TARANTINO
Like most students, I had no idea what to expect from my
first year in university. It was a time for a lot of firsts:
I was commuting hours back and forth to school every day, I
was in a new school in a totally new city, I was forced to
make new friends with people I had never previously met…the
horrifying list goes on and on. And in a Mass Communication
class that first term, I was pushed further into new
territory. The main idea I took out of that class as I look
back on it was the concept of semiotics. For those
frightened of big words or just for the morbidly curious,
semiotics is the study of the signs and symbols that we see
around us, and what meanings they hold. The big paper in
that course, my first real “university” paper, was based on
a piece of media that I analyzed by way of semiotics. Now, reading the title of this article, and then reading this far, you may wonder what any of this has to do with Quentin Tarantino. Well, that’s simple: I wrote this paper, this semiotic analysis if you will, on the movie poster for Pulp Fiction.
I didn’t write the paper on the movie. Not the plot, the story, the characters, or anything of that nature.
Just the poster.
I will let that sink in for a moment.
“The Aura of the Tarantinomage” as I called it (I have never
been good at titles), talked in detail about how the poster
related back to the tawdry, cheap dime store novels of the
early twentieth century, about the appeal and sexiness of a
woman in the “throes of lust”, and how the gaze of Uma
Thurman coupled with her wearing red lipstick and smoking a
cigarette was a very thinly veiled metaphor for fellatio.
Quite a bit to wash down for anyone, let alone a first year
university student trying to decipher the not so subtle
messages from his favorite film of all time.But therein lies the appeal of Quentin Tarantino -- a rebellious, audacious and arrogant filmmaker who can easily be considered the godfather of post-Generation X cinema. Before Tarantino, it was not okay to rip off, give a nod or pay homage (whichever way you want to look at it) to other types of cinema and still consider one’s work blazingly original or unique. But his films are packed with so much detail, so many references both popular and obscure, so many of the “little things” that others had not dwelt upon, that he has forever influenced a whole new generation of filmmakers. He opened the door for darker and bleaker cinematic adventures. He helped pioneer the kinetic and wild non-linear story style in the West. The invasion and influx of more Asian cinema across North America since the early 1990’s was also helped by his love for the genre and filmmaking style. In a way, through his protégé Robert Rodriguez, he helped influence the “do-it-all-yourself” motif of having multiple roles within a film’s production, something we are seeing happen more and more in both the mainstream and boutique industries -- he certainly helped put indie cinema on the map. He was and continues to be one of the few filmmakers who ensure their movie’s soundtrack is just as crucial and just as memorable as the film it is placed in. Most importantly, he brought an idiosyncratic style and element of cool back to the movies.
Now, there are some who have and continually do
call Tarantino an overrated hack and thief, among other
things. And I guarantee there will be some who will take
offense to my claims of how influential his work is here.
But can one really argue against the power or the influence
of Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction
(1994)? They are two of the biggest movies to come out of
the 1990’s, and helped spawn both real and fake imitators (I
am looking squarely at you, Guy Richie). Outside of The
Matrix, I cannot think of any other single film in the
past 20 years that was so influential and groundbreaking
that it affected so many of the movies to come after it. The
loaded dialogue, the brutal violence, the incredibly bleak
comedy…there were countless films released afterward that
tried to capitalize on and utilize Tarantino’s techniques
and style to their own advantage, but none were ever nearly
as good as the work of the man himself. Pulp Fiction
was a runaway success and showcased the filmmaker’s wit and
subtlety; couple that fact with the absolutely outrageous
and raw power of Reservoir Dogs, a movie that gets
better every time you watch it, and you had one hell of a
loaded powerhouse behind the camera as he started in on his
next project.
Unfortunately, all the accolades and drug-enabled trips
seemed to go to Tarantino’s head. After the disappointing
Jackie Brown in 1997 (seriously, I know it is an
adaptation, but how boring and verbose did that movie need
to be?), he did not do all that much for a few years
afterwards. He had a few side projects, but nothing too
major until he began filming his long-awaited comeback, a
love letter to 70’s Asian cinema, exploitation flicks and
Spaghetti Westerns: Kill Bill. The hype for this project was simply astounding. It was even marketed as “The Fourth Film by Quentin Tarantino”. Very few other filmmakers can claim such a cult following that this would be considered a viable tagline by the studio’s publicity department. Filming of Kill Bill was chronicled almost daily on various movie websites and spoilers leaked out (or were made up) even faster than those for The Lord of the Rings movies.
