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Quentin Tarantino

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Template:Infobox actor Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, actor, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter. He rose to fame in the early 1990s as an auteur indie filmmaker whose films used nonlinear storylines, edgy tough-guy dialogue, and stylized violence interwoven with often-obscure cinematic references. His films include Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (Vol. 1 [2003], Vol. 2 [2004]) and Death Proof featured in Grindhouse (2007).

>==Biography==

Early life

Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian American actor and musician. His mother, Connie McHugh, worked for a home medical organization and had part Cherokee Native American ancestry.<ref>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3712013.stm</ref><ref>http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,305084,00.html</ref><ref>http://jjyoung.home.mindspring.com/quentin/quentinfaq.txt</ref><ref>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6875354/</ref> Mel Kiper Jr. is Quentin's uncle on his mother's side. Shortly after Quentin's birth, his mother married musician Curt Zastoupil, with whom Quentin would form a strong bond. He started kindergarten in 1968. In 1971, the family moved to El Segundo, in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, where Tarantino attended Hawthorne Christian School. At the age of 14, he wrote his first script, Captain Peachfuzz and the Anchovy Bandit.<ref>Bernard, Jami (January 1996). Quentin Tarantino: The Man and His Movies, p. pg. 12, Harper Perennial. ISBN 0-06-095161-3.</ref> Dropping out of Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California at the age of sixteen, he went on to learn acting at the James Best Theatre Company. This proved to be influential in his movie-making career.

In 1984, Tarantino started working the counter at the Video Archives, a Manhattan Beach video store. Tarantino befriended Roger Avary, a fellow employee with whom he would later collaborate. While he continued to study acting at Allen Garfield's Actors' Shelter in Beverly Hills, he began to concentrate on screenwriting.

Film career

Tarantino's screenplay True Romance was optioned and eventually released in 1993. After Tarantino met Lawrence Bender at a Hollywood party, Bender encouraged Tarantino to write a film. The end product was Reservoir Dogs (1992), a dialogue-driven heist movie that set the tone for his later films. Tarantino wrote the script in three and a half weeks and Bender forwarded it to director Monte Hellman. Hellman helped Tarantino to secure funding from Richard Gladstein at Live Entertainment (which later became Artisan). Harvey Keitel read the script and also contributed to funding, took a co-producer role, and a part in the movie.<ref>Keitel heard of the script through his wife, who attended a class with Lawrence Bender (see Reservoir Dogs special edition DVD commentary)</ref>

The second script that Tarantino sold was Natural Born Killers. Director Oliver Stone made a number of changes that Tarantino disagreed with. As a result, Tarantino disowned the script. Following the success of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino was approached by Hollywood and offered numerous projects, including Speed and Men in Black. He instead retreated to Amsterdam to work on his script for Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the 1994 Cannes film festival.

Along with Steven Soderbergh's Palme d'Or winner Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Michael Moore's Roger and Me, Pulp Fiction revolutionized the independent film industry by showing that indie films could do well at the box office. The success of Pulp Fiction also helped to revive the career of John Travolta. Pulp Fiction earned Tarantino and Avary Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, and was also nominated for Best Picture.

File:Dusktilldawn.jpg
Quentin Tarantino and George Clooney as the Gecko brothers in From Dusk Till Dawn (1996).

After Pulp Fiction he directed episode four of Four Rooms, "The Man from Hollywood", a tribute to an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode that starred Steve McQueen. Four Rooms is a collaborative effort with filmmakers Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell and Robert Rodriguez. The film was very poorly received by critics and audiences. He also starred in and wrote the script for Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn, which saw mixed reviews from the critics yet led to two sequels, for which Tarantino and Rodriguez would only serve as executive producers.

Tarantino's next film was Jackie Brown (1997), an adaptation of Rum Punch, a novel by his mentor Elmore Leonard. A homage to blaxploitation films, it also starred Pam Grier, who starred in many of that genre's films of the 1970s. In 1998, he turned his attention to the Broadway stage, where he starred in a revival of Wait Until Dark.

