do with. Over time, Quentin realized  that the problem was that he and Stone just had   different work styles. Tarantino loved  ambiguity. Stone, on the contrary,   wanted you to know exactly what was happening  in his film, and what message it carried.   If you like the movie, it's Oliver, if  not, it's Oliver too. (Quentin Tarantino)   His disappointment was compensated by  the incredible success of another film,   which was also released in 1994. Pulp Fiction   Pulp Fiction originated before Reservoir Dogs,  and was conceived as a collection of three short   films by three directors: Quentin Tarantino, Adam  Rifkin and Roger Avary. At that time, Tarantino   had a story about the adventures of Vincent Vega  and Mia Wallace, and Avary had a story about a   boxer. When Rifkin refused, the project was put  on pause. After the premiere of his first film,   Tarantino told Avary that he wanted to return to  Pulp Fiction, but to combine the developments into   one full-fledged film, including using some of  Avary's ideas. For that moment it had to be three   films for the price of one, where the characters  who were the main characters in one of the three   main storylines could look into the other two. Avary went to Amsterdam, where he stayed in   Tarantino's studio apartment. According to  Avary, they took all their favorite scenes   that they had once written and laid them out  on the floor to see which of them would fit.   By the time he left Amsterdam, Avary felt like a  co-writer of the Pulp Fiction script, and that he   and Tarantino had an agreement on this. Obviously, Quentin looked at it a little   differently. He stayed in Amsterdam, continuing  to perfect the scenes and adding dialogues.   As a result, he got a 500-page script. For  understanding: 1 page of the script, as a rule,   is equal to the 1st minute of the film. Using  simple mathematical calculations, we can conclude   that the timing of the first scenario was more  than 8 hours. The genius had to moderate his   creative impulses, and reduce it to 159 pages. After the production started, Roger Avary got a   call from Tarantino's lawyer and demanded that  he agree to be not a co-author of the script,   but the author of the story. Thus Tarantino  could write in the credits “Written and   directed by Quentin Tarantino.” Avary was terribly offended by this,   and he refused to give up his co-authorship.  Then Tarantino said that he would remove   the part about the boxer from the script  altogether, and Avary would get nothing.   Tarantino admitted that many of the ideas in  the script belonged to his friend. Including   one about watches, but it was Quentin who came  up with the story of these watches. Obviously,   Avary's ideas were the launching pad  around which Tarantino created the script.   In the end, Avary did sign a contract  under which he was able to earn $ 25,000   for his contribution to the film, but in an early  interview he admitted that he felt betrayed.   However, these days Avary claims that he does not  remember any of this. Today, according to him, he   is on good terms with his colleague. «I love the  movie. I’m delighted with my contribution. That is   enough. And I love Quentin. He’s like a brother.» Among all the actors who starred in Tarantino's   films, there was a whole group of those whose  career he revived or launched. Perhaps the most   striking example of a good director's  flair was John Travolta. At that time,   his career was on the verge of collapse. Harvey  Weinstein, whose company financed the shooting,   was categorically against his candidacy for one  of the central roles of the film. But Tarantino   believed in Travolta. They met when the director  invited the actor to his home to discuss the role.   Tarantino recalled, “I open the door, and he says,  ‘O.K., let me describe your apartment to you. Your   bathroom has this kind of tile, and da-da-da-da.  The reason I know this is, this is the apartment   that I lived in when I first moved to Hollywood”.  That's such an interesting coincidence.   They quickly found a common language, and chatted  until dawn. “John is a real gentleman, we became   friends,” Tarantino admitted afterwards. Travolta also did not skimp on compliments.   “I've been doing this for 20 years now, and I've  never seen anyone have more fun on a movie set   than Quentin. And it's contagious. You think:  If this guy can get off as much as he does,   then I definitely want to get on board this boat.  His knowledge of film is acute. His joy of film is   acute. Just the pure wattage of Quentin as a human  being is extraordinary. And his willingness to   accept criticism as well as admiration and not get  introverted by it just floors me. I'm so envious   of it. I can't find his fear.” (John Travolta) Another important character for this story,   Bruce Willis, asked for Tarantino's project  himself. Being an ardent fan of "Reservoir   Dogs", Willis was ready to work with the  young director even for a minimum wage.   But Quentin had to persuade his muse,  Uma Thurman, for a long time. The   actress was confused by some scenes, but the  charming director was still able to convince   Uma to say "Yes" to the project at dinner. By the way, the film was also produced by the   company "A Band Apart", which Tarantino founded  in 1991 with Lawrence Bender. In the future,   the company participated in the production of  many films, including the authorship of Tarantino,   as well as music videos. The shooting of Pulp Fiction   lasted 51 days, and as Tarantino recalled… I was on “a creative and imaginative high. I was   just living my dream.” (Quentin Tarantino) Perhaps there was no viewer who would not be   interested in what was in that mysterious  briefcase. Well, we have a clue.   We can confidently state that .... (For the speaker: please, make a meaningful   pause, as if the drum roll is about to begin) … there were "two batteries and a light bulb"   In general, the contents of the briefcase  does not matter, and it is unlikely that   it will ever be out. Do you remember  that Tarantino likes understatement?   One of the most memorable scenes in  Pulp Fiction is the dance of Travolta   and Thurman's characters. Before creating the  dance, Tarantino showed the duo a dance scene   from Godard's "Band of Outsiders". This has  become one of the main references for them.   Tarantino was determined to make the $8.5  million movie look like all $25 million. And   we can conclude that he succeeded, since with  a very modest budget, the film earned $ 214   million worldwide. Thus, “Pulp Fiction” became  the highest-grossing independent film of that   time. And one of the most significant. Tarantino said that he did not expect   such a resounding success. Critic Roger Ebert called it   “the most influential” movie of the 1990s, “so  well-written in a scruffy, fanzine way that   you want to rub noses in it—the noses of those  zombie writers who take ‘screenwriting’ classes   that teach them the formulas for ‘hit films.’” It was only Tarantino's second film. But his style   already stood out against the background of other  newcomers. Among the most memorable techniques   of the director, the audience noted dialogues. It  would seem that people are talking about nothing,   but you are still interested, even if it lasts 10  minutes. But accepting praise for his dialogues,   Tarantino felt like a bit of a fraud. He often  liked to say that this was not his merit at all,   but a kind of gift from above. It was his  characters who wrote these dialogues, and   he just provoked them and took notes of what they  were saying. But there is a simpler explanation.   The film was awarded the highest award at  the Cannes Film Festival - The Palme d'Or.   When the president of the jury, Clint Eastwood,  announced the winner, the audience went wild.   After Tarantino and the cast rushed on stage, one  woman screamed, “Pulp Fiction is shit!” Tarantino   flipped her off and then said why the prize was  unexpected: “I don’t make movies that bring people   together. I make movies that split people apart.” “Pulp Fiction” received nominations in 9   categories for the BAFTA Award, 6 Golden Globe  nominations, and 7 Oscar nominations. The film   won the Academy Award for Best Original  Screenplay, which Tarantino shared with   Avary. It was a success that Tarantino  had been working towards for years.   And what's next? After the enchanting releases of two films,   the audience was looking forward to what this  time they would be surprised by the one whom   the tabloids had already dubbed the Wonderkind  director. Everyone was wondering if Tarantino's   next work awaits the fate of the so-called  "Difficult Third Album"? In the world of music,   this is a frequent phenomenon, and this has  also happened to many directors. In the end,   surpassing the masterpiece “Pulp  Fiction” is really not easy. Tarantino,   to everyone's surprise, was not  going to prove anything to anyone,   and was in no hurry with a new solo  project. He decided to take a little break.   But this did not mean that the director did not do  anything at all. During this period, he had a hand   in the script of “The Rock” starring Nicolas Cage  and Sean Connery. He told his famous theory about   the homoerotic subtext of “Top Gun” in the 1994  comedy drama “Sleep with me”. And the following   year he starred in a film for which he once wrote  his first paid script - "From Dusk Till Dawn".   Robert Rodriguez directed the movie. Tarantino  met him at the Toronto Film Festival a couple   of years before. Then they talked for about  an hour and a half in the lobby of the hotel,   and quickly became friends. Later, the directors discovered   that their offices were nearby, and began  spending time together, reading materials   from their next projects to each other. Despite the fact that Tarantino was not the   director of the film, he could have a significant  influence on the creation of the picture,   because he played one of the main roles  in the film paired with George Clooney.   Rodriguez knew he had a big bloody movie  in his hands, so to ensure that the movie   wouldn't get a scary NC-17 rating, he made all  vampire blood green, not red. But this didn't   save him from criticism about excessive  cruelty. In general, the perky film about   two robbers who suddenly find themselves in a  vampire lair has received mixed reviews. But   it showed very good results at the box office,  and subsequently received the status of a cult.   Tarantino believed that the role in this  film was an artistic breakthrough for him.   I realized that everything I had done  before had been pretty much what you do   in an acting class. I had never, you know,  completely become another person before.   By the way, it was his partner  on the site, George Clooney,   who gave Tarantino the idea to participate  in the creation of the hit series “ER”.   