Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (/ˌtærənˈtiːnoʊ/; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue including a pervasive use of profanity, and references to popular culture.
"Tarantino" redirects here. For other uses, see Tarantino (disambiguation).
Quentin Tarantino
- Film director
- film producer
- screenwriter
- actor
- author
1987–present
2
- Connie McHugh
- Tony Tarantino
Tarantino began his career as an independent filmmaker with the release of the crime film Reservoir Dogs in 1992. His second film, Pulp Fiction (1994), a dark comedy crime thriller, was a major success with critics and audiences winning numerous awards, including the Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. In 1996, he wrote and starred in From Dusk till Dawn. Tarantino's third film, Jackie Brown (1997), paid homage to blaxploitation films.
In 2003, Tarantino directed Kill Bill: Volume 1, inspired by the traditions of martial arts films; it was followed by Volume 2 in 2004, with both volumes combined regarded as a single film. He then made the exploitation-slasher Death Proof (2007), part of a double feature with Robert Rodriguez released under the collective title Grindhouse. His next film, Inglourious Basterds (2009), follows an alternate account of World War II. He followed this with Django Unchained (2012), a slave revenge Spaghetti Western, which won him his second Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. His eighth film, The Hateful Eight (2015), is a revisionist Western thriller and opened to audiences with a roadshow release. His most recent film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), is a comedy drama set in the late 1960s about the transition of Old Hollywood to New Hollywood. A novelization of the film written by Tarantino was published in 2021, becoming his debut novel.
Tarantino's work has been subject to criticism, such as the depictions of violence and frequent inclusion of racial slurs. During Tarantino's career, his films have garnered a cult following; as well as critical and commercial success, he has been considered "the single most influential director of his generation". Other major awards won by Tarantino include two BAFTAs and four Golden Globes.
Early life
Tarantino was born on March 27, 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee, the only child of Connie McHugh and aspiring actor Tony Tarantino, who left the family before his son's birth.[2] Tarantino identifies as having Cherokee descent through his mother, who is of Irish descent on her other side; his father is of Italian descent.[3][2] He was named in part after Quint Asper, Burt Reynolds's character in the TV series Gunsmoke.[4] Tarantino's mother met his father during a trip to Los Angeles. After a brief marriage and divorce, Connie left Los Angeles and moved to Knoxville, where her parents lived. In 1966, Tarantino returned with his mother to Los Angeles.[5][6]
Tarantino's mother married musician Curtis Zastoupil soon after arriving in Los Angeles, and the family moved to Torrance, a city in Los Angeles County's South Bay area.[7][8] Zastoupil accompanied Tarantino to numerous film screenings while his mother allowed him to see more mature movies, such as Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Deliverance (1972). After his mother divorced Zastoupil in 1973, and received a misdiagnosis of Hodgkin's lymphoma, Tarantino was sent to live with his grandparents in Tennessee. He remained there less than a year before returning to California.[9][10]
At 14 years old, Tarantino wrote one of his earliest works, a screenplay called Captain Peachfuzz and the Anchovy Bandit, based on the 1977 film Smokey and the Bandit. Tarantino later revealed that his mother had ridiculed his writing skills when he was younger; as a result, he vowed that he would never share his wealth with her.[11] As a 15-year-old, Tarantino was grounded by his mother for shoplifting Elmore Leonard's novel The Switch from Kmart. He was allowed to leave only to attend the Torrance Community Theater, where he participated in such plays as Two Plus Two Makes Sex and Romeo and Juliet.[9] The same year, he dropped out of Narbonne High School in Harbor City, Los Angeles.[12][13]
Career
1980s: Early jobs and screenplays
Through the 1980s, Tarantino had a number of jobs. After lying about his age, he worked as an usher at an adult movie theater in Torrance, called the Pussycat Theater. He spent time as a recruiter in the aerospace industry, and for five years he worked at Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California.[14][15] He was well known in the local community for his film knowledge and video recommendations; Tarantino stated, "When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, 'No, I went to films."[16][a] In 1986, Tarantino was employed in his first Hollywood job, working with Video Archives colleague Roger Avary, as production assistants on Dolph Lundgren's exercise video, Maximum Potential.[17]
Before working at Video Archives, Tarantino co-wrote Love Birds In Bondage with Scott Magill. Tarantino would go on to produce and direct the short film. Magill committed suicide in 1987, after which all film shot was destroyed.[18] Later, Tarantino attended acting classes at the James Best Theatre Company, where he met several of his eventual collaborators for his next film.[19][20][b] In 1987, Tarantino co-wrote and directed My Best Friend's Birthday (1987). It was left uncompleted, but some of its dialogue was included in True Romance.[23]
The following year, he played an Elvis impersonator in "Sophia's Wedding: Part 1", an episode in the fourth season of The Golden Girls, which was broadcast on November 19, 1988.[24] Tarantino recalled that the pay he received for the part helped support him during the preproduction of Reservoir Dogs; he estimated he was initially paid about $650; however, the episode was frequently rerun because it was on a "best of..." lineup, therefore received about $3,000 in residuals over three years.[25]
1990s: Breakthrough
After meeting Lawrence Bender at a friend's barbecue, Tarantino discussed with him about an unwritten dialogue-driven heist film. Bender encouraged Tarantino to write the screenplay, which he wrote in three and a half weeks and presented to Bender unformatted. Impressed with the script, Bender managed to forward it through contacts to director Monte Hellman.[26] Hellman cleaned up the screenplay and helped secure funding from Richard N. Gladstein at Live Entertainment (which later became Artisan, now known as Lionsgate).[27] Harvey Keitel read the script and also contributed to the budget, taking a role as co-producer and also playing a major part in the picture. In January 1992, it was released as Tarantino's crime thriller Reservoir Dogs—which he wrote, directed, and acted in as Mr. Brown—and screened at the Sundance Film Festival. The film was an immediate hit, receiving a positive response from critics.[28][29]