He had then planned to make the war film Inglorious Bastards. However, he postponed that to write and direct Kill Bill (released as two films, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2), a highly stylized "revenge flick" in the cinematic traditions of Wuxia (Chinese martial arts), Jidaigeki (Japanese period cinema), Spaghetti Westerns and Italian horror or giallo. It was based on a character (The Bride) and a plot that he and Kill Bill's lead actress, Uma Thurman, had developed during the making of Pulp Fiction.

In 2004, Tarantino returned to Cannes where he served as President of the Jury. Kill Bill was not in competition, but it did screen on the final night in its original 3-hour-plus version. The Palme d'Or that year went to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. Tarantino is given credit as "Special Guest Director" for his work directing the car sequence between Clive Owen and Benicio Del Toro of the 2005 neo-noir film Sin City. In 2005, Tarantino announced his next project would be Grindhouse, which he co-directed with Robert Rodriguez. It was released in theaters on April 6 2007.

He has stated his next film will "probably" be Inglorious Bastards, which is a World War II film, but that he needed to spend another year working on the script before filming. Reportedly, one of the scripts he wrote for Inglorious Bastards would, if filmed complete, make for an 8 hour long film [unverified]. Also, Quentin has divulged information about possible anime prequels to the Kill Bill films. These would probably center around the DiVAS, Bill or The Bride before the events of the first two films. In a recent interview with The Telegraph he mentioned an idea for a form of spaghetti western set in America's Deep South which he calls "a southern." Stating that he wanted "to do movies that deal with America's horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it's ashamed of it, and other countries don't really deal with because they don't feel they have the right to" [1].

There have also been rumors of a film about two characters from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Vic and Vincent Vega. This would be The Vega Brothers but this has only been hinted at, along with April Fools rumours posted on the internet about Pulp Fiction 2: The Valley Of Darkness. In 2007 he claimed that the Vega Brothers project (which he intended on called Double V Vega is "kind of unlikely now." [2] Among his current producing credits are the horror flick Hostel (which included numerous references to his own Pulp Fiction), the adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Killshot (which Tarantino had once written a script for) and Hell Ride (written & directed by Kill Bill star Larry Bishop). In 2005 Quentin Tarantino won the "Icon of the Decade" award at the Sony Ericsson Empire Awards.

Television

Tarantino directed the fifth season finale to the hit show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which first aired May 19, 2005. The highly rated episode, entitled "Grave Danger", shared a very similar situation from Tarantino's second Kill Bill film: CSI Nick Stokes is captured and buried alive in a Plexiglas coffin while an Internet camera broadcasts the whole thing to CSI headquarters. (In Kill Bill, the Bride (Uma Thurman) was also captured and buried alive in a coffin.)

The episode was delayed in being shown in the UK as the broadcast date coincided with the terrorist attacks in London and it was felt that the underground theme in the episode would cause offense. This double-length episode was released on DVD on October 10, 2005. Tarantino was nominated for an Emmy for his role in this episode.

Tarantino also directed an episode of ER called "Motherhood" that aired May 11, 1995, an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, and an episode of then-girlfriend Margaret Cho's show. Tarantino was also featured as a guest judge on the televised singing competition American Idol for one episode during its third season. His reputation for creating memorable movie soundtracks was cited as qualifying him for the role.

Acting

Tarantino as Mr. Brown in Reservoir Dogs.

Although Tarantino is best known for his work behind the camera, he starred in his own movies Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction as minor characters, and co-starred alongside George Clooney in From Dusk Till Dawn. He has also appeared on the small screen in the first and third seasons of the TV show Alias. Tarantino once played an Elvis impersonator on an episode of The Golden Girls (as a non-speaking extra. He can, in fact, barely be seen).<ref>http://www.ultimatedisney.com/thegoldengirls-season4.html</ref> Another non-speaking cameo was in Sin City although he is very unnoticeable, he is the man sitting to the right of Marv (Mickey Rourke's character) at Kadie's Bar. <ref>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401792/trivia</ref> He also played cameo roles in Desperado (directed by his friend, Robert Rodriguez), and Little Nicky. In November 2006, an episode of the Sundance Channel's <i>Iconoclasts<i> features Quentin Tarantino interviewing and spending time with singer Fiona Apple. Tarantino also has a brief appearance in the beginning of Spike Lee's film Girl 6. In April 2007, Tarantino has substantial screen-time in Grindhouse's double-features, Death Proof and Planet Terror, where he respectively takes on the roles of Warren, a bartender, and The Rapist, an infected member of a rogue military.