Being a fan of the show, the director agreed  to shoot the 24th episode of the first season.   Tarantino tried very hard to fit into the team. “I didn’t want to be the odd man out. I wanted to   be inside, not on the outside. - he recalled, - -  When I was directing the ER thing, the emergency   room guys wore the green scrubs. I wore those  for a few days. Then, I wore the blue scrubs,   which were the surgeons’, for a few days  .”...“When I wore the nurse’s pink scrubs,   though, that’s when I became a hero on the set.  The nurses didn’t think I was going to throw   in with them. I ended the episode, the last two  days, wearing the nurses’ scrubs. When I walked   on the set, all the nurses applauded me.” But not everything was smooth. On the set,   the director had a conflict with executive  producer John Wells, who demanded that   Tarantino return and reshoot the scene, which  Quentin considered successfully completed.   “Then I realized, this is their show, this isn’t  my show,” - Tarantino recalled later. “In TV,   the producer is the man, the auteur.” As a result, the director specially   shot each next scene in one take. “It’ll be my cut no matter what.”   he explained to the actors, who had to  rehearse for a long time because of this.   An episode called "Motherhood" aired in 1995  three days before Mother's Day and raised the   already impressive ratings of the show to  the skies. Well, Tarantino, having received   flattering reviews from critics, went to shoot the  anthology farce black comedy “Four Rooms" together   with three more directors . The plot revolves  around a bellhop in a hotel who meets different,   very extraordinary guests on New Year's Eve. Each  director shot his own separate story, which unites   the main character performed by Tim Roth. Other  aspiring independent directors such as Allison   Anders, Alexandre Rockwell and Robert Rodriguez  /rɒˈdriːɡɛz/ worked together with Tarantino.   Tarantino remained true to himself. In his  episode titled "The Man from Hollywood",   lasting 21 minutes, the f-word was pronounced  193 times! And if you are wondering how often   this word sounded throughout Tarantino's  film career, then especially meticulous   fans did the calculations for you, and found  out that this figure reached about 1000.   Critics were dissatisfied with the parts shot  by Anders and Rockwell, and although Tarantino   and Rodriguez were mostly praised, this did  not save the film from negative reviews.   The collaboration of the two directors did not end  there. In the same year, Tarantino appeared in a   supporting role in Rodriguez' film "Desperado"  /ˌdespəˈrɑːdəʊ/. But it seemed that the audience,   critics, and, of course, the media, wanted to  see Tarantino as a director more than an actor.   In an interview, he hinted that he would like to  film some book, but also said that he planned to   rest for that moment. And in his then status,  it was not so easy. Tarantino began to realize   that fame would be the most amazing thing in  the world if it had an on-and-off button.   People are really positive, but I’m [wanting] to  live a regular life. I went to a screening of Get   Shorty recently, and I didn’t sit in the reserved  section. I sat down in front with the rest of the   kids. And then, like, this one guy came up to me  and asked for my autograph. I said: “Not when I’m   in a movie, man. I’m here to see the movie like  you, and you got to respect that, you know?”   Fame put pressure on him, but it didn't spoil  him. By 1996, he was still driving his red Geo,   which he bought with the fee for the first  script, spent all his free time in cinemas,   and lived in a small apartment in West  Hollywood, stuffed to the ceiling with   movie posters, board games and video cassettes. In 1995, he began a relationship with actress   Mira Sorvino. They dated until 1998. Sorvino  admitted that they were a strange couple. “Yeah,   but how many couples do you know where the two  people are exactly alike?” - she said,- “Yes,   I’m quieter than Quentin. But there aren’t  too many people who are louder than Quentin.”   Meanwhile, the idea for a new film has finally  formed. Tarantino isolated himself, cut off all   contacts with the press, refused interviews, TV  shows in order to concentrate all his energy on   a new script. However, this did not mean that  journalists stopped bothering him with calls   and letters. Tarantino felt the pressure of the  media, but he trusted himself at the same time.   “I've tried to build a career that's been  completely based on no fear, and I truly   don't fear anything artistic. I fear a guy in  an alley with a baseball bat, I fear the Manson   family bursting into my house, I fear a rabid dog  walking down the street, but I don't fear anything   artistic. And if I did, then good, that's a great  thing, that's a rocket.” (Quentin Tarantino)   In 1997, he finally satisfied everyone's  impatience by returning to the big screens   with a new film. However, opinions about it were  divided. Critics were mostly satisfied, concluding   that this work was more mature. But some  Tarantino style's fans remained puzzled and even   disappointed after watching. Someone said that the  master was "blown away". Someone simply did not   understand anything, and shrugged his shoulders,  claiming that Tarantino had already shot his best   film, and it would not be better anyway. But they all missed one important thing:   Quentin was not going to do  something similar to Pulp Fiction.   “Jackie Brown”, an ode to blaxploitation,  which he was so fond of as a teenager,   really differed in intonation and film language  from Tarantino's other works. It was slower,   with less blood and everything that at one  time prompted dozens of people to leave   the cinema hall when watching “that very  scene with the ear.” But this did not mean   that the film was worse than the previous ones. The director later explained that he did not want   to stay at the level of "Pulp Fiction" at all, but  decided to go down a few levels, work on a modest   story and deal with the characters in more depth.  It simply corresponded to what he felt then.   “I wanted Jackie Brown to have richness and  depth, but I wanted it to look more ‘real. My   other films do look very ‘real,’ but at  the same time there’s a ‘splashy-movie’   quality to them.” (Quentin Tarantino) Another difference was that it was the first   adaptation of the book in Tarantino's career.  It is based on the novel “Rum Punch” by Elmore   Leonard /ˌelmɔːr ˈlenərd/ - the same writer  whose book Tarantino once stole in a store.   Although the director tried to preserve  the spirit of the book to the maximum,   there were not without changes. For example,  the location was moved from Miami's South Beach   to L.A.'s South Bay. The reason was quite  simple: Quentin knew nothing about Florida,   and was not eager to shoot there. But he grew  up in South Bay, knew those places very well,   both rich areas and poor ones. The director felt  that he could use this knowledge in the material   to make it more personal. By the way, Elmore  Leonard was pleased with the film adaptation.   The plot centered on a middle-aged flight  attendant who was trying to make ends meet   by working for a small airline. Jackie  sometimes helped the arms dealer Ordell,   played by Samuel L. Jackson, with smuggling  to compensate for her meager salary,   and this connection eventually triggered a chain  of events that could negatively affect her life.   Tarantino did not change himself, and  in this film, as in the previous ones,   he made very interesting casting decisions. As  the director himself said, one of the coolest   privileges of fame was that he has found the  opportunity to invite some of the idols of his   youth. This time, two fading stars of the  70s got a chance to revive their careers:   Robert Forster, best known for his role  as the television detective Banyon and Pam   Grier, [pæm ɡraɪər] who became famous for her  participation in the blaxploitation movies.   Tarantino even had posters of Grier films  in his office. During their first meeting,   the actress came in and asked: "Did you put  these posters up because you knew I was coming?   —No," - Quentin said. — I actually was thinking  about taking them down because you were coming."   After working on the set with Tarantino,  Grier told reporters that it was not   easy (since the director only uses  one or two takes), but exciting.   "When he works you and you feel it, and you're in  the groove, man, it just flies." (Pam Grier)   By the way, it was on the set of “Jackie Brown”  that the famous Big Jerry appeared. The fact was   that filming often was at night, and the actors  began to fall asleep between shots. But Tarantino   had a life hack, which Tony Scott shared with him.  The director gave the task to one of the interns   to buy the biggest dildo he could find. And as  soon as one of the actors had the temerity to   fall asleep, they were photographed with Big  Jerry. According to Tarantino, the dildo was   the size of a lamp in the living room. It became a  very, very important participant on the set. Alas,   a huge collection of photos was solemnly burned  at a party in honor of the end of filming. But   the tradition remained, and Big Jerry then  wandered from one Tarantino movie to another.   There was no role for the director  himself in the film that time,   but he claimed that Ordell was very close to him. “This is the movie that proves Tarantino is the   real thing, and not just a two-film wonder  boy. - film critic Roger Ebert wrote in his   review, - It's not a retread of "Reservoir Dogs"  or "Pulp Fiction," but a new film in a new style,   and it evokes the particular magic of  Elmore Leonard--who elevates the crime   novel to a form of sociological comedy.” Lawrence Bender, who again collaborated with   Tarantino as a producer, believed that this film  turned out to be more mature. "It's similar to   Pulp Fiction in that people go some place in a  car, and then they go some place else in a car,   but Pulp was more showy and in your face.  There's a tenderness to this movie." he   once said. And it's hard not to agree with him. After Jackie Brown, Tarantino disappeared from   view for several years. Partly because during  this period fame became a real burden for him.   "I had to withdraw for a while," he said.  "I needed a rest from films and my life was   slightly out of control. I remember sitting down  and thinking that I was about 30% too famous.   I needed to be able to walk down the street." Even in Tokyo, he couldn't leave the hotel, and in   Beijing, film students mobbed him on the street. "I mean, my films don't even get released in   China. - the director lamented in  an interview, - "It really started   to feel like there was no escape." In a moment of despair, he even turned   to Robert De Niro for advice. An experienced  actor advised him to go out in disguise.   "That might work for Bobby, but it doesn't work  for me. I put on a hat and a pair of glasses and   I look like Quentin Tarantino wearing a hat  and a pair of glasses." (Quentin Tarantino)   Fortunately, at that time he already had a place  to hide from the paparazzi and store his numerous   collections of videotapes. In the late 90s, the  director shelled out $3 million for a luxurious   8733-square-foot mansion in the Hollywood Hills.  Naturally, in this comfortable bachelor pad,   he was able to equip an excellent home cinema. One day, singer Fiona Apple, explaining how she   managed to overcome her cocaine addiction,  recalled "one painful night" that she spent   in Tarantino's home cinema. She had to  listen to a lengthy discussion between   Quentin and Paul Thomas Anderson, during  which the directors boasted of their   extensive knowledge and achievements in cinema. ‘Every addict should just get locked in a private   movie theater with QT and PTA on coke, and they’ll  never want to do it again,” (Fiona Apple)   The whole Tarantino is revealed  in this little story, isn't he?   There is a red plush sofa at the front of the home  cinema on which Quentin sits when he is alone,   and about fifty red seats in graduated rows at the  back for guests. The room is designed to look like   an old-fashioned cinema, with a diamond-shaped  wall-to-wall carpet and velvet ropes supported   by short brass poles. What else is needed for   happiness? Maybe another house. In order not to have to live in hotels   on the east coast, around 1998 Tarantino bought  an apartment in the West Village in Manhattan.   Having traditionally taken a break from filming,  Quentin decided to try his hand at Broadway. In   1998, he appeared in the play "Wait Until  Dark" with Marisa Tomei /toʊˈmeɪ/. He found   this experience hilarious, but in a sense  traumatic due to the fact that working in   the theater required a huge amount of time  that could be spent on creating a new movie.   And the reviews of the play left much to  be desired, and they touched a nerve in   Tarantino. For example, the New York Post's  theater critic wrote: 'He was far better than   I was led to expect. He was merely terrible.'  Tarantino began to think that people on the   streets would recognize him as the one whose  acting sucks. “I tried not to take it personally,   but it was personal." - he admitted, - "It  was not about the play—it was about me,   and at a certain point I started getting too  thin a skin about the constant criticism."   Then he decided to concentrate on what he  did best: writing stories. From 1998 to 2000,   Tarantino's only film work was a role in the  comedy with Adam Sandler - “Little Nicky”.   The media again wondered where the  chatty, cheeky director was hiding.   Some journalists in long sarcastic articles  enthusiastically buried alive the career of   the Hollywood wonder boy. It was all nonsense,  of course. Tarantino was just waiting until he   felt that the time and the project were suitable  enough for him to step behind the camera again.   “When I was making ‘Pulp Fiction,’ I would have  died for the movie, and if I don’t feel that   way I don’t want to put my name on it. I almost  feel that I owe it to people who like my stuff.   I don’t want to burn out, all right?”. He worked on several scripts at the same time   during this self-imposed exile from Hollywood.  There was a story taking place during the 2nd   World War. The screenplay "became big and  sprawling. It was some of the best stuff   I've ever written, but at a certain point,  I thought, 'Am I writing a script or am I   writing a novel?' I basically ended up writing  three World War II scripts. None of them had   an ending," he later explained to Vanity Fair.  And it seemed to be already obvious that part of   this would be his next film, but one day at  a party the director ran into Uma Thurman.   The actress, whom they had not seen for 3 years,  asked if he had done anything with the idea that   they came up with a long time ago, back in the  days of “Pulp Fiction". One day after a day of   shooting, they were chatting about the types  of films they would like to work on. Quentin   said that he would like to make a kung fu movie  in the style of the 70s. Uma came up with the   first shot of the film, in which she was beaten  and dressed in a wedding dress. Inspired by the   conversation, Tarantino wrote 30 pages  of the script, but then abandoned it.   At the time they crossed paths with Thurman again,  his war epic had ballooned into something much   larger than he had intended, and he was distressed  that so many other directors were already working   on World War II films. Therefore, Tarantino  decided to return to the story of the Bride,   promising the actress that he would finish writing  it in two weeks as a birthday present for her.   'I've always considered her my actress, you  know. So I went back home that weekend and   dug out the few pages that I'd written on Kill  Bill and decided, what the heck, I'll work on   them.' (Quentin Tarantino) The Bride   Initially, “Kill Bill” was not going to be  divided into 2 parts. Even when the script   for 'the movie of his geek-movie dreams' grew  to 200 pages, which was about a third longer   than the average Hollywood script, Tarantino  still hoped to squeeze it into one part.   While working on the story, the director  spent days watching films about martial arts,   including those ones produced by the cult studio  of the Shaw Brothers. He wanted to immerse himself   so much in this style of filmmaking that what  they were doing became second nature to him.   “I’m a big fan of stealing an invention  and making it your own. Half the time I’m   taking stuff from other movies. I grew up  watching kung-fu films and Japanese samurai   movies and spaghetti westerns, and while I was  writing Kill Bill I had the fun of completely   reindoctrinating myself with those films.” As a tribute to the genre, he decided that the   Bride would wear a tracksuit, very similar to  Bruce Lee' costume in the "Game of Death". You   can also see the Shaw Brothers Studio logo  in the opening credits as another reference   to the director's sources of inspiration. He always liked to be inspired by other works.   But this time Tarantino's "borrowing" has reached  unprecedented proportions. The director's fan   site listed about 80 films that inspired him to  create "Kill Bill." There were mostly movies that   were often watched in cinemas in the 1970s - Hong  Kong martial arts flicks, Japanese samurai movies,   blaxploitation films and spaghetti westerns. The Miramax company was to be engaged in   financing again. However, the collaboration  was suddenly jeopardized when Thurman told   Tarantino that Weinstein had harassed her. Tarantino set a condition for the producer:   either he apologizes to the actress,  or there will be no next film.   “I wasn’t giving Harvey the benefit of the  doubt,” Tarantino said. “I knew he was lying,   that everything Uma was saying was the  truth. When he tried to wriggle out of it,   and how things actually happened,  I never bought his story. I said,   I don’t believe you. I believe her. ” Weinstein apologized, and it seemed that   the incident was over, but it was only  the calm before the storm. But we will   talk about the next scandal a little later. In the meantime, Tarantino continued to show   loyalty to his beloved actress. Shortly before the  start of filming, Thurman found out that she was   pregnant. The director didn't want to hear about  replacing her with someone else. "I'll wait for   Uma," he told the press. "She's my actress."  "If Josef Von Sternberg is getting ready to   make Morocco and Marlene Dietrich /mɑːrˈleɪnə  ˈdiːtrɪx/ gets pregnant, he waits for Dietrich!"   “There’s no one else I would even  have considered for the part,”...“Uma   Thurman is so damned statuesquely beautiful,  she’s scary — she’s all elbows and kneecaps.”   Perhaps it was for the best. Thanks to the delay,  Tarantino was not only able to bring the script   to the ideal, but also change the ending. If you  haven't watched the second part of Kill Bill and   are afraid of spoilers, rewind the video about  2 minutes ahead. While working on the script,   the director lived in New York, spending a lot  of time with Thurman. It was then, watching   the already mature actress, Tarantino suddenly  decided that the Bride's child might be alive.   “A lot of things had changed with her, so I  was getting to know her all over again, her   rhythm of speech and that kind of stuff you want  to do as a writer. - the director said, - And,   while getting to know her, I'm getting to  know Maya, her daughter, and I'm being warmed   by that. And all those things started coming  out. And during that time, Uma was a mother,   that's what she did. So as you start learning  about her, that's what you start taking away."   Most of the filming took place in  Beijing, according to Tarantino,   largely for the sheer adventure of it. 'During the  seven months of preproduction, I spent three in   Beijing,' he says. 'And since May, I haven't  left China at all. Four months straight.'   Like other members of the film crew, Tarantino  explored local attractions, made new friends,   and became part of the bustling nightlife of  the capital. He found his favorite restaurant,   which he and then the whole team began to call  "Bucket of Blood", referring to the piles of   red and hot food that was served there. The work was not easy. Tarantino has never   shot so many action scenes before. Action directors are the real film   directors! This film is difficult; I mean  anybody can shoot a scene with two people   sitting around a table talking to each other.  And I know I can always go back to that,   but this is something totally different!' During the filming of the famous episode in the   House of Blue Leaves, Tarantino decided to abandon  the use of computer graphics, preferring practical   effects. Perhaps that's why the part of the film  that was supposed to take two weeks to shoot took   a whopping eight weeks. For comparison, all  the “Pulp Fiction” was filmed in 10 weeks.   The director insisted that the blood effects  used in the film were the same as Chang Cheh,   the pioneer of Chinese cinema, used: there  were small bags filled with artificial   blood that burst on impact. Moreover,  Tarantino was very picky about its color.   “I say, 'I don't want horror movie blood, all  right? I want Samurai blood.' You can't pour this   raspberry pancake syrup on a sword and have it  look good. You have to have this special kind of   blood that you only see in Samurai movies." In general, more than 450 gallons of artificial   blood were used on the set of "Kill  Bill", 100 of which were spent on the   scene in the House of Blue Leaves. Tarantino wanted this scene to be his   main achievement as a director. “I set up  the sequence so that either it would be the   greatest thing anyone's ever seen as far as this  shit's concerned, or I would hit my head on the   ceiling of my talent.” - he explained. 