Best Known As: Writer and director of Pulp Fiction
A high school dropout and video freak, Quentin Tarantino took Hollywood by storm in 1992 with the cult hit Reservoir Dogs. His combination of clever dialogue and brutal violence hit a new peak in 1994 with Pulp Fiction, which won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and revived the career of John Travolta. Tarantino also began to dabble in acting, appearing with Antonio Banderas in Desperado (1995), and with George Clooney in From Dusk Til Dawn (1996). In 1997 he had a solid, if not spectacular, hit with Jackie Brown, starring Pam Grier. An overnight success by Hollywood standards, Tarantino is considered a genius by some and a snotty imitator by others, adding to his mystique as a moviemaker. In 2003 he announced that his film, Kill Bill (starring Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu) would be released in two parts. The first part was released in 2003, and the second part was released in 2004. He teamed with filmmaker Robert Rodriguez for the 2007 "double feature" project, Grindhouse (with Rose McGowan and Kurt Russell), and released his World War II drama Inglourious Basterds in 2009.
Tarantino had a recurring role in the Jennifer Garner's TV series Alias.
(born March 27, 1963, Knoxville, Tenn., U.S.) U.S. director and screenwriter. He worked in a video store in California before selling two screenplays that became True Romance (1993) and Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994). He made his directing debut with Reservoir Dogs (1993). His controversial Pulp Fiction (1994) won the Academy Award for best screenplay and the Golden Palm at the Cannes Film Festival. His films, including Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), and Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004), are known for their stylized violence, razor-sharp dialogue, and fascination with film and pop culture. Tarantino also worked as an actor, producer, and executive of a film distribution company, Rolling Thunder.
Director/screenwriter/actor/producer Quentin Tarantino was perhaps the most distinctive and volatile talent to emerge in American film in the early '90s. Unlike the previous generation of American filmmakers, Tarantino learned his craft from his days as a video clerk rather than as a film-school student. Consequently, he developed an audacious fusion of pop culture and independent arthouse cinema; his films were thrillers that were distinguished as much by their clever, twisting dialogue as their outbursts of extreme violence. Tarantino initially began his career as an actor (his biggest role was as an Elvis impersonator on an episode of The Golden Girls), taking classes while he was working at Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, CA.
During his time at Video Archives, the fledgling filmmaker began writing screenplays, completing his first, True Romance, in 1987. With his co-worker, Roger Avary (who would later also become a director), Tarantino tried to get financial backing to film the script. After years of negotiations, he decided to sell the script, which wound up in the hands of director Tony Scott. During this time, Tarantino wrote the screenplay for Natural Born Killers. Again, he was unable to come up with enough investors to make a movie and gave the script to his partner, Rand Vossler. Tarantino then used the money he made from True Romance to begin pre-production on Reservoir Dogs, a film about a failed heist. Reservoir Dogs received financial backing from LIVE Entertainment after Harvey Keitel agreed to star in the movie. Word-of-mouth on Reservoir Dogs began to build at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival, which led to scores of glowing reviews, making the film a cult hit. While many critics and fans were praising Tarantino, he developed a sizable number of detractors. Claiming he ripped off the obscure Hong Kong thriller City on Fire, the critics only added to the director/writer's already considerable buzz. During 1993, Tarantino wrote and directed his next feature, Pulp Fiction, which featured three interweaving crime storylines; Tony Scott's big-budget production of True Romance was also released that year.
In 1994, Tarantino was elevated from a cult figure to a major celebrity. Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that May, beginning the flood of good reviews for the picture. Before Pulp Fiction was released in October, Oliver Stone's bombastic version of Natural Born Killers hit the theaters in August; Tarantino distanced himself from the film and was only credited for writing the basic story. Pulp Fiction soon eclipsed Natural Born Killers in both acclaim and popularity. Made for eight million dollars, the film eventually grossed over 100 million dollars and topped many critics' top ten lists. Pulp Fiction earned seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay (Tarantino and Avary), Best Actor (John Travolta), Best Supporting Actor (Samuel L. Jackson), and Best Supporting Actress (Uma Thurman); it won one, for Tarantino and Avery's writing.
After the film's success, Tarantino was everywhere, from talk shows to a cameo in the low-budget Sleep With Me. At the beginning of 1995, he directed a segment of the anthology film Four Rooms and acted in Robert Rodriguez's sequel to El Mariachi, Desperado, and the comedy Destiny Turns on the Radio, in which he had a starring role. Tarantino also kept busy with television, directing an episode of the NBC TV hit ER and appearing in Margaret Cho's sitcom All-American Girl.