Aesthetics

Tarantino's movies are renowned for their sharp dialogue, splintered chronology, and pop culture obsessions. His films, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill have copious amounts of both spattered and flowing blood that are graphically violent in an aestheticized sense. His depictions of violence have also been noted for their casualness and macabre humour, as well as for the tension and grittiness of these scenes.

Tarantino is also known to go out of his way to avoid product placement in his films, often going so far as to create fictional brand names, or otherwise using brands that have long been discontinued, when the use of a particular product is necessary in a scene. Fictional brands such as Red Apple cigarettes and Big Kahuna Burgers have shown up in several movies, including Pulp Fiction, Four Rooms, From Dusk Till Dawn, Kill Bill, and Death Proof. There is a Big Kahuna Burger restaurant in Seaside, Oregon, though it is unconfirmed whether or not it opened before or after Pulp Fiction. The director is also known for his love of breakfast cereal, and many of his movies feature brands such as Fruit Brute (a monster cereal similar to Franken Berry, Count Chocula, and Boo Berry that was discontinued) in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and Kaboom! in Kill Bill. In Grindhouse real life brands such as Budweiser, Jagermeister, Icy hot and others are prominently displayed and mentioned in various scenes. These placements may be an attempt by Tarantino to parody his earlier works.

Tarantino sometimes makes vague connections between his films, usually by reusing names and locations. An example of this is Tarantino's assertion that John Travolta's character in Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega, and Michael Madsen's character in Reservoir Dogs, Vic Vega, are brothers. Harvey Keitel's character in Reservoir Dogs, Larry Dimmick/Mr. White, is also said to be related to Tarantino's character in Pulp Fiction, Jimmie Dimmick. However, Larry could also be short for Clarence. As Mr. White mentions being involved with a woman named Alabama, this could be a nod to where Clarence and Alabama from True Romance ended up. Jack Rabbit Slims, the restaurant at which characters in Pulp Fiction dine, was mentioned on the radio, and Red Apple cigarettes, the brand smoked by Bruce Willis/Butch and Mia Wallace (she reaches for the pack before Vincent gives her one) in Pulp Fiction has a prominent billboard in the subway in Kill Bill. Also, in Pulp Fiction, Brett and his associates are eating from "Big Kahuna Burger" and in From Dusk Till Dawn the Gecko brothers ate there as well, and Stuntman Mike from Death Proof mentions Big Kahuna burger. There is also a connection between the boots worn by Vic Vega and the boots that Uma is buried with, along with the razor blade used in both scenes. While Planet Terror was not his film, Red Apple Cigarettes can obviously be seen as El Wray's brand of cigarettes, as well.

Influences

In the 2002 Sight and Sound Directors' poll, Tarantino revealed his top-twelve films: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Rio Bravo, Taxi Driver, His Girl Friday, Rolling Thunder, They All Laughed, The Great Escape, Carrie, Coffy, Dazed and Confused, Five Fingers of Death, and Hi Diddle Diddle.<ref>http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/voter.php?forename=Quentin&surname=Tarantino</ref> A previous top-ten list also included Blow Out, One-Eyed Jacks, For a Few Dollars More, Bande à part, Breathless (the 1983 remake), Le Doulos, They Live By Night, GoodFellas and The Long Goodbye.[unverified]

Tarantino also credits Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets, Stanley Kubrick's The Killing, and George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead as strong influences.[unverified] He owns a rare 35mm copy of Manos: The Hands of Fate, which he cites as his favorite "comedy."[unverified] He is known as a Godzilla fan.[unverified] He has also been a supporter of Kevin Smith's work, being that Smith hit success with Clerks. around the time Tarantino released Pulp Fiction. Tarantino also cited Smith's Chasing Amy as his favorite movie of 1997.<ref>http://www.viewaskew.com/tv/charlierose/tarantino.mov </ref> In one of the Train Wreck making of shorts for Smith's Clerks II, we see that he invited Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to a private screening of the film at the View Askew offices.