'When we were training for the fight   scenes,' Julie Dreyfus[ˈdraɪfəs] said, who  played the role of assassin Sofie Fatale,   'he would sit us down after lunch each day and  show us scenes from films like Drunken Master,   or some of Sonny Chiba's films. His enthusiasm and  attention to detail are extraordinary. It was like   a crash course in his movie obsessions.' " Do not forget about the soundtrack,   which Tarantino still attached great  importance to. The director often turned   on music on the set to cheer everyone up. “I think he goes to sleep with his iPod on   when we're filming, because the music becomes  the rhythm of his directing.” “Quentin’s use   of music is pretty darn remarkable.  He really articulates scenes with   music.” - Sally Menke said, his film editor. “On Kill Bill, I went into his music room and he   played me a lot of music for specific scenes.  He thinks very clearly about all the music,   for months if not years in advance. But those  moments of inspiration come from the cutting room.   I don’t cut with his music before he comes in. We  work together–– adjust and even edit the music to   fit the film in certain areas.” (Sally Menke) Among the creative solutions that make Tarantino's   films so unique, his choice of music  is almost at the top of the list.   The soundtrack for Tarantino is not just a  background. This is another important hero   of his films. Music moves the story. "What  I’m looking for is the spirit of the movie,   the beat that the movie will play with.” …“I think  the reason that my music works so good is I don’t   just blanket it in there. When it’s in there, it’s  there for a real purpose.” - the director said.   Tarantino, already at the very  early stages of the film's creation,   begins to choose the music he wants to use. “One of the things I do when I am starting   a movie, when I’m writing a movie or when I  have an idea for a film is, I go through my   record collection and just start playing songs,  trying to find the personality of the movie,   find the spirit of the movie…then, ‘boom,’  eventually I’ll hit one, two or three songs,   or one song in particular, ‘Oh, this will  be a great opening credit song.’”   Quentin once said that he “could make a tape that  the character would listen to.” Music defines the   characters of his heroes, due to their musical  preferences, the director adds depth to them,   reviving them for the public. An integral part  of his directorial style is diegetic editing,   a technique in which music is heard  not only by the viewer as a soundtrack,   but also by the character himself. Tarantino likes to use old songs that   have already appeared in other films, instead  of inviting a composer. For example, one of   the most memorable tracks from “Kill Bill” when  Elle Driver walks along the hospital corridor,   Tarantino borrowed from Twisted Nerve  - the 1968 Boulting brothers thriller.   Also in this Tarantino movie, you can hear  the music of the great Ennio Morricone,   [ˈɛnnjo morriˈkoːne] who is also known for the  soundtracks to Sergio Leone's Dollars Trilogy.   And for the second part of “Kill Bill”, one of  the soundtracks was written by Robert Rodriguez.   For his work, the director charged a friend  only $1. In response, Tarantino shot a scene   in Rodriguez' film "Sin City" for the same price. Already at the editing stage, after seeing how the   budget had grown from $39 million to $55 million,  and the initial 12-week shooting stretched to nine   months, Harvey Weinstein made an unprecedented  offer to Tarantino: divide the film into two   parts. Thus, the second part was supposed to  be released 6 months after the first one.   In 2003, shortly before the release of  “Kill Bill”, one of the publications wrote:   “Given Tarantino’s time in the wilderness and  the middling box office gross for Jackie Brown,   are there enough Tarantino fans left to make  Kill Bill a big hit? … Is Tarantino becoming   a cult director, or will he again achieve mass  appeal? But the most interesting question has   gone largely unasked: Will this movie finally put  to rest the whispers that Tarantino can’t write   a screenplay by himself?” Twenty years later, we can   confidently answer “yes” to all these questions. “The bad-ass chick revenge movie,” as the director   himself once called it, collected more than $ 180  million with a production budget of $ 30 million.   And although the Oscar Committee this time  bypassed Tarantino, his movie and actors received   nominations for other well-known film awards. Kill Bill: Volume 1 was placed in Empire   Magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Films of  All Time at number 325 and the Bride was also   ranked number 66 in Empire magazine's  "100 Greatest Movie Characters".   Manohla Dargis of the Los Angeles  Times aptly called Kill Bill:   Volume 1 a "blood-soaked valentine to movies.”  Naturally, there were those who continued to   criticize the director for the violence that  went beyond any bounds of decency in this film.   At some point there is so much blood that  the scene turns black and white. It's like   the world has run out of paint. However, it is  necessary to make a remark that the violence   in the first part of “Kill Bill” is not the  same as in the director's previous films. If   in "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction" it looks  real, serious and sometimes shocking, then here   it becomes graphic — unreal, frivolous. “To me, violence is a totally aesthetic   subject." - Tarantino explained, - "I will not  use the term "comic", but alienating techniques   peculiar to comics are present here. I'm not  trying to convince you that I'm presenting   you with the real world. In fact, no one is  being killed here, the blood here is not real,   and if you don't like it, then you just don't  like the red color, because you know that it's   not real. Otherwise it wouldn't be a movie.” Yohei Taneda, the production designer for the   film's Asian sequences, tried to explain the look  of the film. 'There is a reality to Kill Bill, but   it is not the reality of the world,' he says. 'It  is the reality of Quentin's world, and that is a   somewhat different place. We are in Tokyo, we are  in Okinawa, we are in a Chinese temple, but at all   times, really we are in the world of Quentin.' Well, all this unreality makes sense if you   remember that Quentin Tarantino  has two film universes. But   we'll talk about this a little later. The unrealistic 2nd part of “Kill Bill”,   released 6 months after the first one, received  a very real $152 million at the box office.   The sequel was no longer so comic-hyperbolized.  There were more dialogues, the action slowed down,   which, however, did not prevent the viewer  from still worrying about the main character.   The turn towards realism in Kill Bill: Vol.  2 was manifested not only in the absence of   an excessive amount of blood, but  also in the choice of locations.   Do you remember the scene in which Uma  Thurman's heroine meets Bill's old mentor   in a Mexican brothel? So, the brothel was real.  Tarantino purposefully sent various scouts and   production assistants to Mexico so that they  would find a place suitable for filming.   The scouts coped with the task, although  the brothel they found turned out to be even   more authentic than it was necessary — there  was no toilet, and it was across the street   from the pig slaughterhouse. But Tarantino  liked the idea of a slaughterhouse nearby,   so the designers rented more pigs and a few hens. The authenticity of the place was added by the   fact that just before the arrival of the film  crew, a murder was committed there, and the police   closed the brothel. This really upset Tarantino,  who wanted to use real representatives of the   oldest profession and their pimp in the scene. To  the great joy of the director, it turned out that   the institution just moved a little further  down the street, and it was easily found.   And in the second part there was no famous  Pussy Wagon. If you are interested in the   fate of the famous car in which Uma Thurman  traveled, then we assure you that she was   in safe hands. Tarantino took it for himself. I did say at one point that my Pussy Wagon died   on me, but really the director took it back  to his house. He possesses the Pussy Wagon,   he drives the Pussy Wagon, he loves  the Pussy Wagon. (Uma Thurman)   In general, Tarantino likes to pick up  various souvenirs from the site. But he   loves his characters even more. One day he ordered  sculptures of some of them from an artist. Namely,   Mia Wallace from Pulp Fiction, Louis,  Melanie and Max Cherry from Jackie Brown,   and Mr. Blonde from Reservoir Dogs.  When he drew up a contract with Miramax,   he asked his lawyer to include a provision that  assigns him all rights to the characters in the   future so that no one can use them — for sequels,  spin-offs, marketing or something else - without   his permission, and so that he could use  them again in the film whenever he wanted.   So, after the release of both parts of “Kill  Bill” Quentin Tarantino was back on the horse,   more precisely, in Pussy Wagon, and his duet with  Uma Thurman was idolized and adored. "He says he   intends to make pictures with Uma for the rest  of his life, that he's Josef von Sternberg and   she's his Marlene Dietrich." - David Carradine,  /ˈkærədiːn/ the performer of the role of Bill,   said in an interview. But only a few people  knew that in fact a black cat ran between   the director and his muse at that time. Only in 2018, Uma Thurman told the public   about the terrible accident she got into at the  end of the filming of “Kill Bill”. An accident,   after which their friendship with  Quentin was spoiled for many years.   Four days before the end of the filming of  the dilogy, Tarantino asked Uma to drive the   car on her own in one of the scenes. Nothing  boded trouble. “None of us ever considered it   a stunt. It was just driving. None of us looked  at it as a stunt. Maybe we should have, but we   didn’t.” - Tarantino recalled. He wanted Uma to  drive 30-45 miles per hour so that her hair would   be blowing spectacularly. The director personally  checked the serviceability of the car by   driving along a road that seemed to him safe and  straight enough to drive along it at high speed.   Despite the fact that the actress was nervous,  he convinced her that everything would be fine.   However, during the shooting, the director decided  that the shot would look better if Thurman went in   the opposite direction. And that was a fatal  mistake. It turned out that for some strange   reason the road was not so straight when going in  the opposite direction, but had a slight bend.   