The latter half of the '90s saw Tarantino continue his multifaceted role as an actor, director, screenwriter, and producer. In 1996, he served as the screenwriter and executive producer for the George Clooney schlock-fest From Dusk Till Dawn, and the following year renewed some of his earlier acclaim as the director and screenwriter of Jackie Brown. The film, in which Tarantino had a voice-over cameo, reunited him with Fiction star Samuel L. Jackson and won him the raves that had been missing for much of his post-Fiction career. Also in 1997, Tarantino appeared in Full Tilt Boogie, a documentary about the making of From Dusk Till Dawn. His film work the following year was essentially confined to a role in friend Julia Sweeney's God Said, Ha!, and in 1999, he was back behind the camera as the producer for From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money.
Though Tarantino would lay relatively low in the early years of the new millennium, he did make a prominent guest-starring appearance in 2001 on a two-episode story arc of the spy show Alias. In late 2002/early 2003, hype would soon start to build around his fourth feature, Kill Bill (2003). Though originally envisioned to be a single release, Kill Bill was eventually seperated into two films entitled Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 when it became obvious that the story was simply too far-reaching to be contained in a single film. A kinetic homage to revenge movies of the 1970s, Kill Bill Vol. 1 featured Uma Thurman as a former assassin known as "The Bride." While the first film in the pair was an eye-popping homage to Asian cinema and all things extreme, the outrageous violence of Kill Bill Vol. 1 stood in stark contrast to the dialogue-driven second installment that concluded the epic tale of revenge and betrayal. The gambit of separate releases paid off, as both earned a combined sum of more than 130 million dollars domestically.
In the wake of the Kill Bill films, rumors abounded concerning Tarantino's next feature, and eager fans were shocked to see his name mentioned as being a potential candidate to helm everything from the next Friday the 13th film to a remake of the James Bond classic Casino Royale.
In 2005, Tarantino did step back into the director's chair to helm a segment of Robert Rodriguez's eagerly anticipated comic book adaptation Sin City. A longtime friend of Rodriguez, Tarantino agreed to take part in the filming of Sin City, not only to repay the versatile filmmaker for providing soundtrack music for the Kill Bill films, but also to try his hand at digital filmmaking -- a process increasingly championed by the seemingly inexhaustable Rodriguez. After this, the two directors joined forces again, for one of the most ballyhooed and hotly anticipated pictures of 2007: Grindhouse. A no-holds-barred elegy to the sleazy, seedy, often half-dilapidated inner-city theaters of the 1970s that would churn out similarly sleazy movies, Tarantino and Rodriguez divided Grindhouse into two portions: the first half, Death Proof, directed by Tarantino, starred Kurt Russell in homage to the high-octane auto thrillers of the '70s. Merging low-brow thrills with blunt, existential dialogue, the Tarantino segment garnered the lion's share of the film's considerable critical praise, although the three-hour-plus Grindhouse ultimately failed to connect with audiences, much to the dismay of The Weinstein Company, who released it. Separate versions of Death Proof and Rodriguez's Planet Terror were then prepped for European release, with Tarantino's effort screened in competition at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.
In 2009 Tarantino issued Inglorious Basterds, a sprawling World War II epic abuot a band of Jewish American soldiers fighting an Apache resistence behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied France. The film, strring Brad Pitt, was a hit around the world, and garnered Tarantino nominations from the Writers Guild, the Directors Guild, the Hollywood Foreign Press, and the Academy for his screenplay and his direction. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Rovi
As an employee of the Video Archives, a now-defunct video rental store in Manhattan Beach, he and fellow movie enthusiasts, including Roger Avary, discussed cinema and customer video recommendations at length. He paid close attention to the types of films people liked to rent and has cited that experience as inspiration for his directorial career.[9] Tarantino has been quoted as saying, "When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'no, I went to films.'"[4]
Film career
After Tarantino met Lawrence Bender at a Hollywood party, Bender encouraged him to write a screenplay. Tarantino directed and co-wrote a movie called My Best Friend's Birthday in 1987. The final reel of the film was almost fully destroyed in a lab fire that occurred during editing but its screenplay would form the basis for True Romance. In January 1992, Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs screened at the Sundance Film Festival and was an immediate hit. The film garnered critical acclaim. Reservoir Dogs was a dialogue-driven heist movie that set the tone for his later films. Tarantino wrote the script in three and a half weeks and Bender forwarded it to director Monte Hellman. Hellman helped Tarantino to secure funding from Richard Gladstein at Live Entertainment (which later became Artisan). Harvey Keitel read the script and also contributed to funding, taking a co-producer role, and a part in the movie.[10]
Tarantino has had a number of collaborations with director Robert Rodriguez.