Casting

Tarantino has a group of actors that he often casts in his films, including Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Four Rooms), Harvey Keitel (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, From Dusk Till Dawn), Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2), Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, Sin City), Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction), Bruce Willis (Pulp Fiction, Four Rooms, Sin City, Grindhouse), and Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill Vol. 2).

He often casts comedians in small roles: Steven Wright as the DJ in Reservoir Dogs, Kathy Griffin as an accident witness in Pulp Fiction and a hotel manager in Four Rooms, Julia Sweeney as Raquel in Pulp Fiction , Phil LaMarr as Marvin in Pulp Fiction, and Chris Tucker as Beaumont Livingston in Jackie Brown.

He often plays a small role in his own films (Jimmie Dimmick in Pulp Fiction, Mr. Brown in Reservoir Dogs, Chester Rush in Four Rooms, Richard Gecko in From Dusk Till Dawn, the answering machine voice in Jackie Brown, a dead Crazy 88 gang member in Kill Bill, and the Rapist and Warren in "Grindhouse").

Music

Tarantino often makes references to and features music from cult movies and television. He often features a character singing along to a song from the soundtrack: Mr. Blonde, "Stuck in the Middle With You" — Stealers Wheel; Butch, "Flowers on the Wall" — The Statler Brothers; Mia Wallace, "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" — Urge Overkill; Elle Driver, "Twisted Nerve" — Bernard Herrmann; Max Cherry, "Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)" - The Delfonics; Jungle Julia and her friends, "Hold Tight" - Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.

He often incorporates a scene in which music is heard to fade out completely before fading back in again (Diegetic music):

  • Reservoir Dogs (the ear scene) - Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen) walks to his car, then back inside (Stuck in the Middle With You — Stealers Wheel)
  • Pulp Fiction (the gimp scene) - Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) escapes upstairs and then returns with a katana (Comanche - The Revels)
  • Jackie Brown (Beaumont Livingston's death) - Beaumont Livingston (Chris Tucker) is in the trunk of a car driven by Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). The radio is playing and the car drives off before performing a U-turn and heading back toward the camera.

In 1993, soon after Reservoir Dogs and shortly before Pulp Fiction, Nirvana thanked Quentin on their album In Utero.[unverified]

Criticism - Racial epithets

Tarantino has come under criticism for his use of racial epithets in his films, particularly the word nigger/nigga in Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Grindhouse, and Reservoir Dogs, most notably from black American director Spike Lee. In an interview for Variety discussing Jackie Brown, Lee said: "I'm not against the word... and I use it, but Quentin is infatuated with the word. What does he want? To be made an honorary black man?" Samuel L. Jackson, who has appeared in films directed by Tarantino and Lee, defended Tarantino's use of the word. At the Berlin Film Festival, where Jackie Brown was being screened, Jackson responded to Lee's criticism by saying, "I don't think the word is offensive in the context of this film. ... Black artists think they are the only ones allowed to use the word. Well, that's bull. Jackie Brown is a wonderful homage to black exploitation films. This is a good film, and Spike hasn't made one of those in a few years."

An oft-cited example is a scene in Pulp Fiction in which a character named Jimmie Dimmick, portrayed by Tarantino himself, rebukes Samuel L. Jackson's character, Jules Winnfield, for using his house as "dead nigger storage", followed by a rant that uses the word profusely. Lee makes direct reference to this in his film Bamboozled when the character Thomas Dunwitty states: "Please don't get offended by my use of the quote-unquote N word. I got a black wife and three biracial children, so I feel I have a right to use that word. I don't give a damn what Spike says, Tarantino is right. Nigger is just a word."