As a result, the actress lost  control and crashed into a tree.   It was a shock for the director, who sincerely  repented and took the blame for what happened.   I told her it would be safe. And it wasn’t.  I was wrong. I didn’t force her into the car.   She got into it because she trusted me. And  she believed me. (Quentin Tarantino)   When Thurman demanded a video recording  of the accident from the producers,   they agreed to provide it only on condition  that she signed a document “releasing them   of any consequences of her future pain  and suffering,". The actress refused.   As for Tarantino, for some reason, he  decided not to interfere and did not   help his muse, which greatly disappointed her. “We were in a terrible fight for years,” Uma said,   “We had to then go through promoting the  movies. It was all very thin ice. We had   a fateful fight at Soho House in New York  in 2004 and we were shouting at each other   because he wouldn’t let me see the footage and  he told me that was what they had all decided.”   In turn, Tarantino claimed that after the  accident, he left the producers and the insurance   company to deal with this matter, so, although  he regretted what happened, he was not involved   in the dispute between Miramax and the actress. “Uma thought I had acquiesced to them not letting   her see the footage. I didn’t know any of  that was necessarily going on. - Tarantino   said. - I knew they weren’t letting her see  the footage, but I didn’t know she thought I   was part of that. She had just told me  they hadn’t let her see the footage.”   Anyway, after this incident, the relationship  between the director and the actress was   spoiled. They continued to communicate,  but without the same warmth and trust.   When Harvey Weinstein was publicly accused of  harassment years later, Uma turned to Tarantino   for help so that he could find the ill-fated video  in the archives. This time the director agreed.   “It’s the biggest regret of my life, getting her  to do that stunt”. - he stated in an interview.   And Uma in her Instagram post thanked the  director for his help, and laid all the   blame for what happened on Lawrence Bender, E.  Bennett Walsh, and the notorious Harvey Weinstein.   It seems that over time, the director  and his muse were still able to sort   everything out and make peace. However,  Uma Thurman did not appear in Tarantino's   films anymore. TIME TO BE ELVIS   Let's go back to 2004, when the audience  had still fresh impressions of the film,   and the yellow press was in full swing discussing  Tarantino's new romance with Sofia Coppola.   However, there is nothing much to say about this  relationship: the directors dated for only a   couple of years, and parted friends. Tarantino  continued to devote all his time to cinema.   "When I'm doing a movie, I'm not doing anything  else. It's all about the movie. I don't have a   wife. I don't have a kid. Nothing can get  in my way. The whole (expletive) world can   go to hell and burst into flames. I  don't care. This is my life."   "I'm not saying that I'll never get  married or have a kid before I'm 60. - he   added, - But I've made a choice, so far,  to go on this road alone. Because this is   my time. This is my time to make movies." In the same 2004, the director, as a recognition   of his services to cinema, received an offer  to head the jury of the Cannes Film Festival.   He also didn't forget about television. For  example, he appeared in one episode of the   TV series “Alias” directed by J. J. Abrams. And in 2005, Tarantino wrote the script and   directed an episode of the drama "CSI: Crime  Scene Investigation". It turned out he was a   big fan of the show. "It was like channeling a  god," Carol Mendelsohn, [ˈkærəl ˈmɛndəlsən] the   showrunner of the series, recalled with delight  this collaboration, "He knows more about CSI than   we do; things we've long forgotten, he's filed  away. He's a walking encyclopedia." The director   was nominated for an Emmy Award for his work. In the same year, Tarantino was ranked 42nd in   Time's annual list of the 100 most influential  people in the world. And filmmaker and historian   Peter Bogdanovich referred to Tarantino as  “the single most influential director of his   generation.” It's not surprising  that everyone wanted to see him   at least as a cameo in their projects. For example, he agreed to participate in   “The Muppets' Wizard of Oz” as himself. In the  film, Tarantino discussed with Kermit the cruel   ideas of how to stop the Wicked Witch of the  West. The contrast is certainly impressive.   What can this say about Tarantino? Probably he's  not shy about doing what he gets pleasure from,   and it doesn't matter whether  it's a new Robert Rodriguez movie,   a puppet fairy tale with curved 3D animation, The  Muppets' Wizard of Oz or a cult police series.   Speaking of Rodriguez. In 2007, the buddies  reunited to create a project that was supposed   to be a tribute to the exploitation films of  the 60s and 70s. Such B movies were often shown   in a double session in American cinemas, which  were called Grindhouses. /ɡraɪndˈhaʊzɪz/ Hence   the name of the project appeared. Tarantino and Rodriguez' Grindhouse   consisted of two full-length films in the  spirit of exploitation and four fake trailers.   The idea came when Rodriguez visited  Tarantino, and he arranged for a friend   to watch similar films in his home theater. “He’d always program the night with some really   great trailers from the era and then  a feature, then a few more trailers,   and then another feature. And I was like, ”Man,  we have to re-create these nights for the rest of   the world!” And right then, he was like, ”We have  to call it Grindhouse!” (Robert Rodriguez)   So, the part of Rodriguez was called  “Planet Terror” and was a horror about   zombies with elements of comedy. And  Tarantino's slasher, "Death Proof",   in turn told about a maniac stuntman who once had  bad luck with his victims. Rodriguez and Tarantino   were going to shoot comic trailers on their  own, but Rob Zombie, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth,   and Jason Eisener [ˈʤeɪsən ˈaɪsənər] became  interested in the project, and the directors   agreed to use their colleagues' material. Some refuse to work with friends in order to   avoid conflicts, but this is definitely not about  our couple. If one of them doesn't like something,   he just talks about it and offers something of his  own. For example, in Rodriguez's script there was   a big speech, with which he was going to attract  one actor for the role. The director made a note   in the script: ”To be rewritten by QT.” Tarantino directed the second unit of   Rodriguez's film. And he, in turn, was the  director of photography in "Death Proof".   "I can't imagine doing Grindhouse with any other  director in the way me and Robert did it because   I just had complete faith and trust in him. -  Tarantino admitted - So much so that we didn't   actually see each other's movie completed until  three weeks before the film opened. It was as if   we worked in little vacuums and cut our movies  down, and then put them together and watched it   all play, and then made a couple of little changes  after that, and pretty much that was it."   Grindhouse was conceived as a kind of attraction  that was supposed to send the viewer on a journey   through time, namely, to a cheap cinema of  the 70s. The creators used various techniques   to make the films look like the ones they were  inspired by. The image was deliberately damaged   to look like exploitation films, which,  due to frequent moves from one theater   to another, ended up in very poor condition. Film editor Sally Menke recalled: ““We’d take a   pen, a needle or some other implement, and scratch  the film. Nina Kawasaki,[ˌkɑwɑˈsɑki] my assistant,   would go out and thrash it against the bushes  on the driveway… We kept asking the lab to make   this section dirtier. We never even got  it; we were too careful. We should have   gotten it dirtier in some places. The lab had  a lot of fun, though, not being careful. Want   to smoke a cigarette over that? No problem.” Tarantino himself said that "Death Proof" was   supposed to be the worst film he had ever made. “And for a left-handed movie, that wasn’t so bad,   all right?- he added, - so if that’s  the worst I ever get, I’m good."   Apparently, the idea behind the movie grew out of  his desire to buy a Volvo. In a 2007 interview,   Tarantino explained: “ About 10 years ago,  I was talking to a friend about getting a   car. And I wanted to get a Volvo because  I wanted a really safe car. I remember   thinking that I didn’t want to die in some auto  accident like the one in Pulp Fiction. ”   “ So I was talking to my friend about this, and he  said, ‘Well, you could take any car and give it to   a stunt team, and for $10,000 or $15,000, they  can death-proof it for you.’ Well, that phrase   ‘death proof’ kinda stuck in my head .” At the time of the film's release, Tarantino   thought it was one of the best scripts he had  ever written. However, despite all the passion,   enthusiasm and love for the genre that were  invested in "Grindhouse", it unfortunately   failed at the box office. Perhaps now, in the  days of franchises and interactive content,   the audience would like Grindhouse more,  with all its subtle references and parody   trailers. But in 2007, the viewer wasn't  in a hurry to give his money for a ticket.   Someone called the three-hour runtime the  reason. And someone thought that not everyone   understood the format. Many viewers  left after the end of the first film,   not knowing that the second one was next. Tarantino had to admit: “With Grindhouse,   I think me and Robert just felt that people  had a little more of a concept of the history   of double features and exploitation movies. No,  they didn’t. At all. They had no idea what the   f*ck they were watching. It meant nothing to  them, alright, what we were doing. So that was   a case of being a little too cool for school.” As for the critical reception, some fans of the   old exploitation cinema called "Grindhouse"  mainstream, "a film that was desperately   trying to be a cult." However, others were  more supportive, saying that the idea itself   was good - just the implementation was  not the most successful. For example,   the author of a review for The Guardian wrote  that Death Proof was silly but wildly enjoyable.   