Quentin Tarantino, a ghost director who has not had a new work for a long time, has recently been busy with the promotion of his new book "Cinema Speculation", and has continuously appeared on the talk show of Bill Maher, Jimmy Kimmel and other TV celebrities, talking freely about his movie life.
"Movie Blind Dream" book shadow
The title of the new book is "Movie Imagination," because Quentin has an entire chapter in this collection of film reviews, essays, essays, and interviews about his own bold imagination: What would have happened if Brian DePalmer had directed Taxi Driver instead of Martin Scorsese.
Overall, "Movie Blind Dream" is a personal history of fans, introducing many Hollywood works that Quentin watched in the 70s when he was young. Among them, there are classics such as "The Getaway" - the two people on the cover are the film's director Sam Pekinpak and starring Steve McQueen, "Bullitt", "Dirty Harry", "Deliverance", "Escape From Alcatraz" and other classics, as well as many black movies that ordinary fans are not familiar with , exploitation films, B-grade films. In short, these films have special significance for Quentin, and they also provide another entry point for us to understand his own films.
Quentin Tarantino (left) promotes Jim Kimmel's talk show on his new book
Throughout the book, it is not difficult to see that for Quentin's film life, his mother Connie played a decisive role. According to him, in 1972, one of his mother's boyfriends, a football star for the Los Angeles Rams, but who it was, Quentin did not say - offered to take him to the movies in order to have a good relationship with him.
At that time, American theaters used the so-called two-film joint screening practice, first showing B films, that is, B-grade films with a relatively lower production budget and less big names in front of and behind the scenes, and then showing A films, that is, feature films with a larger scale and led by stars. That day, my mother's boyfriend took eight-year-old Quentin to a movie theater in the black neighborhood of Los Angeles, and first watched a B-grade film called "The Bus Is Coming", which was intended to reflect the racial conflict in American society at that time, but it was shot relatively rough and immature, making the audience sitting below quite bored, and some even cursed at the movie characters on the screen while watching, which opened the eyes of little Quentin.
The A-rated film that followed was an action film starring black football star Jim Brown. Brown is a star guard for the Cleveland team, and after retiring, he entered Hollywood and starred in blockbuster films such as "The Twelve King Kongs" and "Passing the Pass". In the 70s, he starred in many black exploitation films that focused on violence and action, and Quentin Jr. was obviously watching one of them at the time. This viewing experience also left an indelible impression on him for life, because the audience sitting underneath, when watching the film, changed their previous passive attitude of drowsy or angry, and watched it very attentively and enjoyed. "Movies are meant to be made for audiences, and that's what I learned from a Jim Brown movie one Saturday night in 1972, and that's what I've always wanted to achieve." Quentin said.
Quentin's mother is named Connie Zastoupil, and her life experience is also quite exciting. She married Italian-American actor Tony Tarantino at the age of 16 and gave birth to Quentin Jr. But it wasn't long before the couple broke up, and Quentin was raised alone by his mother, who was a nurse. As an adult, Quentin only happened to meet his biological father once in a café, and that's it.
When he was three years old, his mother married the musician Curtis Zastuupil and took the husband's surname. In those days, my mother and stepfather would often take Quentin to the theater with them, and they were still watching some movies that were definitely not suitable for children. According to Quentin in "Movie Imagination", he also consulted his mother on this issue at the time, and the answer was: "Quentin, instead of worrying about this, I am more worried that you watch too much on TV news." Movies are just movies, they can't hurt you. "In recent years, from time to time, the media has criticized Quentin's movies for being full of violence and blood, teaching bad children, and Quentin has always said that he does not believe that violence on the screen will affect the audience, and normal people will understand that it is just a movie. Tracing back to the roots, I am afraid that it was his mother Connie who first instilled this concept in Quentin.
When her son was ten years old, Connie divorced her second husband, Zastupier, and returned to singleness. When promoting the new book, Quentin once introduced that after his mother returned to singleness, he had many boyfriends, including Harpy Hailston and Wilt Chamberlain of the Lakers. The latter was a well-known flower company in the NBA that year, claiming to have had relationships with 20,000 women, but according to Quentin, although his mother and Chamberlain were not in a regular relationship, they had been filming on and off for three years, and they were once Chamberlain's "number one girlfriend".
Quentin Tarantino
Although she supports her son watching movies, Quentin's mother is not very optimistic about her son's other hobby, writing. She has poured cold water on little Quentin more than once, and also made him vow when he was a child that when he grew up, if his dream came true one day, he would never pay his mother back. When Quentin first revealed this private life last year, the media of good things soon contacted Connie to ask her what she said about her son's "cold-blooded ruthlessness". The old mother said quite generously that no matter what her son said or did, she would always love him, support him, and be proud of him.
During the interview, Quentin also introduced readers to his "perfect movie", including "Jaws", "Anne Hall", "Archmage", "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", "New Frankenstein" and "Back to the Future". "There's Sam Pekinpa's 'Sunset Sands,' which isn't 100% technically perfect, but it's good enough to be almost impeccable, so I'm going to put it on it as well."
Finally, on the question of whether he will one day direct a Marvel movie, Quentin clearly answered with an unpopular Western masterpiece directed by Peter Fonda in the 1970s, saying that the directors who made Marvel movies were just "hired hands", which is completely absent for himself who is not short of job opportunities.
In Quentin's view, peers like himself who have no interest in superhero movies are actually very popular in Hollywood, whether they are publicly stated or secretly expecting, everyone hopes that the craze for such movies will end sooner and the audience can be completely tired of watching these movies earlier. "It's like Hollywood in the '60s, when the popularity of the cabaret films made by big companies finally began to wane, there were actually a lot of directors who were too late to be happy. I think the current situation is very similar to that time, when too, the entire industry was almost monopolized by song and dance films, which was quite depressing; Now it's a superhero blockbuster that forces people to breathe. ”