Tarantino has defended his use of the word by arguing that black audiences have an appreciation of his blaxploitation-influenced films that eludes some of his critics, and, indeed, that Jackie Brown, another oft-cited example, was primarily made for "black audiences:"

<blockquote>To me the film is a black film. It was made for black audiences actually. It was made for everybody, but that was, pretty much, the "main" audience. If I had any of them in mind, I was thinking of that because I was always thinking of watching it in a black theatre. I didn't have audiences ridiculously in mind because I am the audience, but that works well for that too because I go to black theatres. To me it is a black film.<ref>http://film.guardian.co.uk/Guardian_NFT/interview/0,4479,78447,00.html</ref></blockquote>

Borrowing

Tarantino has also been criticized for stealing concepts, scenes and dialogue from other films.<ref>http://www.impossiblefunky.com/qt/</ref> For example, the climax of Reservoir Dogs is similar to that of Ringo Lam's City on Fire. Stanley Kubrick's The Killing is a direct influence on the fractured narrative structure (Lionel White, author of the novel Clean Break which The Killing was based on, was given a dedication in the end credits of Reservoir Dogs) while the idea of the color-coded criminals is taken from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. The infamous ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs resembles a scene in Sergio Corbucci's 1966 Spaghetti Western classic Django, in which a man's ear is cut off and fed to him before he is shot dead.

The Don Siegel version of The Killers played an influence on Pulp Fiction, and the events of the adrenaline-injection scene closely resemble a story related in Martin Scorsese's documentary American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince. The line about going "to work on homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch" is similar to "You know what kind of people they are. They'll strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch" from another Don Siegel film, 1971's Charley Varrick.

The dancing scene in the diner is inspired by a scene in Godard's "Band of Outsiders", the film which Tarantino named his production company after, though it bears very little resemblance to it at all. The misquoted bible verse Samuel Jackson recites in Pulp Fiction can also be found in the movie Karate Kiba (a 1970s Japanese action film starring Sonny Chiba, also known as The Bodyguard), which Tarantino has mentioned in interviews with The New York Times and Positif. The title crawl of the movie contains the line:

The path of the righteous man and defender is beset on all sides by the iniquity of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper, and the father of lost children. And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious anger, who poison and destroy my brothers; and they shall know that I am Chiba the Bodyguard when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.

The intro titles to Jackie Brown are a careful homage to the intro titles to The Graduate.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 is heavily influenced by the 1973 Toshiya Fujita film Lady Snowblood. The fighting scene where the The Bride duels as back lit silhouettes is almost a direct copy of a similar scene in the 1998 Hiroyuki Nakando film Samurai Fiction. The Superman monologue delivered at the end of Kill Bill Vol. 2 was inspired by a passage from Jules Feiffer's 1965 book, The Great Comic Book Heroes, which Tarantino confirmed in a 2004 interview with Entertainment Weekly.

Much debate has been sparked on when such references cease to be tributes and become plagiarism. Tarantino, for his part, has always been open and unapologetic about appropriating ideas from films he admires. When confronted about stealing ideas from dozens of movies, he stated, "I lift ideas from other great films just like every other great filmmaker."

Personal life

Tarantino has been romantically linked with numerous entertainers, including Academy Award-winning actress Mira Sorvino,<ref>http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/03-98/03-15-98/zzzwnppl.htm</ref> directors Allison Anders and Sofia Coppola,<ref>http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/07/14/showbuzz/index.html</ref> French actress Julie Dreyfus and comedian Margaret Cho.<ref>http://www.popmatters.com/film/reviews/i/im-the-one-that.shtml</ref> There have also been rumors about his relationship with Uma Thurman, whom he has referred to as his "muse". However, Tarantino has gone on record as saying that their relationship is strictly platonic. He has also been allegedly linked to actress Shar Jackson. He has never married and has no children.

One of Tarantino's closest friends is fellow director Robert Rodriguez (the pair often refer to each other as brothers). Their biggest collaborations have been From Dusk Till Dawn (written by Tarantino, directed by Rodriguez), Four Rooms (they both wrote and directed segments of the film), Sin City and Grindhouse.