Tarantino's box office blunder did not prevent  him from buying his own cinema in 2007. New   Beverly Cinema in its long history of existence  has managed to be both a pastry shop, a nightclub,   and an adult theater, until it finally became a  cinema. Tarantino was its sponsor for 10 years,   and after the death of its owner decided  to purchase the building in order to save   it from redevelopment. “As long as I’m alive,   and as long as I’m rich, the New Beverly  will be there”(Quentin Tarantino)   Exclusively 35mm and 16mm films are shown  there, most of which Tarantino provides   from his personal collection. In 2014, Tarantino took up the   scheduling of movies at the cinema. As in the distant days of working at   Video Archives, [ˈɑrˌkaɪvz] Tarantino gives  great pleasure to share rare semi-forgotten   films with other people. Fame and money brought  him the opportunity not only to advise someone   on the movie, but also to show it in his  own cinema, on his own release prints.   And before the purchase of the cinema, he did it  at his own film festival. The director organized   the first such event in 1996 at the Dobie  Theater near the University of Texas. Since then,   Tarantino has organized the festival 8 times. He personally presented each film, and then sat   down to watch it with the audience.  And if along the way he remembered   what he forgot to tell at the beginning,  then he shouted it right from his seat.   The most important thing that Tarantino never  tired of talking about before the start of the   watching was that they might not be the world’s  best movies, but they were movies and, as such,   were worthy of respect. Tarantino is annoyed  by people who are arrogant about genre films,   and any other ones. “I say to the audience,   ‘I like all of these movies,’...“There  might be apologies for this and that,   and sometimes you might have to stand on  your tippy toes to see what I see in them,   and there’s funny and wacky and silly stuff that  happens, and it’s O.K. to laugh at that stuff,   all right—but don’t laugh at the movie to  show how cool you are. Wait till something’s   funny and laugh at that. Because I want  you to get into it, and if you put up a   force field of smugness you never will. Just  leave. We’ll give you your money back.”   Meanwhile, it was time for the story about World  War II, which Tarantino had been working on even   before “Kill Bill”. For a while, the script  was so gigantic that it was only suitable   for a mini-series. But Luc Besson dissuaded the  director from such a version. "You're one of the   only guys whose movies make me want to go out to a  theater," Besson told him one night over drinks.   Then Tarantino once again made an attempt to  reduce the material, and radically changed   the story to still make a movie out of it. Of course, in this scenario, most of what was   happening did not correspond to real  events, for which Tarantino was then   actively criticized by part of the audience. But  what did they expect to get from a director who   constantly mixed genres and broke patterns?  That time, his film was greatly influenced   by spaghetti westerns. It's an interesting  combination with a military theme, isn't it?   The film’s title is also a reference to a 1978  Spaghetti Western /spəˌɡeti ˈwestərn/ called   ‘The Inglorious Bastards.’ [ɪnˈɡlɔɹ.i.əs  ˈbæstɝdz] Quentin Tarantino has cited this   movie as an influence on ‘Inglourious  Basterds,’ although the two films   have very little in common beyond the title. Tarantino admitted that of all the characters   he has written throughout his career, it was  most interesting to create Colonel Hans Landa.   “The minute he enters a scene, he dominates it.  All the things that he was supposed to be good at,   he was that good at them. I found I had a really  interesting situation with him that has been   hard to have with any other character.” But for such an interesting and frightening   character, it was not so easy to find a suitable  actor. The difficulty was added by the fact that   the hero spoke four languages. The director  couldn't find an actor until the last moment,   and he was so desperate that he wasn't  sure if the film would be shot at all.   He gave the film crew one more week to find a  suitable candidate before shutting down production   completely. That's when they found Christoph  Waltz, [ˈkʀɪstɔf ˈvalts] and the film was saved.   It was much easier to find an  actor for the role of Aldo Raine.   Tarantino recalled: As I was writing the script,  it went from “Oh, Brad could be good in this,” to,   “Brad would be damn good in this,” to, “Brad  would be f*ckin’ awesome in this,” to, “OK,   now, I need to fuckin’ get Brad, because  if I don’t, what am I going to do?”.   Tarantino went to Pitt's house in the south  of France to attract the actor for the role.   They walked around his property, after which  they talked for a long time about movies,   drinking wine and smoking has****. The next  morning, Tarantino returned to his hotel room   with a piece of has**** that Pitt had  cut off from his own, as well as with   a can of Coca-Cola, which they used as a pipe. "All I know is we talked about backstory - Pitt   said, - We talked about movies into the wee hours,  I got up the next morning and I saw five empty   bottles of wine on the floor. Five. And something  that resembled smoking apparatus, I don't know   what that was. Apparently I had agreed to do the  movie and six weeks later I was in a uniform."   And so the work on "Inglourious Basterds" began. One of Tarantino's features as a director is that   he prefers not to sit behind video monitors,  but to be as close to the actors as possible   so that they feel the power of his attention. This time he was not only next to the actors,   but also among them. But it wasn't for  long. At the beginning of the 2nd chapter,   you might notice Quentin Tarantino in the image  of a dead Nazi soldier, whose corpse was scalped.   Tarantino's hands had their own cameo. It was the  director's hands in the scene where Hans Landa   strangled Bridget Von Hammersmark. He decided  that for more realism, the actress needed to be   strangled a little for real, and did not entrust  it to other members of the team. Naturally, when   it appeared in the media, the director received  a wave of hate. Tarantino was called a sadist,   and they recalled stories from the filming of  Kill Bill, when for one scene he himself spat in   Uma Thurman's face instead of Michael Madsen,  and for another he strangled her with a chain.   As for Diane Kruger herself, the performer  of the role of Bridget Von Hammersmark,   she did not seem to feel offended. Anyway,  when Tarantino was once again criticized for   allegedly liking to abuse actresses in  his films, she wrote on her Instagram:   “I would like to say that my work experience with  Quentin Tarantino was pure joy. He treated me with   utter respect and never abused his power or forced  me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable with.”   Tarantino's accusations of misogyny are poorly  combined with the fact that the central characters   in many of his films are strong women who  can beat any man if he gets in their way.   His heroines take revenge on maniacs and  former lovers, single-handedly cope with   hundreds of hired killers, set fire to a cinema  with Nazis, head a dangerous mafia group and   outwit a dangerous drug dealer. Stuntwoman and actress Zoë Bell,   who starred in most of Quentin Tarantino's  films, said the following about his heroines:   By the way, he exploited another of his  actresses from “Inglourious Basterds” as an   employee of his cinema. Come on, this is a joke. Mélanie Laurent played the role of Shosanna in   the film, who worked as a projectionist  in the film. In order for the actress to   get used to the role better and behave  more confidently in the projector room,   Tarantino sent her to gain experience in his New  Beverly Cinema. As a final test, Laurent needed to   run the screening of his film “Reservoir Dogs.” When "Inglourious Basterds" came to an end at the   premiere in Cannes, the audience gave a standing  ovation for ten minutes. You bet. It is unlikely   that a more spectacular scene of Hitler's murder  can be found in the cinema. When the journalist   later asked Tarantino what he was thinking  that night as the applause went on and on,   the director said: "I wanted to get the  biggest standing ovation of the festival,   and I got it,"..."They counted it. But I wanted  to be inscrutable. That was my cool moment,   and I was gonna be cool. Sometimes it's your  time to be Elvis, and that was my time."   It's safe to say that Tarantino made a film,  in part, about the power of cinema. That it   was able to change the fate of people  in a variety of sophisticated ways.   “One of the things that’s actually very  interesting to me about that is that, one, nitrate   stock can do that, so it’s just a neat, cool,  practical aspect. But I like the idea that it’s   the power of cinema that fights the Nazis. But not  even as a metaphor – as a literal reality.”   Inglourious Basterds grossed a total  of $321.5 million at the global box   office. This made Tarantino's film the  highest-grossing at the time of release,   surpassing Pulp Fiction. Inglourious Basterds  has been nominated for eight Academy Awards.   Tarantino was nominated as the best director, and  as the author of the best original screenplay.   In those years, many believed that one of the  reasons for the success of Tarantino's films was   his long-term collaboration with film editor Sally  Menke. Tarantino himself admitted that he did not   always remember which idea, sitting in the editing  room, he proposed, and which one she proposed.   After they met in the mid-90s, Tarantino announced  on the same day that they would work on all of   his films. And so it was until 2009. Sally Menke was the very editor who was   able to understand Tarantino's confusing  chronology and plots. He listened to her,   trusted her opinion. Menke could say “You overdo  it too much.” And he answered, “All right.”   "We just clicked creatively," Sally said in an  interview, "Editing is all about intuiting the   tone of a scene and you have to chime with  the director... We've built up such trust   that now he gives me the dailies and I put 'em  together and there's little interference."   They didn't usually work in studios. Quentin  rented small private houses in Los Angeles and   turned them into editing rooms for a while.  Perhaps he wanted to add more comfort and a   homely atmosphere to both of them in this way.  Editing a film is a very long, painstaking   process that usually takes place alone. On the  set of “Death Proof” and “Inglourious Basterds”   Tarantino asked the actors to send her greetings  after unsuccessful takes to cheer Sally up.   It turned out to be a kind of breaking  of the 4th wall for a single viewer.   When Tarantino received an award from the American  Cinema Editors organization in 2007, in his speech   he insisted on the importance of synergy  between the editor and the director. The best   collaborations, he said, were the director–editor  teams, where they could finish each other's   sentences. Obviously, he and Sally had it. Sally Menke died unexpectedly in 2010,   after going for a walk in extreme heat. Tarantino was devastated by her death.   