Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, October 14, 1994 TAG: 9410150013
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FRANK BRUNI KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Long
As of last month, only an estimated 9 percent of Americans were familiar with his name, and one-tenth of those people misidentified him as a soccer player, according to a Gallup poll commissioned by Entertainment Weekly.
He is only 31 years old, drives a Geo Metro, inhabits a reportedly unremarkable apartment in West Hollywood and has not been romantically linked to Madonna, Julia Roberts or Winona Ryder.
Why, then, is Quentin Tarantino arguably the most closely watched and widely discussed filmmaker in Hollywood right now?
It's time for a crash course on Tarantino, who will come to much greater public attention with his second directorial feature, ``Pulp Fiction,'' which opens today.
It's already been hailed as a masterpiece. To prepare moviegoers for it, we offer Tarantino 101.
LESSON 1: The Making and Praising of ``Pulp Fiction.''
``I thought it deserved this reception,'' Tarantino says immodestly during an interview last week. ``But I didn't know I'd get it. I figured I would in time. I figured people would look back in 20 years and say, `Wow, that was something.' ''
Actually, people have been saying ``Wow'' from the moment Tarantino finished the screenplay for ``Pulp Fiction,'' which he scribbled in longhand on notebook paper.
Those sheets contained a triptych of interwoven crime tales that subvert conventional chronology and mix copious bloodshed with sly, irreverent humor.
That amalgam is a Tarantino trademark. It shows up in ``Reservoir Dogs,'' which he both wrote and directed; last year's ``True Romance,'' which he scripted; and this year's ``Natural Born Killers,'' which came from an original story he'd written. He declined a screenwriting credit after director Oliver Stone made changes he didn't like.
The screenplay for ``Pulp Fiction'' also featured the kind of long-winded, challenging dialogue that actors relish, and a host of important talents agreed to make the movie for fractions of their usual salaries. They included Harvey Keitel, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman and Samuel L. Jackson.
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Some even bigger names were turned away.
``It was definitely an embarrassment of riches,'' says producer Lawrence Bender, who has been making movies for less than half a decade. ``I was getting calls from some of the most powerful agents in town. It was actually scary to me.''
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When executives at TriStar Pictures took a look, they, too, said, ``Wow,'' but nervously. The violence and profanity made them balk, and they released rights to it, which were snatched up by Miramax.
The first sign that Miramax's gamble might pay off came in March at the Cannes Film Festival, where ``Pulp Fiction'' became only the fourth American movie in the competition's history to win the top prize.
LESSON 2: Tarantino Engenders Controversy.
Not everyone thinks he's a genius. In regard to ``Reservoir Dogs,'' which is about a jewel heist gone wrong, a few critics described Tarantino as a canny fraud, tapping an astonishing fluency in other directors' movies to create showy, but derivative work.
A larger group objected to the violence in ``Reservoir Dogs,'' which includes a 10-minute sequence in which a character is slowly tortured. Tarantino has grown so tired of defending it that his whole posture and manner change when the subject is raised. He slouches and sighs.
The violence complaint, he says, ``is like this giant spotlight they're shining in everybody's eyes, so they don't see anything other than that. If I was doing swashbuckling movies, no one would ask, `Why so many swordfights?' I'm telling stories in a crime film, and [violence] is a staple of the genre. It's a staple of what happens. It's life rearing its ugly head.''
Tarantino uses violence not casually but to purposeful and unusual effect, interspersing gore with hilarious dialogue and wedding it to characters with a sometimes shockingly casual attitude toward the blood around them.
Violence - and the revulsion it triggers - are tools in Tarantino's constant striving for unnerving juxtapositions. NEXT 2 GRAFS OPTIONAL)
In a sequence from ``Pulp Fiction,'' he makes viewers cringe by introducing the idea that someone will plunge a syringe of life-saving adrenaline into the heart of a woman who has overdosed on heroin. Simultaneously, he makes viewers guffaw over the antics of characters who can't coordinate this effort at resuscitation.