It was Tarantino who suggested that Rodriguez name the final part of his El Mariachi trilogy Once Upon a Time in Mexico, as a homage to the titles Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon A Time In America by Sergio Leone. They are both members of A Band Apart, a production company that also features directors John Woo and Luc Besson. Rodriguez scored Kill Bill: Volume 2 for one dollar, and the favor was returned in kind, with Tarantino directing a scene in Rodriguez's 2005 film Sin City for the same fee.

Rodriguez was also responsible for introducing Tarantino to digital film. Prior to this, Tarantino was a vocal supporter of using traditional celluloid film. Tarantino is good friends with The RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. They are often seen together in the VIP room of nightclubs. RZA composed the musical score for Kill Bill. Tarantino spat at Chris Connelly<ref>http://www.mtv.com/overdrive/?id=1539536&vid=111448</ref> on the red carpet during the 1997 Oscars. He mistakenly thought Connelly edited a story in Premiere magazine about his estranged biological father.

Tarantino is a friend of Japanese Director Takashi Miike, whom he asked to perform a cameo in Eli Roth's film Hostel. As a result of Miike doing so, Tarantino is performing in the opening action sequence of Miike's next Movie Sukiyaki Western: Django, scheduled for release in August 2007.

Tarantino has claimed to detest both drugs and violence in real life. However, in a recent Playboy interview, he boasts of smoking marijuana and using Ecstasy while filming Kill Bill and his willingness to physically beat people who he has disagreements with.<ref name"playboy01">'Playboy.com: Arts & Entertainment - November 2003"</ref>

Trademarks

Template:Original research In the opening credits to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, he omits his own credit as writer and director. Characters in nearly all of his movies have aliases. Examples include Honey Bunny and Pumpkin from Pulp Fiction, the heist crew in Reservoir Dogs, and many different characters in Kill Bill. Most of his movies feature a "Mexican standoff" scene, in which three or more characters are simultaneously pointing guns at each other.

He often uses an unconventional storytelling device in his films, such as retrospective, with frequent flashbacks(Reservoir Dogs), non-linear (Pulp Fiction), "chapter" format (Kill Bill, Four Rooms), or time-twisting (Jackie Brown in the sequence showing what all the main characters did at the money drop in the mall). He also guest directed a scene in Sin City, which uses a similar layout. (In the Reservoir Dogs DVD commentary with Quentin Tarantino, he mentions that he hates it when people say that most of his methods are "flashbacks". Flashbacks are recollections of an individual person, but the non-linear style he uses is just a different way of telling you the story and giving you the information, like a book.)

Almost all of his films are set in Los Angeles (Death Proof and Kill Bill being a notable exceptions, although Kill Bill had a minor scene taking place in Los Angeles). There are a variety of camera angles and types of shots that are considered typical of a Tarantino movie. He often frames characters with doorways and shows them opening and closing doors, and he often films characters from the back. He uses widely-imitated quick cuts of character's hands performing actions in extreme closeup, a technique reminiscent of Brian De Palma.

He also uses a long closeup of a person's face while someone else speaks off-screen (closeup of The Bride while Bill talks, of Butch while Marsellus talks, Ted's face when Chester talks in Four Rooms). Although he did not invent it, Tarantino popularized the trunk shot, which is featured in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill. In Grindhouse (Death Proof feature), Tarantino's traditional shot looking up at the actors from the trunk of a car is replaced by one looking up from under the hood. Often he will shoot a character's feet during a key moment.

File:QTTrunkJB.jpg
Trunk shot in Jackie Brown.

His lead characters usually drive General Motors vehicles or an old white Honda Civic. Cigarette smoking by main characters is a recurring element of Tarantino's movies, a notable exception being The Bride in the Kill Bill series. In his films, he uses the name of a fictional cigarette brand called Red Apple. Briefcases and suitcases play an important role in many of his films.