Appraisals
During his career, Tarantino's films have garnered a cult following, as well as critical and commercial success.[1][192] In 2005, he was included on the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.[193] He was also on The Daily Telegraph list of "Top 100 Living Geniuses" in 2007.[194] Filmmaker and historian Peter Bogdanovich has called him "the single most influential director of his generation".[195][196] Tarantino has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry.[197]
In 2013, a survey of seven academics was carried out to discover which filmmakers had been referenced the most in essays and dissertations on film that had been marked in the previous five years. It revealed that Tarantino was the most-studied director in the United Kingdom, ahead of Alfred Hitchcock, Christopher Nolan, Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg.[198]
Controversies
Racial slurs in films
In 1997, Spike Lee questioned Tarantino's use of racial slurs in his films, especially the N-word, particularly in Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown.[199] In a Variety interview discussing Jackie Brown, Lee said, "I'm not against the word ... And some people speak that way, but Quentin is infatuated with that word... I want Quentin to know that all African Americans do not think that word is trendy or slick."[200] Tarantino responded on The Charlie Rose Show:
Personal life
Relationships and marriage
In the early 1990s Tarantino dated comedians Margaret Cho and Kathy Griffin. From 1995 to 1998 he dated actress Mira Sorvino. He was her date at the 68th Oscars ceremony where she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In March 1998 they separated, with Sorvino releasing a statement that "[They] still love each other very much" but had reached a "mutual" decision to go their separate ways."[227] From 2003 to 2005, Tarantino was in a romantic relationship with filmmaker Sofia Coppola. The two have remained friends since their breakup.[228]
On June 30, 2017, Tarantino became engaged to Israeli singer Daniella Pick, daughter of musician Zvika Pick. They met in 2009 when Tarantino was in Israel to promote Inglourious Basterds.[229] They married on November 28, 2018, in a Reform Jewish ceremony in their Beverly Hills Home.[230][231] As of January 2020, they were splitting their time between the Ramat Aviv Gimel neighborhood of Tel Aviv, Israel and Los Angeles.[232] On February 22, 2020, their son[233][234] was born in Israel.[235] Their second child, a daughter, was born in July 2022.[236][237]
Faith and religious views
As a youth, Tarantino attended an Evangelical church, describing himself as "baptized, born again and everything in between". Tarantino said this was an act of rebellion against his Catholic mother as she had encouraged what might usually be considered more conventional forms of rebellion, such as his interests in comic books and horror films. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Tarantino was evasive about his religious beliefs but said he believed in God, whom he credited with giving him his writing ability.[238]
In the 2010s, Tarantino continued ascribing his talents to gifts from God but expressed uncertainty regarding God's existence. "I think I was born Catholic, but I was never practiced," said Tarantino. "As time has gone on, as I've become a man and made my way further as an adult, I'm not sure how much any of that I believe in. I don't really know if I believe in God, especially not in this Santa Claus character that people seemed to have conjured up."[239][240] In June 2021, Tarantino said he was an atheist.[241]
Views on gun violence and police brutality
Tarantino has said he does not believe that violence in film inspires real acts of violence.[242] In an interview with Terry Gross, Tarantino expressed "annoyance" at the suggestion that there is a link between the two, saying, "I think it's disrespectful to [the] memory of those who died to talk about movies ... Obviously the issue is gun control and mental health."[243]
In October 2015, Tarantino attended a rally held in New York protesting police brutality. The event aimed to call attention to "police brutality and its victims". At the event Tarantino made a speech, "I'm a human being with a conscience ... And when I see murder I cannot stand by. And I have to call the murdered the murdered and I have to call the murderers the murderers."[244]
As a response to Tarantino's comments police unions across the United States called for a boycott of his upcoming film at the time, The Hateful Eight. Patrick J. Lynch, union president of the Police Benevolent Association of the City of New York, said, "It's no surprise that someone who makes a living glorifying crime and violence is a cop-hater, too. The police officers that Quentin Tarantino calls 'murderers' aren't living in one of his depraved big screen fantasies — they're risking and sometimes sacrificing their lives to protect communities from real crime and mayhem."[244] The Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck said Tarantino "doesn't understand the nature of the violence. Mr. Tarantino lives in a fantasy world. That's how he makes his living. His movies are extremely violent, but he doesn't understand violence. … Unfortunately, he mistakes lawful use of force for murder, and it's not."[245]
Tarantino's response to this criticism was, "All cops are not murderers ... I never said that. I never even implied that."[244] In an MSNBC interview with Chris Hayes, he said, "Just because I was at an anti-police brutality protest doesn't mean I'm anti-police."[246] He clarified his protest comments, "We were at a rally where unarmed people – mostly black and brown – who have been shot and killed or beaten or strangled by the police, and I was obviously referring to the people in those types of situations. I was referring to Eric Garner, I was referring to Sam DuBose, I was referring to Antonio Guzman Lopez, I was referring to Tamir Rice ... In those cases in particular that we're talking about, I actually do believe that they were murder."[247]