``It has the frantic-ness of an emergency room sequence, except nobody knows what they're doing,'' Tarantino explains. ``It's believable - it's the way people would act - but it's also funny.''
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LESSON 3: A Director Is Born
Like many auteurs, Tarantino possessed an intelligence that didn't submit well to traditional schooling. He flunked the sixth grade, then dropped out after the ninth.
His preferred classroom was the local cinema, where he spent much of his Los Angeles childhood. Later, he worked at Video Archives, a rental store known for its movie-mad clerks, a few of whom have gone on to become independent filmmakers.
He knew he wanted a career in filmmaking, and though he dabbled in acting - he once did a guest spot as an Elvis impersonator on ``The Golden Girls'' - he soon realized that writing and directing were his passions.
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He started scribbling screenplays. His determination was fierce. He compares it to the zeal of the title character in ``Ed Wood,'' a forthcoming movie about one of Hollywood's worst schlock directors. Wood's drive to create and to succeed was so great he couldn't see how awful his work was.
``I cried maybe eight times during `Ed Wood,' '' says Tarantino, who saw an advance screening. ``I could completely relate to him so tremendously. The film's really funny, but some little voice inside of me was yelling at the audience, `Stop laughing! Shut up! This is this man's soul!' ''
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Tarantino left Video Archives to work for a small independent production company, where he met Bender, the producer. Bender convinced Harvey Keitel to look at the screenplay for ``Reservoir Dogs,'' and Keitel's agreement to appear in it enabled Bender to raise $1.5 million for its production.
Tarantino raised additional funds by selling his scripts for ``True Romance'' and ``Natural Born Killers.''
``Reservoir Dogs'' got spots at many major film festivals, where it riveted Hollywood insiders. This was precisely Tarantino's plan.
``I figured that every year, there are about four independent films that do really well,'' he says. ``Did I expect it to reach the level it got - that, by my second film, I would be considered this proven entity? No.''
LESSON 4: The Walking Movie Encyclopedia
Part of what makes Tarantino's work so accomplished, and his conversation so lively, is the massive movie library stored in his near-perfect memory. He can recite whole scenes from the most arcane movies imaginable.
``Quentin talks in film metaphors,'' says Samuel L. Jackson. ``If you name a film, Quentin can say a line of dialogue from it. He can name who did the costumes. It's that kind of film mind.''
``When he's directing, he'll say, `This scene is like the opening shot in `Kagemusha.' Then we're going to do the Sergio Leone thing. Then we're going to do the Road Runner type thing where Wile E. Coyote almost goes off the cliff.' You can only make sense of it if you've seen all the films.''
A perfect emblem of Generation X's literacy in pop culture, he surrounds himself with its relics - kung fu posters, a ``Welcome Back, Kotter'' board game he played with Travolta. (``I won,'' says Travolta.) He is known to make and keep long lists of movies that meet certain criteria or include given kinds of scenes.
LESSON 5: Situations vs. Stories
A number of commonalities are emerging among Tarantino's screenplays and directorial efforts. In addition to a potent mix of tones, they boast daring structures. ``Reservoir Dogs'' constantly flashes forward and backward in time. ``Pulp Fiction'' takes a circular shape.
``I like to tell stories,'' Tarantino says, adding that most Hollywood releases are about mere situations. ``You know what you're going to see in the first 10 minutes, and maybe even from the poster. It's a situation, and the movie is just living up to the situation.''
Bruce Willis says storytelling is what makes ``Pulp Fiction'' so unique.
``Everyone in Hollywood would be very happy if they could tell a story as good as this film,'' says Willis.
``Pulp Fiction'' veers off in unexpected directions. So, perhaps, will Tarantino's career. He says he'll move on to movies outside the crime genre; he says there are dozens of ideas percolating in his mind.
The way things are going right now, he may get to indulge each and every one of them.
by CNB