Quentin Tarantino  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Related e

Google Wikipedia Wiktionary Wiki Commons Wikisource Wordpress YouTube Shop Featured: The Trylon and Perisphere, two modernistic structures at the New York World's Fair of 1939-1940 Photo: Trylon, Perisphere and Helicline (Samuel H. Gottscho)

Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an Academy Award- and Palme d'Or-winning American film director, screenwriter and actor. He rose to fame in the early 1990s as an auteur indie filmmaker whose films used postmodern nonlinear storylines, and stylized violence.

Influences and style of filmmaking

In the 2002 Sight & Sound Directors' poll, Tarantino revealed his top-twelve films: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Rio Bravo; Taxi Driver; His Girl Friday; Rolling Thunder; They All Laughed; The Great Escape; Carrie; Coffy; Dazed and Confused; Five Fingers of Death; and Hi Diddle Diddle. In 2009, he named Kinji Fukasaku's violent action film Battle Royale as his favorite film released since he became a director in 1992.

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, 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".

Tarantino's different style of film making 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. 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.

African American Perspective

Tarantino has been criticized for a too familial attitude towards other cultures. Spike Lee questions the use of racial epithets in his films, particularly the racially offensive word nigger. In an interview for Variety 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?" Tarantino retaliated on The Howard Stern Show by stating Lee would have to "stand on a chair to kiss my ass" Samuel L. Jackson, who has appeared in films directed by both directors, 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."

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".

According to a 1995 Premiere magazine article, actor Denzel Washington would also confront Tarantino on his usage of racial slurs in his pictures, but mentioned that Tarantino was a 'fine artist.'

Filmography