Tarantino's screenplay True Romance was optioned and eventually released in 1993. The second script that Tarantino sold was Natural Born Killers, which was revised by Dave Veloz, Richard Rutowski and director Oliver Stone. Tarantino was given story credit, and wished the film well.[11] Following the success of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino was approached by Hollywood and offered numerous projects, including Speed and Men in Black. He instead retreated to Amsterdam to work on his script for Pulp Fiction. After Pulp Fiction was completed, he then directed Episode Four of Four Rooms, "The Man from Hollywood", a tribute to the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode that starred Steve McQueen. Four Rooms was a collaborative effort with filmmakers Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, and Robert Rodriguez. The film was very poorly received by critics. He appeared in and wrote the script for Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk till Dawn, which saw mixed reviews from the critics yet led to two sequels, for which Tarantino and Rodriguez would only serve as executive producers.
Tarantino's third feature film was Jackie Brown (1997), an adaptation of Rum Punch, a novel by Elmore Leonard. A homage to blaxploitation films, it starred Pam Grier, who starred in many of that genre's films of the 1970s. He had then planned to make the war film provisionally titled Inglourious Bastards, but postponed it to write and direct Kill Bill (released as two films, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2), a highly stylized "revenge flick" in the cinematic traditions of Wuxia (Chinese martial arts), Jidaigeki (Japanese period cinema), Spaghetti Westerns and Italian horror. It was based on a character (The Bride) and a plot that he and Kill Bill's lead actress, Uma Thurman, had developed during the making of Pulp Fiction. In 2004, Tarantino returned to Cannes, where he served as President of the Jury. Although Kill Bill was not in competition, Vol. 2 had an evening screening, while it was also shown on the morning of the final day in its original 3-hour-plus version with Quentin himself attending the full screening. Tarantino then went on to be credited as "Special Guest Director" in Robert Rodriguez's 2005 neo-noir film Sin City for his work directing the car sequence featuring Clive Owen and Benicio del Toro.
The next film project was Grindhouse, which he co-directed with Rodriguez. Released in theaters on April 6, 2007, Tarantino's contribution to the Grindhouse project was titled Death Proof. It began as a take on 1970s slasher films,[12] but evolved dramatically as the project unfolded. Ticket sales were low despite mostly positive reviews.
Among his producing credits are the horror flick Hostel (which included numerous references to his own Pulp Fiction), the adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Killshot (for which Tarantino was credited as an executive producer although Tarantino was no longer associated with the film after its 2009 release.)[13] and Hell Ride (written and directed by Larry Bishop, who appeared in Kill Bill Vol. 2).
Tarantino's 2009 film Inglourious Basterds is the story of a group of guerrilla U.S. soldiers in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. Filming began in October 2008.[14] The film opened on August 21, 2009 to very positive reviews[15] and the #1 spot at the box office worldwide.[16] It went on to become Tarantino's highest grossing film, both in the United States and worldwide.[17]
In 2011, production began on Django Unchained, about the revenge of a slave on his former master. The film stemmed from Tarantino's desire to produce a spaghetti western set in America's Deep South; Tarantino has called the proposed style "a southern",[18] stating that he wanted "to do movies that deal with America's horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it's ashamed of it, and other countries don't really deal with because they don't feel they have the right to".[18] Tarantino finished the script on April 26, 2011, and handed in the final draft to The Weinstein Company.[19] Agency William Morris Endeavor reported Christoph Waltz was cast to play a German bounty hunter,[20] with Stacey Sher producing. Although Will Smith and Idris Elba were heavily rumored to be up for the title role, Jamie Foxx has since been confirmed to play Django.[21] Tarantino regular Samuel L. Jackson will play Stephen, a wise, proud house slave. Leonardo DiCaprio has also been officially cast in the role of Calvin Candie, the primary antagonist in the film. Kevin Costner had been cast as Ace Woody, a "vile and sadistic trainer of slaves who are forced to fight in death matches for a plantation owner (DiCaprio)" before he later dropped out due to scheduling conflicts, and has been replaced by Kurt Russell.[22]Kerry Washington has been cast as Broomhilda, the "long-suffering slave wife of Django."[23] Other cast members include Dennis Christopher as Candie family lawyer Leonide 'Leo' Moguy, Laura Cayouette as Candie's sister, Lara Lee Candie-Fitzwilly, M.C. Gainey and Tom Savini as Big John and Ellis Brittle, two of the slave owners who separate Django and Broomhilda, Anthony LaPaglia and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Australian brothers, Jano and an unnamed character, respectively,[24] who encounter Django while escorting slaves to a fight.[25][26] However, Gordon-Levitt has not fully committed to the film, due to possible scheduling issues,[27][28][29][30] and Gerald McRaney and Michael K. Williams in unknown roles. Tarantino-collaborator RZA was cast as a slave named Thadeus. According to ReservoirWatchDogs.com, Sacha Baron Cohen was cast in the role as gambler Scotty Harmony who wishes to purchase Django's wife from Calvin Candie.[31] Reportedly, Tarantino is also interested in including Lady Gaga in the film to some degree.[32] The film is said to be inspired by the 1966 film Django, directed by Sergio Corbucci. James Remar is also involved in the film. The film is scheduled to be released on December 25, 2012.