He even seriously thought about whether he could  continue directing. Tarantino still shot the next   film. But while working on the cinema equipment,  he had a sign with the inscription "WWSD". It was   deciphered as “What Would Sally Do?". Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight   In 2010, Tarantino was appointed chairman of the  Venice Film Festival jury. There was not without   scandal. When the Golden Lion was awarded to  Sofia Coppola for her film "Somewhere", some   accused Tarantino of bias. Allegedly, the head of  the jury specifically put pressure on the others   so that the award went to his ex-girlfriend. “Being her friend didn’t affect me or make   me sway the jury in any way,” - the  director responded to the criticism,   “The other members of the jury don’t know  her at all,”...“They just loved the film.”   As for his personal life, since his affair with  Sofia Coppola /ˈkoʊpələ/ ended in 2006, Quentin   has not stayed in a relationship for a long time. “I’ve been alone most of my life, I was an only   child, raised by a single mother, so I am  very comfortable with my own company.”   And in general, the director was not up to it.  He was already working hard on his new film.   Tarantino began developing the idea of a  film set in the deep south of the United   States before the Civil War back in 2007. He has long wanted to do movies that deal   with America's horrible past with slavery but do  them like Spaghetti Westerns, not like big issue   movies. For which later, by the way, the director  will repeatedly receive bad reviews from critics,   but more on that later. He formed his vision  of the film when he began writing a book about   the work of Italian director Sergio Corbucci,  [ˈsɛrdʒo korˈbuttʃi] known for his spaghetti   westerns. According to Tarantino, one of the  things Corbucci did was to push Spaghetti   Westerns from being operatic, grandiose versions  of American Westerns to being much more violent,   brutal and surreal. And Tarantino wanted  Django Unchained to be just that.   I was writing about how his movies have this evil  Wild West, a horrible Wild West. It was surreal,   it dealt a lot with fascism. So I'm writing  this whole piece on this, and I'm thinking:   'I don't really know if Sergio was thinking  [this] while he was doing this. But I know I'm   thinking about it now. And I can do it!' Corbucci's films became his main source of   inspiration, including “Django” in 1966. One of the first actors who was introduced to   work with the film was Christoph Waltz. Tarantino  was so impressed with him during the filming of   “Inglourious Basterds” that this time he gave  him a script to read during the writing process.   Waltz recalled how he came to visit Quentin,  and the director sat him down at the table,   put the pages of the script in front of him  and watched the actor read. Waltz compared   this process to a kind of magical ritual. And he  was very touched that Tarantino allowed him to   participate in the process of creating the script,  even at the level of a third person observer.   Of course, the actor was modest. One scene of  the movie definitely wouldn't have happened if   it wasn't for him. When creating the characters,  Tarantino knew from the very beginning that   Django's wife, whom he seeks to free from  slavery, would be called Broomhilda. One day   Christoph invited the director to a production  of Wagner's "The Ring of the Nibelung" in Los   Angeles. But Tarantino was late for the first act,  and Christoph invited him to dinner. At dinner,   the actor told him the plot of the first act. And  as he talked, Tarantino realized the parallels   between the adventures of Django with Broomhilda  and Siegfried with Brunhilda. He never went to   the third act because he didn't want to know  how it would end. So there was a scene in   the film in which Christoph's character  told Django the plot of the legend of   Siegfried [ˌsɪɡfriːd] and Brunhild [ˈbrynˌhild]. While working on his Spaghetti Southern,   Tarantino delved quite deeply into the study of  how slave plantations worked as societies. And   he found that it was basically an absurd,  grotesque parody of European aristocracy.   The director speaks of the cruel landowner  Calvin Candie [ˈkælvən ˈkændi] as the only   character he had that he didn't like to create. “I hated Candie and I normally like my villains no   matter how bad they are. I can see their point  of view .”...“ I could see his point of view,   but I hated it so much. For the first time as  a writer, I just f*#$ing hated this guy. ”   Fortunately, the director did not have to look  for an actor for the role of this vile guy for a   long time. Being a friend of Leonardo DiCaprio for  15 years, Tarantino sent him scripts from time to   time, in case the actor wanted to play in them. “He got the script and really liked Calvin   Candie. - the director recalled, - Leo  was younger than I had initially written,   but I read it again and could see no reason  why the character couldn’t be younger.   Perhaps the most difficult was the choice of  an actor for the main role. One of the main   candidates was Will Smith. But the director and  the actor's vision of Django's image diverged,   and in the end Jamie Foxx got the role.  By the way, the horse Django rode in the   movie was Foxx' horse in real life. The most difficult trick of the film   was also connected with horses. FORGET CGI – MAKE IT REAL is one   of the main rules for creating action  movies, according to Tarantino. Therefore,   the team has been preparing for the scene in which  riders and their horses fell from the explosion of   the dentist's trailer for 4 months. They had 15  horses that had to fall at the same time, and as   you understand, it was not so easy to do this. This was not the end of Tarantino's attempts to   abandon computer graphics to the maximum. “For the opening sequence in the winter,   I needed it to be so cold you could see the  actors’ breath; I didn’t want to add the breath   later. It was -8F. People were collapsing,  going face down in the snow. People would   start crying and were having nervous breakdowns  because it was so brutally, frigidly cold. But   if I can shoot the real thing, I will.” But judging by the reviews of the actors,   shooting at Tarantino's movies  cannot be called a total torment.   Speaking of Samuel L. Jackson . Since the actor  has been working with Tarantino for many years,   their mutual understanding on the set surpasses  all other relations between the director and the   actors. According to Jamie Foxx, he was even a  little jealous of this tandem. While working,   they offer each other to do some feint in  the next take, which was not in the script,   and everything turns out as well as possible. The team's efforts paid off in full. The film   grossed $426 million worldwide with  a production budget of $100 million,   thereby overtaking “Inglourious Basterds". However, as always, a storm of criticism has   arisen around the film. First of all, many  were outraged by the frequency of using   the N-word. But this is not the first  time Tarantino has faced this claim.   “Every time someone wants an example of overuse  of the N-word, they go to Quentin — it’s unfair.   - Samuel L. Jackson defended the director, - He’s  just telling the story and the characters do talk   like that. When Steve McQueen /ˌstiːv məˈkwiːn/  does it [with ’12 Years a Slave’], it’s art. He’s   an artist. Quentin’s just a popcorn filmmaker.” The problem is also that Quentin is a white   director showing the horrors of slavery on  the screen. And he even does it not in a   classical manner according to all the rules, but  in the form of a fervent western. Some felt that   in this way the director exploited one of the  most painful pages in the history of mankind.   Director Spike Lee, for example, denounced  the film even before its release,   saying that he considered it disrespectful to his  ancestors and he would not be going to watch it.   "What happened during slavery times is a thousand  times worse than [what] I show," Tarantino tried   to explain, "So if I were to show it a thousand  times worse, to me, that wouldn't be exploitative,   that would just be how it is. If you can't take  it, you can't take it." The director wasn't   trying to make something like Schindler's List  /ˌʃɪndlərz ˈlɪst/. He wanted to do something more   entertaining, and give the hero the opportunity  to avenge all the pain he had endured, in a manner   typical of all previous Tarantino's characters. The atmosphere around Django Unchained got heated   when the tragedy occurred at Sandy  Hook Elementary School. Once again,   the issue of the influence of violence in  cinema on the psyche of the viewer was raised,   and it's clear who got criticism at first. “I think it's disrespectful. I think it's   disrespectful to their memory, the memory of the  people who died, to talk about movies … Obviously,   the issue is gun control and mental  health." (Quentin Tarantino)   At that time, Tarantino was so fed up  with the accusations against him that   he refused to answer another question about  violence during an interview with Krishnan   Guru-Murthy. [ˈkrɪʃnən ˈɡuˌru-ˈmɜrθi] However, all these numerous scandals did   not prevent the film from receiving  five Golden Globe Award nominations,   including Best Film, Best Director and Best  Screenplay. Tarantino also won the second   Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. For a while, he even thought about the Django   Unchained sequel. It would be called "Django in  White Hell” and the plot focused on strangers   with a mysterious past, locked in a hut during a  snowstorm. Django would be among them. The story   was a combination of two genres: the parlor-room  mystery and the wide-screen, large-scale western.   The idea came to the director while watching  his collection of TV series such as Bonanza,   /bəˈnænzə/ The Big Valley and The Virginian /ðə  vərˈdʒɪniən/. These shows often had episodes   where a bunch of thugs were held hostage. He thought, "What if I did a movie starring   no heroes, no Michael Landons? Just a bunch of  nefarious guys in a room, all telling backstories   that may or may not be true. Trap those guys  together in a room with a blizzard outside,   give them guns, and see what happens." But Django, being a positive character,   didn't really fit into this concept. “All of a sudden it hit me the only thing   wrong [with the story] was Django. There  should be no moral center. I thought it   should be a room of bad guys, and you  can’t trust a word anybody says”.   So Django left the script, and the story ceased to  be a sequel, but was supposed to become a separate   film called The Hateful Eight. However, in  January 2014, the script leaked online.   