Acting Appreciation
One day, as I was driving on Lavaca Street in Austin on my way to work, a tall thin guy decided to jaywalk 50 feet from my moving vehicle. As I slowed down to prevent injuring this jaywalker, I noticed it was someone oddly familiar. As he turned towards me to wave either thank you or sorry I realized it was the film director Quentin Tarantino.
Where was he going? I thought? The Capitol building? Or perhaps to the Cloak Room, a historical lounge bar frequented by politicians and Hollywood stars.
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee on March 27, 1963, Quentin Tarantino is a pop culture icon known films such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Volume 1 and Volume 2, Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and so much more.
Before the icon became an icon, Tarantino was interviewed by PLAYBOY for their November 1994 edition. The 20 questions provide some insight into the 31-year-old film director soon after Pulp Fiction about films, his thought on sports, car, and women.
Tarantino is no fan of watching sports. As he explained, "To me, torture would be watching sports on television. If I go to Dodger Stadium, that's OK, because the game is secondary to the beer and the environment. One think I don't understand is that the average American moviegoers cannot watch a movie for three hours, yet they'll watch a stupid, boring, horrific football game for four hours."
He shared that he used his red 1964 Chevy Malibu in Pulp Fiction, "The red Chevy Malibu that John Travolta drives in Pulp Fiction is mine. I could give a shit about it. It's actually a big pain in the ass. I keep it in storage so I don't have to deal with it. I was trying to sell it on the set." The car was eventually stolen from his home. About 20 years later, the car was found and returned back to Tarantino.
He explained how he uses a Mexican standoff in his films, "In movies, I never saw the Mexican standoff taken to what I consider to be the logical conclusion, which is when everyone fucking shoots everybody else because there is nowhere else to go... What's cool about the Mexican standoff is that it's the end of the line. And what's really exciting to me, for the kind of crime story I like to do, is using that one second before the explosion as the point where there's a bit of discussion. It has a reality to it. It takes the rubber band and stretches it as far as it can go."
When asked what he sees as cool women liking, he responded, "If a girl like to sit in the third row at the movies, that's great. I could be serious about that girl; it could be something that could last for a long time. Also, she shouldn't be a stickler when it comes to my personal hygiene... A girlfriend, the one who was the love of my life, once told me, 'I like your smell.' To me, that was the most romantic thing."
One can't watch a Tarantino film without expecting guns, except for American Psycho. But his thoughts on gun control is interesting, "I don't own a gun. But if gun control were to happen in America, I would have no problem with it whatsoever. Gun control would probably do wonders here. The street violence in America is horrific. When you got to Europe, you actually feel like you take a vacation from the threat of violence. Not that people don't get killed and raped in Europe. But it seems like they don't in comparison with here. But I also feel there's a slight hypocrisy about gun control. America was founded on people grabbing guns and just taking it. We are basically a nation of warriors."
Interestingly, soon after Sandy Hook, NRA VP Wayne LaPierre cited Tarantino films as a cause for school violence. Tarantino responded, "I'm really annoyed... [It's disrespectful to] the memory of the people who died to talk about movies. I think it's totally disrespectful to their memory. Obviously, the issue is gun control and mental health."
The interview discussion turned to his film's contribution to fashion, in particular the Reservoir Dogs look, "If an action movie id doing its job, you should want to dress like the hero... Any time a character is really cool in a movie, you should want to dress like him or drink the beer he drinks. I thought Kevin Costner was so fucking cool in Bull Durham that I drank Miller High Life for a while."
Photography by Michael Grecco (PLAYBOY)
Source:
Rochlin, Margy. "20 Questions: Quentin Tarantino" PLAYBOY, vol. 41, no. 11, November 1994, p. 133.
Wikipedia
https://autos.yahoo.com/news/how-quentin-tarantino-s-stolen-chevy-from--pulp-fiction--was-discovered-nearly-two-decades-later-170713276.html;_ylt=AwrEq5rA3MZjXDsVgyRXNyoA;_ylu=Y29sbwNiZjEEcG9zAzIEdnRpZANMT0NVSTA4OV8xBHNlYwNzcg--
https://www.indiewire.com/2013/01/quentin-tarantino-says-newtown-tragedy-about-gun-control-and-mental-health-issues-not-movie-violence-102677/