Producer
In recent years, Tarantino has used his Hollywood power to give smaller and foreign films more attention than they might have received otherwise. These films are usually labeled "Presented by Quentin Tarantino" or "Quentin Tarantino Presents". The first of these productions was in 2001 with the Hong Kong martial arts film Iron Monkey which made over $14 million in the United States, seven times its budget. In 2004 he brought the Chinese martial arts film Hero to U.S. shores. It ended up having a #1 opening at the box office and making $53.5 million. In 2006, the latest "Quentin Tarantino presents" production, Hostel, opened at #1 at the box office with a $20.1 million opening weekend, good for 8th all time in January. He presented 2006's The Protector, and is a producer of the (2007) film Hostel: Part II. in 2008 he produced the Larry Bishop helmed Hell Ride, a revenge biker film.[33]
Before Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino had considered making The Vega Brothers. The film would have starred Michael Madsen and John Travolta reprising their roles of Vic (Mr. Blonde) from Reservoir Dogs and Vincent from Pulp Fiction. However in 2007, because of the age of the actors and the onscreen deaths of both characters, he claimed that the project (which he intended to call Double V Vega) is "kind of unlikely now".[34]
In 2009, in an interview for Italian TV, after being asked about the success of the two Kill Bill films, Tarantino said "You haven't asked me about the third one", and implied that he would be making a third Kill Bill film with the words "The Bride will fight again!"[35] Later that year, at the Morelia International Film Festival,[36] Tarantino announced that he would like to film Kill Bill: Vol. 3. He explained that he wanted ten years to pass between The Bride's last conflict, in order to give her and her daughter a period of peace.[37]
Personal life
Tarantino has been romantically linked with American actress Mira Sorvino,[38] directors Allison Anders and Sofia Coppola, actresses Julie Dreyfus and comedians Kathy Griffin and Margaret Cho.[39] There have also been rumors about his relationship with Uma Thurman, whom he has referred to as his "muse".[40] However, Tarantino has stated that their relationship is strictly platonic.[41] Tarantino stated "I'm not saying that I'll never get married or have a kid before I'm 60. But I've made a choice, so far, to go on this road alone. Because this is my time to make movies."[42] He also has said that he plans to retire from filmmaking at age 60, to focus on writing novels and film literature. He also is skeptical of the film industry going digital, saying, "If it actually gets to the place where you can't show 35 mm film in theatres anymore and everything is digital projection, I won't even make it to 60."[43]
On, February 18, 2010, it was announced that Tarantino had bought the New Beverly Cinema. Tarantino allowed the current owners to continue operating the theater, but he will be making programming suggestions from time to time. He was quoted as saying: "As long as I'm alive, and as long as I'm rich, the New Beverly will be there, showing films shot on 35mm."[44]
Tarantino has created a unique style that is all his own, combining styles from his favorite genres into brand new mash-ups, making him one of the more recent true Auteurs. He expresses his films exactly from his point of view, for example, in Kill Bill he combined Sonny Chiba-style kung fu films and spaghetti westerns. Tarantino is the first to tell people that he is heavily inspired, in plot and style, by his favorite movies; and manages to pay homage to his favorites, yet still create a film that has a unique feel to it. He frequently employs a retro sensibility to his films, placing the viewers in the old Saturday matinee movies or the 70's exploitation films. At the same time, he adds personal touches, such as his frequent use of foot-centered shots. Tarantino’s love of women's feet finds its way into the majority of his films. His body of work features unique humor, action, interpersonal touch, and fast-paced, pop culture-laden dialogue. It has been claimed that Tarantino has written some of the best most memorable dialogue ever heard in cinema.[46][47]
In an awards ceremony in the Critics Choice Awards celebrating Tarantino, he said he got his start in filmmaking in his 20s. Music is an important part of his filmmaking style. He said he would listen to music in his bedroom and create scenes that correlated to the music playing.[48]
In August 2007, while teaching a four-hour film course during the 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival in Manila, Tarantino cited Filipino directors Cirio Santiago, Eddie Romero, and Gerardo de León as personal icons from the 1970s,[51] citing De Leon's "soul-shattering, life-extinguishing" movies on vampires and female bondage, particularly Women in Cages. "It is just harsh, harsh, harsh," he said, and described the final shot as one of "devastating despair".[51] Upon his arrival in the Philippines, Tarantino was quoted in the local newspaper as saying, 'I'm a big fan of RP [Republic of the Philippines] cinema.'
