Why I love Quentin Tarantino

Those of you that know me, know my relative obsession with Quentin Tarantino. I've been a fan since the first time Reservoir Dogs blew my brain off. Being around 12 at the time, this movie scared the shit out of me, confused me and kept me enthralled all at the same time. It's what any Tarantino fan watches his movies for in the first place. He does what he does and NO ONE else is like him. Many, and I unfortunately mean many, have tried to do what he does.

How many movies have you seen that have a storyline that jumps from present to past and back again like Quentin does? He wasn't the first to do this but he was certainly the one that made it the "it" thing to do when writing a screenplay. Too many films come to mind that do this now. For a while after he kicked our asses with Pulp Fiction EVERYONE was trying to duplicate his storytelling style. The funny thing is he doesn't even try to do this. It's just what comes natural to him when writing a story. Which only inflates his Genius more in my eyes.

Quentin's well known for his encyclopedic knowledge of films. Not just popular films mind you, ALL genres of films. He'll talk about this film influenced this scene and how and most people scratch their heads, not having the slightest clue as to what movie he's talking about. (Myself included for sure) It's this knowledge though that, mostly, makes him what he is. I mean imitation is the sincerest form of flattery right? But he doesn't copy anyone he just "borrows". And it's usually a style, not "I think I'll do this shot because Director X did it and it made them famous". If you watch him do an interview on a late show or TV show he seems to be "out there". He's twitchy, he jumps around in the conversation and most of the time he's the only one laughing at his jokes. He's pretty much just a big friggin' dork. Just a very talented dork.

Quentin has a grasp for storytelling, great camera shots, how to build intensity and wind back down to eventually draw you back in and his strongest point as a filmmaker, in my opinion, is his writing of dialogue. I consider myself a director and a little bit of a writer. Yet unproven but still... If I could write anything as good as Quentin's dialogue I'd be a very happy (and potentially well off) director and writer. In any Tarantino film you'll see a group of people sitting around a table and talking away. But (unless you don't like Tarantino and if you don't, why are you still reading this?) we're still completely enthralled in these characters. We care about them and what happens. That's what a good filmmaker does and that's what Tarantino is amazing at.

Now some frown on the amount of "violence" in Tarantino's movies. And yes I'm using quotes because compared to most shit movies we see now I don't really consider it violence exactly. There's always justification for the violence, if there is such a thing. Most of the time it's revenge or an event preceding the revenge. You don't hear as much about this anymore because he's pretty much a well respected director among the critics and they've gotten past the whole violence thing.

For a director that only released 7 feature films, Tarantino has left a mark on the film industry that most directors spend a lifetime trying to achieve. He's molded modern cinema and affected pop culture with his work. The thing I respect so much about him these days is the fact that he's the only director out there doing EXACTLY what he wants to do for a film and does it how HE wants to do it. He's releasing original, thought provoking, artful, cutting edge films. Not a bunch of lazy, CGI filled, terribly written, horribly acted putrescence. If only we all had the nerve to stop paying to watch crap and give good artists like Tarantino our money instead. However we all get sucked into the marketing buzz and mutter "That looks pretty good. We should see that." at the same old bullshit movie trailers we see day in and day out. That's another post in itself for another time...