Quentin Tarantino

In recent years, Quentin Tarantino has used his Hollywood clout to promote smaller films.

Inglourious Basterds, a war cum Nazi cum revenge movie which has raked in over $100 million worldwide, has released in India. The consensus at rottentomatoes.com, which aggregates film reviews from across the world, is that it ‘is a classic Tarantino genre-blending thrill ride… violent, unrestrained, and thoroughly entertaining.’ A look at Quentin Tarantino, its cult filmmaker, in three chapters.

Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of Connie McHugh Zastoupil, a health care executive and nurse, and Tony Tarantino, an actor and amateur musician. Tarantino attended Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California, before dropping out at age 15. At age 22, he worked for Video Archives, a now defunct video rental store in Manhattan Beach where he and fellow movie buffs like Roger Avary spent all day discussing and recommending films to customers. He is 46 years old.

His video rental background (not his movie standards) has some parallels in Bollywood. Madhur Bhandarkar ran a video cassette library in Khar, a suburb of Mumbai. Ram Gopal Varma too had one in Hyderabad.

Reservoir Dogs, Natural Born Killers, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, the Kill Bills, Sin City, Grindhouse, Death Proof, Hostel … oh, I’m sorry, strictly speaking, Hostel belongs in Chapter Three of the Quentin Tarantino story.

In recent years, Tarantino has used his Hollywood power to give smaller and foreign films arguably more attention than they would otherwise have received. These films are usually labeled ‘Presented by Quentin Tarantino’ or ‘Quentin Tarantino Presents’. The first of these was in 2001 with the Hong Kong martial arts film Iron Monkey which made over $14 million in the United States, seven times its budget.

Election isn’t one of ‘Quentin Tarantino presents…’, but Tarantino loved the film so much that his quote, “The Best Film of the Year” is on this film’s US DVD cover.

After Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino now says a western movie is on his horizon. We’ll all be waiting for it.

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