Quentin Tarantino

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine film biography

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 {

filmography snapshot

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010

Year	Title	Rating
1992	Past Midnight Associate Producer
1992	Reservoir Dogs Actor, Screenwriter, Director
1993	True Romance Screenwriter
1994	Killing Zoe Executive Producer
1994	Natural Born Killers Screen Story
1994	Pulp Fiction Screenwriter, Director, Screen Story, Actor
1994	Sleep with Me Actor
1994	Somebody to Love Actor
1994	The Coriolis Effect Actor
1995	Desperado Actor
1995	Destiny Turns on the Radio Actor
1995	ER: Motherhood Director
1995	Four Rooms Director, Executive Producer, Actor, Screenwriter
1995	Saturday Night Live: Quentin Tarantino TV Guest Appearance
1996	Curdled Executive Producer
1996	From Dusk Till Dawn Actor, Executive Producer, Screenwriter
1996	Girl 6 Actor
1996	The Typewriter, the Rifle, and the Movie Camera Participant
1997	Full-Tilt Boogie Participant
1997	Jackie Brown Screenwriter, Director, Voice
1997	Off the Menu: The Last Days of Chasen's Interviewee
1998	From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money Executive Producer
1998	God Said, Ha! Actor, Executive Producer
1999	Forever Hollywood Participant
1999	From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter Executive Producer
2000	Little Nicky Actor
2002	Alias: The Box, Part 1 TV Guest Appearance
2002	Alias: The Box, Part 2 TV Guest Appearance
2003	BaadAsssss Cinema Participant
2003	Double Dare Participant
2003	Kill Bill Vol. 1 Producer, Screenwriter, Director, Voice
2003	My Name Is Modesty Presented by
2004	Alias: After Six TV Guest Appearance
2004	Epreuves d'Artistes Archival Appearance
2004	Kill Bill Vol. 2 Director, Screenwriter
2004	Kill Bill: The Unseen, Uncensored Full-Length Cut Director
2004	The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing Participant
2004	Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession Interviewee
2005	CSI: Crime Scene Investigation: Grave Danger Screen Story, Director
2005	Daltry Calhoun Executive Producer
2005	Hostel Executive Producer
2005	Sin City Guest Director
2005	The Muppets' Wizard of Oz Actor
2007	Death Proof Director, Screenwriter, Cinematographer, Actor, Producer
2007	Freedom's Fury Executive Producer
2007	Grindhouse Screenwriter, Director
2007	Hostel Part II Executive Producer
2007	Machete Producer
2007	Planet Terror Producer, Actor
2007	Sukiyaki Western Django Actor
2008	Dead On: The Life and Cinema of George A. Romero Participant
2008	Fantastic Flesh: The Art of Make-Up EFX Participant
2008	Hell Ride Executive Producer
2008	Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation Participant
2009	Inglourious Basterds Screenwriter, Director
2009	Killshot Executive Producer
2011	Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel Participant
2011	The Greatest Movie Ever Sold Participant
2012	Django Unchained Screenwriter, Director