Actor Steve Buscemi has described Tarantino's different style of film making as "bursting with energy" and "focused,"[52] a style that has earned him many accolades worldwide. According to Tarantino, a recurring hallmark in all his movies is that there is a different sense of humour in all his movies, which gets the audience to laugh at things that aren't funny.[53] Michael Winner, whilst appearing on an episode of Piers Morgan's life stories (an ITV production), stated that Quentin Tarantino was a "big fan" of Death Wish.
Racial epithets in Tarantino's work
Spike Lee questioned Tarantino's use of racial epithets in his films, particularly the racially offensive epithet, "nigger". In a Variety interview discussing Jackie Brown, Lee said: "I'm not against the word... and I use it, but Quentin is infatuated with the word. What does he want? To be made an honorary black man?"[54] Tarantino responded on Charlie Rose by stating:
As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are, all right? And to say that I can't do that because I'm white, but the Hughes brothers can do that because they're black, that is racist. That is the heart of racism, all right. And I do not accept that ... That is how a segment of the black community that lives in Compton, lives in Inglewood, where Jackie Brown takes place, that lives in Carson, that is how they talk. I'm telling the truth. It would not be questioned if I was black, and I resent the question because I'm white. I have the right to tell the truth. I do not have the right to lie.[55]
In addition, Tarantino retaliated on The Howard Stern Show by stating Lee would have to "stand on a chair to kiss my ass."[56]Samuel L. Jackson, who has appeared in both directors' films, defended Tarantino's use of the word. At the Berlin Film Festival, where Jackie Brown was being screened, Jackson responded to Lee's criticism by saying:
I don't think the word is offensive in the context of this film ... Black artists think they are the only ones allowed to use the word. Well, that's bull. Jackie Brown is a wonderful homage to black exploitation films. This is a good film, and Spike hasn't made one of those in a few years.[57]
Tarantino has defended his use of the word, arguing that black audiences have an appreciation of his blaxploitation-influenced films that eludes some of his critics, and, indeed, that Jackie Brown, another oft-cited example, was primarily made for "black audiences".[58]
According to a 1995 Premiere magazine article, actor Denzel Washington also confronted Tarantino on his usage of racial slurs in his pictures, but mentioned that Tarantino was a "fine artist."[59]
In 2009, his film Inglourious Basterds was nominated for eight Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, winning one for Best Supporting Actor.
In March 2010, Tarantino was awarded the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic along with Lucy Liu and Andy Vajna for producing the 2006 movie Freedom's Fury.[63]
^ Keitel heard of the script through his wife, who had attended a class with Lawrence Bender (see Reservoir Dogs special edition DVD commentary).
^Fuller, Graham (1998). "Graham Fuller/1993". In Peary, Gerald. Quentin Tarantino: Interviews. University Press of Mississippi. pp. 57–59. ISBN1578060516.
^White, James (23 October 2011). [Empire (film magazine) "Gordon-Levitt Up For Django Unchained"]. Empire. Empire (film magazine). Retrieved 22 November 2011.
Wikipedia on Answers.com. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article Quentin Tarantino. Read more
.jpg)
