In 1992 a young video store clerk began his career as a film director. The man’s name? Johnny Buttsman. He shot straight to video adult films that usually featured live parrots repeating the actors’ lines in the middle of the “action”. Clearly a man ahead of his time.
Across town there was another young video clerk who launched his career with a well received movie called Reservoir Dogs. That guy was Quentin Tarantino. Reservoir was not a big hit but it had a lot of buzz, and more importantly it launched what would become known as the Tarantino style, and should never be confused with the Paul Reubens style which involves a Sarasota movie theater and a post dinner at next door Applebee’s. Quentin was responsible for launching the cinema of cool. People spoke differently and about different things in Reservoir Dogs. They didn’t behave the way you expected movie characters to behave.
Quentin ran with this buzz and released Pulp Fiction, where hit men talked about Royales with cheese and foot massages. This film basically broke all the rules, including killing off your main character halfway through the movie only to have him show up in the last act. Critics were raving about the movie, and it proved that independent film could actually be quite lucrative if handled properly (and was I believe the beginning of the end for indie film but that’s a topic for another column on another day when I don’t have a casserole in the oven due in 10 minutes).
It was after winning an Academy Award that I think QT began to lose it. The first problem was that every up and coming writer and director began to copy his style. Suddenly every independent film had people talking about unimportant issues and topics. What they never understood was that Tarantino’s dialogue always made sense because of the characters uttering the lines.
The second problem was that Quentin began to repeat himself. He turned John Travolta’s career around with Pulp Fiction (Travolta was weighing his options between Pulp and The Experts 2), and tried to accomplish the same with Robert Forster and Pam Grier in Jackie Brown, David Carradine in Kill Bill and to some extent Kurt Russell in Death Proof.
Death Proof was Tarantino taking his clout to the extreme. The film was awful. It was all talking but with no point to it. After all those years of people copying his style, Tarantino was simply spitting out what everyone else had been doing. There was barely any action in the movie, and had it not been for the rather large man in the small shorts sitting next to me eating potato chips (who eats chips in a theater?) I would have fallen asleep.
It seems Quentin has woken up, because his new film stars the hottest actor on the planet right now, no not Crispin Glover, Brad Pitt. Supposedly he’s been writing Inglourious Basterds for over a decade. Personally, I believe that there is nothing worth investing ten years of your time in unless it involves a medical miracle or a toy similar to Silly Putty.
My fear is that Inglourious will suffer from the same problem his other films have. QT is a great writer but needs someone else to direct his scripts to help edit his scenes. Quentin likes to hear his characters talk and talk and talk and never knows when to cut out of a scene. The best Tarantino film ever made is still True Romance, because it was directed by Tony Scott.
I’ll check out Inglourious Basterds because 1) I’m hoping Tarantino has gotten over himself since Death Proof 2) he still can direct decent action as is evidenced with Kill Bill and 3) Brad Pitt is simply the hottest thing on the planet and he builds houses in New Orleans. That man can do no wrong (unless you’re Jennifer Aniston).
Your Talkback on this Story