You can imagine how furious Tarantino  was. The script was seen by only 6 people,   among whom were Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern  [brus dɜrn] and Tim Roth. It seems that   one of the actors gave the script to his agent,  through whom the leak occurred, but the specific   name of the responsible was never named. Tarantino refused to shoot the picture,   but since he really liked the story, the  director decided to arrange a script reading   at the theater at the Ace Hotel in Los Angeles. And this evening changed Tarantino's mind. "The   energy in that theater was so big," recalls  Michael Madsen, –" It was just big. And   afterwards Quentin said, "Wow, that really  went well. I didn’t think it would go that   well." And they all were like, ‘Yeah, it  did, man.’" Madsen thought that was when   Quentin made the decision to make the film. The calmed director wrote two new endings and   decided to return to the project. Interestingly,  most of the actors who took part in the reading   got roles in the film, with the exception  of Amber Tamblyn, [ˈæmbər ˈtæmblɪn] who   read the role of Daisy - she was replaced by  Jennifer Jason Leigh.[ˈʤɛnəfər ˈʤeɪsən li]   The great Ennio Morricone also took part  in the creation of the film. Previously,   Tarantino had already taken his soundtracks  for his projects, but this time the composer   wrote music specifically for the director. “He trusted me so much. He left me completely   free to compose my music,” Morricone recalled  with delight, “This is totally different from   some of my past experiences. Some directors wanted  me just to do once again what they have already   [heard before] and I had to really force them to  accept my idea, because I wanted to do something   that belonged to me, something that was coming  from myself.” Morricone took fragments of unused   music for the John Carpenter film “The Thing".  And remade them for a new movie. It was symbolic,   taking into account the theme of both  films and the fact that Kurt Russell   had one of the main roles in both movies. Quentin decided that “The Hateful Eight” should   be shot on 70 mm. Moreover, the director went  even further: he decided to shoot the film in   the long-unused Ultra Panavision 70 format, which  was last used on the set of the film Khartoum in   1966. The system was used in only 10 films made  in the 60s. But that didn't stop Tarantino.   The director was extremely lucky. Employees of the  company Panavision, having rummaged in warehouses,   found fifteen lenses. Some of them were  used in the filming of chariots in the   cult "Ben-Hur" /ˌben ˈhɜːr/ in 1959. The  lenses have been slightly modified to make   them compatible with modern cameras. “Quentin is a fearless person; he makes   decisions that are scary at first, but later  always turn out to be perfect,” says costume   designer Courtney Hoffman.[ˈkɔrtni ˈhɔfmən] The 70mm film is perfect for capturing the harsh   landscapes of the western, the snow, and the  beauty of the places where they were shooting.   In addition, the widescreen format allows you to  better convey the tension in the interior scenes,   giving the spectacle a feeling of claustrophobia. The main difficulties on the set were that they   had to shoot in winter. Moreover,  a real blizzard was needed for some   scenes - artificial snow did not suit Quentin. The producers planned to shoot inside during good   weather, and outside during a snowfall that made  them wait. The actors had to be prepared all the   time for the fact that they would be called  in case of a sudden change in the weather,   and psychologically coping with the  constant expectation was much more   difficult than with the cold and heights. Therefore, the actors and members of the film   crew, together with local residents and employees  of nearby resorts, gladly participated in the   burning of skis. It was an urban custom invented  to cause such a welcome snow. Whether it was magic   or pure chance was unknown, but a few days later  a strong storm broke out, thanks to which the   filmmakers managed to complete the shooting.  Perhaps higher powers like Tarantino movies?   In “The Hateful Eight" you can see a small  detail that connects his films. There are   Red Apple cigarettes . Since Tarantino does  not like hidden advertising in the cinema,   you will not find real brands in his films.  There are only ones made-up by the director.   Fictional brands are one of the many  elements that make up the two film   universes of Quentin Tarantino. And this is  not just the guesses of fans, the director   himself mentioned this in an interview. “There's the Realer than Real Universe,   alright, and all the characters inhabit that one.  But then there's this Movie universe. . . From   Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill, they all take place  in this special Movie universe. So, basically,   when the characters of Reservoir Dogs or  Pulp Fiction, when they go to the movies,   Kill Bill is what they go to see. From  Dusk Till Dawn is what they see.”   So, the Realer than Real Universe is similar  to the one where you and I live.. Most of   Tarantino's films take place in it. Fictional  characters can interact with real ones,   and the events of a real story can change. Characters can also roam from movie to movie   of this universe. For example, Vic Vega  from "Reservoir Dogs" is the brother   of Vincent Vega from "Pulp Fiction",  Alabama mentioned in "Reservoir Dogs"   is the same Alabama from "True Romance". Why is it more real than our universe? The   director explained it this way: There is a  normal universe of Quentin, in which all the   pleasure of cinema is concentrated for him,  but which is much more real than real life.   He takes all the relish of genre cinema, adds  the spices of real life, not in the way that is   accepted by the rules, and he gets a buzz. But the Movie-In-A-Movie Universe is a   completely different matter. There  is nothing from real life there,   everything is from the cinema. This universe  really exists only on the screen, projected   onto the screen. It includes both ”Kill Bill"  volumes, From Dusk till Dawn and Grindhouse.   The characters in these films are not directly  related; no random relatives appear in different   films. They are also too unreal to get  into the Realer than Real Universe. There   are vampires and zombies, and Uma Thurman  successfully fights 88 people with a katana.   “The Hateful Eight”, which was released in  2015, could not beat Django Unchained at   the box office. Tarantino believes that “The  Hateful Eight” is his most underrated film.   Nevertheless, the film was nominated for many  film awards, and Tarantino received an award   in the category “Best Original Screenplay” from  The National Board of Review of Motion Pictures.   While the director was taking a  break from filming, the situation   with his partner Harvey Weinstein worsened. And on October 5, 2017, a real thunderstorm   broke out. The New York Times published an  article detailing the fact that he had been   harassing women in the industry for decades. For many years, the names of Weinstein and   Tarantino stood side by side in newspaper  headlines. The director was a gold mine   for the producer, his main trump card. But  they were connected not only by professional,   but also by friendly relations. Shortly  before the scandal, Weinstein threw a party   in honor of Tarantino's engagement. It was not  surprising that the public was waiting for the   director's comment about what happened. “For the last week, I’ve been stunned and   heartbroken about the revelations that have come  to light about my friend for 25 years Harvey   Weinstein,” the director explained his silence,  - “I need a few more days to process my pain,   emotions, anger and memory and then  I will speak publicly about it.”   On October 19, Tarantino finally spoke out  in an interview with the New York Times.   It turned out that back in the mid-90s, he learned  from Mira Sorvino, whom he was dating at the time,   about sexual harassment by Weinstein. “I was shocked and appalled," Tarantino recalled,   “I couldn’t believe he would do that so  openly. I was like: ‘Really? Really?’.   However, at the time he thought it was because  the producer was crazy about Mira. Although this,   of course, did not justify the fact that Weinstein  tried to give the actress a massage, despite her   refusal, and chased her around the hotel room. It seemed to Tarantino that the problem was   solved when Mira started dating him, and  Weinstein left her alone. “I’m with her,   he knows that, he won’t mess with her, he knows  that she’s my girlfriend," Tarantino thought.   However, after several other actresses,  including Uma Thurman, told him that   Weinstein had harassed them, Tarantino realized  that there was a pattern in these actions.   “I knew enough to do more than I did,”...“There  was more to it than just the normal rumors,   the normal gossip. It wasn’t secondhand. I knew he  did a couple of these things. I wish I had taken   responsibility for what I heard. If I had done the  work I should have done then, I would have had to   not work with him.”(Quentin Tarantino) He continued to turn a blind eye to what   was happening, attributing it to a slight  misconduct. It seemed that this time his   watchfulness played a cruel joke with Tarantino. Now he thinks it's wrong, but in the late 90s it   was easier to chalk up what Weinstein  was doing, to the mid-‘60s, Mad Men,   Bewitched /bɪˈwɪtʃt/ era of an executive  chasing the secretary around the desk.   Years later, after more women spoke about  Weinstein's criminal acts, Tarantino said he   did not know about the scale of the disaster. “I’d never heard the stories that later came   out at all” - he said in an interview in 2022, -  There was never any talk of rape or anything like   that.”. “I didn’t think it was, ‘Ok, you do this  for me or you’re not going to get this movie.’   I never heard any actresses say anything like  that,” Tarantino added. “It was just, you know,   ‘Don’t get in the back of a limo with him.’  It was easy to compartmentalize that to some   degree. Anyway, I feel bad about … what I feel  bad about is I feel bad that I did not have a   man-to-man talk with him about it.”

Channel: Biographer

Views: 852,486

Keywords: Quentin Tarantino biography, Quentin Tarantino life story, Quentin Tarantino personal life, Quentin Tarantino scandals, Quentin Tarantino interview, Quentin Tarantino awards, Quentin Tarantino facts, Quentin Tarantino movies, Quentin Tarantino family, Quentin Tarantino kids, Quentin Tarantino wife, Pulp Fiction, Django Unchained, Kill Bill, Reservoir Dogs, Inglourious Basterds, The Hateful Eight, Sin City, From Dusk Till Dawn, Jackie Brown, biographer

Id: DKwdnKrwlao

Length: 146min 35sec (8795 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 30 2023