Another fictional brand which Tarantino fits into his films is the fast-food restaurant Big Kahuna Burger. For example, in Reservoir Dogs, Michael Madsen's Mr. Blond character shows up at the warehouse, the principle setting of the film, holding a soft drink from Big Kahuna Burger. In Pulp Fiction, Big Kahuna Burger had a much larger part, being mentioned several times in the scene where Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) shoots a man while he is eating a burger from said restaurant. Also, in Death Proof,, Kurt Russell's character makes reference to a billboard he saw just outside of Big Kahuna Burger.'In 'From Dusk Till Dawn' Seth Gecko returns to the hotel carring food from Big Kahuna Burger also.

While in general film characters are rarely shown using the bathroom, Tarantino often includes a toilet scene (e.g. Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs, John Travolta in Pulp Fiction, Christian Slater in True Romance, Juliette Lewis in From Dusk Till Dawn, Uma Thurman in Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill Vol. 2).

Tarantino uses biracial characters in some of his movies. In Pulp Fiction, Jules Winfield (Samuel L. Jackson) mentions a half-black, half-Samoan named Antwan "Tony Rocky Horror" Rockamora, and in Kill Bill Vol. 1, O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu) is half-Japanese, half-Chinese-American, and her best friend in the film, Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus), is half-Japanese, half-French. Drexl (Gary Oldman) in True Romance is white, likes to think he is black, and claims that his mother was an Apache.

He often includes characters dressed in black suits with white shirts and black ties: the thieves in Reservoir Dogs, John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, Pam Grier in Jackie Brown (without a tie), the Gecko brothers in From Dusk Till Dawn, the crazy 88s in Kill Bill Vol. 1. It is stated on the fact commentary on the Pulp Fiction DVD that he uses the black suits as the standard outfit that his characters wear in the way that other directors have certain outfits for their characters, like Leone's main characters wearing dusters usually.

Every movie he has directed contains at least one instance of the Wilhelm scream sound effect. Many of his films feature the line, "All right ramblers, let's get rambling," or a variation thereof ("hard drinkers/drink hard", "vampire killer/kill some vampires","motherfuckers/fuck mothers").

Tarantino always incorporates food/drink in scenes of importance or whenever a major event is about to occur. Examples include the Big Kahuna burger scene and the breakfast pastry being heated in the bathroom scene before Butch finds Vincent in "Pulp Fiction", and many scenes in both "Kill Bill" volumes. One that is of immediate importance is in Volume II when the Bride tracks down Bill. He makes a sandwich, has a couple drinks, and then shoots the bride with the drug-tipped dart.

His films often contain lines of dialog in which a character rhymes when introducing himself, for instance, "My name is Buck, and I'm here to fuck." In other instances the name introduced is not the character's name (when Jules Winnefield said "My name's Pitt, and your ass ain't talking your way out of this shit," and when the bartender tells Vincent Vega "My name is Paul, and that shit's between y'all.") These latter instances are actually common phrases in the Black American community meant to be said in jest.

He also makes frequent references to the Netherlands, like the Amsterdam conversation and the Drum tobacco in Pulp Fiction, the song "Little Green Bag" in Reservoir Dogs and the name Beatrix in Kill Bill.

Presented by...

In recent years, Tarantino has used his Hollywood power to give smaller and foreign films 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 productions 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. In 2004 he brought the Chinese martial arts film Hero to U.S. shores. It ended up having a #1 opening at the box office and making $53.5 million. In 2006 the latest "Quentin Tarantino presents" production, Hostel, opened at #1 at the box office with a $20.1 million opening weekend, good for 8th all time in the month of January. He also presented 2006's The Protector, and is a producer of the (2007) film Hostel: Part II.

In addition, in 1995, Tarantino formed Rolling Thunder Pictures with Miramax as a vehicle to release or re-release several independent and foreign features. By 1997, Miramax shut down the company due to "lack of interest" in the pictures released. The following films were released by Rolling Thunder Pictures: Chungking Express (1994, dir. Wong Kar-Wai), Switchblade Sisters (1975, dir. Jack Hill), Sonatine (1993, dir. Takeshi Kitano), Hard Core Logo (1996), Mighty Peking Man (1977), Detroit 9000 (1973), The Beyond (1981) and Curdled (1996).

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