Rather disappointingly for purists, the long running time of
the finished film caused it to be chopped in half, its
installments coming out within a few months of each other as
Volume 1 (2003) and Volume 2 (2004) --
just as the final Harry Potter and Twilight
movies are now likewise set to do. Yes, Tarantino’s
influence can even be seen at work in those
heavily-franchised and heavily-financed worlds. There can be
no doubt that Kill Bill brought the wunderkind
director back to the forefront of cinema, and even with the
negative backlash against the films -- for example, Mick
LaSalle of The San Francisco Chronicle, said: “This
puerile, ugly fantasy is the sad but unmistakable product of
a consciousness not worthy of serious attention.” -- it was
still a very potent announcement of his return with an
invigorated sense of creativity and fun. (By the way, each
part of Kill Bill has a score of 85% each on Rotten
Tomatoes, so LaSalle’s vitriolic attack was definitely in
the minority.)
2007’s Death Proof, Tarantino’s half of the double
feature Grindhouse (Rodriguez’s Planet Terror
was the other half), came afterwards and was another love
letter: this time to the schlocky, B-movie drive-in slasher
and car flicks of the 70’s and 80’s. It was met with plenty
of acclaim, but did not exactly invigorate audiences
(perhaps because of its three hour plus running time?). It
was released separately on DVD/Blu-ray, and has only just
been released in its original theatrical form in North
America this past October. Sadly, Death Proof as a
whole does not hold up to multiple viewings, but the car
chase scene at the end of the film remains one of the most
intense ever put to celluloid. Finally, and most recently, Tarantino gave us Inglourious Basterds, an epic and imagined take on World War II. Despite its multiple languages, long running time and horrendously misspelled title, it was his most successful and most acclaimed film since Pulp Fiction. It was even nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards (his first time, again, since Fiction).
And those are just his directing credits. We must also
remember that he wrote the scripts for the cult classics
True Romance and From Dusk Till Dawn, wrote
the original story for Natural Born Killers, worked
as a guest director on Frank Miller’s Sin City,
Four Rooms and on an episode of CSI, and has
worked as an actor, uncredited writer and producer for a
wide and quite wild assortment of other films as well. And
of course, for his more attentive fans, he throws in little
nods and mentions into his films to connect them all
together -- a unique touch that not too many filmmakers,
outside of those making direct sequels, tend to provide
(Kevin Smith notwithstanding).While Tarantino’s first two films were highly influential, everything that came post-Jackie Brown seems to have just increased the image of a bad-ass rebel he has cultivated. There is no way anyone else would have been able to make movies catering to his own personal tastes as readily as he has been permitted to do. He is truly one of the geekiest filmmakers around, and one whose history of cinema seems to help develop his own style of filmmaking. He does copy others yes, but he does so in such a loving way that it really cannot seem detrimental to the initial work; more, it acts as a means of complimenting his source material, and even bringing them to the attention of a whole new generation of audiences. He continues to influence others in the field, but in a way that also continues to demonstrate just how daring a filmmaker he really is. From my outlook and what I have come to learn and understand about him, he is a filmmaker who just seems unable to take anyone else’s shit. It is his way, or no way. And his fans remain devoted to him -- myself included -- no matter what.
While his next project has yet to be announced (IMDb
suggests it might be the long-rumored Kill Bill Volume 3,
but then, maybe it might be The Vega Brothers movie
he’s always talked about, too), there is every chance that
it may very well be his most interesting and unique project
yet. I say this because Tarantino’s editor Sally Menke sadly
passed away rather suddenly this past September, and while
this may not sound like something that could affect his work
at first glance, it is worth be noting that every single one
of his directorial efforts was edited by Menke. We can tell
his style from his highly distinctive oeuvre, but
how much of that partially belonged to Menke? How big of a
contribution did she make to his work, and how radically
different will it be now that she is gone? Only time will
tell.Recently, I was lucky enough to go back to where it all began, catching a now-rare cinematic screening of Pulp Fiction last month in Toronto. The theatre was half full, and people even dressed up as their favorite characters, Rocky Horror-style, to see this almost twenty-year-old film. Seeing it on the big screen for the first time myself, even while humming along to the music and quoting every line, it still managed to feel new, refreshing and unique; as if it were made by a talented newcomer, a rebel of a man with a voice and a style unlike any other; often imitated, never surpassed.
And that my friends, is exactly who Quentin Tarantino, is and always will be.
--
David Baldwin
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