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| Quentin Tarantino backstage at the 86th Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre, Hollywood, California, March 2, 2014. |
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| Quentin Tarantino
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Forecourt Ceremony held on Tuesday, January 5, 2016
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Born: March 27, 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee
Age at the time of the ceremony: 52 |
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Quentin Tarantino is one of the best-known film directors in the world. A passionate believer in the importance of the movie-going experience, Tarantino's films are big, loud, violet, talky, gripping, infuriating, and impossible to ignore. Everyone has dipped into the Tarantino pool; whether you like his deal is another matter.
Where do we begin? He is the only child of Connie and Tony Tarantino, who met when she was on a vistit to Los Angeles, where Tony was a law student. They married and named their son after Burt Reynold's character on Gunsmoke. The marriage ended in divorce rather quickly, with Connie and Quentin moved to Knoxville to stay with her parents.
In 1966, they both moved back to Los Angeles, settling in Torrance. Connie remarried a musician named Curtis Zastoupil, who encouraged Quentin's love of movies and movie-going; his mother took him to see all the "R" rated films of the eary 1970s. Connie divorced Zastoupil in 1973. She was misdiagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma, so Quentin was sent back to Tennessee for a year.
Already attenpting to write scripts at 14, he was grounded for stealing a copy of an Elmore Leonard novel from a local K-Mart. Quentin joined the Torrance Community Theatre and took part of staging plays like Romeo and Juliet. It gets better: dropping out of high school, Tarantino got a job working at the Torrance Pussycat Theatre, which showed pornographic films. You learn a few things doing that job.
Tarantino worked some odd jobs before famously taking a job at a Manhattan Beach video store called Video Archives. Meeting actor Lawrence Bender encouraged Tarantino to write a script. With his video store colleague Craig Hamann, Tarantino
directed, co-produced, co-wrote and played the nutzo Clarence in My Best Friend's Birthday (released in 1987).
He and another video store pal, Roger Avery, got their first gigs working on a Dolph Lundgren exercise video Maximum Potential (released in October 1987). For some reason, Tarantino played an Elvis impersonator on an episode of The Golden Girls with Bea Arthur aired over NBC in November 1988.
Meantime, Tarantino had written a script for a heist movie. Bender got a number of people interested in funding the project. Tarantino directed, wrote and played Mr. Brown in Reservoir Dogs (released in January 1992) with Harvey Keitel. Premiered at Sundance, the talky but violent picture became the talk of the festival. Tarantino was now a hot property.
Director Tony Scott filmed the Tarantino script True Romance (which played the Chinese in September 1993) with Christian Slater, while director Oliver Stone re-wrote Tarantino's script for Natural Born Killers (which played the Chinese in August 1994) with Woody Harrelson.
Tarantino was flooded with offers, but he focused on writing his next film, which he would also direct. Financed by Miramax, Pulp Fiction (which played the Chinese in October 1994) with John Travolta, became an international sensation, winning the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, but also an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The film made a huge amount of money, and is generally considered Tarantino's best film.
The actor in Tarantino came out to play Johnny Destiny in Destiny Turns on the Radio (released in April 1995) with Dylan McDermott. Then, for an omibus film, he was co-executive producer and wrote, directed and played the role of Chester in "The Man from Hollywood" segment of Four Rooms (released in December 1995) with Tim Roth.
For director Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino was executive producer, wrote the script for, and played a huge role as Richard Geko in From Dusk Till Dawn (released in January 1996) with Harvey Keitel. He adapted an Elmore Leonard novel to become Jackie Brown (released in December 1997) with Pam Grier. Tarantino played a large role in Little Nicky (released in November 2000) with Adam Sandler.
Tarantino's next film was so long and drawn out that he and his releasing company Miramax, cut into two parts: Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (released in October 2003) with Uma Thurman, and Kill Bill: Vol 2 (released in April 2004) with David Carradine. In between, he played McKenas Cole for four episodes of Alias with aired over ABC in February 2004. Also for television, Tarantino wrote and directed a pair of episodes for CSI: Crime Scene Investigation called "Grave Danger, Part 1 and 2," aired over CBS in May 2005.
Tarantino was executive producer on Hostel (which played the Chinese in January 2006) with Jay Hernandez, and co-produced, wrote and directed the "Death Proof" segment of Grindhouse (which played the Chinese in April 2007) with Kurt Russell.
Tarantino was executive producer on Hostel: Part II (released in June 2007) with Lauren German, and was executive producer on Hell Ride (released in January 2008) with Larry Bishop.
His next film, Inglorious Basterds (released in August 2009) with Brad Pitt, was released to great reviews and great business. His next film, Django Unchained (released in December 2012) with Jamie Foxx, faired even better: Tarantino won a second Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
After the release of The Hateful Eight (released in December 2015) with Samuel L. Jackson, Tarantino was asked to come down to the Chinese to make his imprints in the Forecourt. A class act to the tips of his toes, Tarantino chose to wear a pair of tennis shoes which carried a subtle message: the block has the director's wish for posterity: "fuck u" it says. Classy.
Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (premeired and played the Chinese later, in August 2019) with Leonardo DiCaprio, got very good reviews, did decent business and racked up a bunch of Oscar nods. But even still, Quentin has vowed to stop directing to concentrate on "writing things." We shall see.
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| TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX®, Hollywood, California. Quentin Tarantino Forecourt block. Executed by unknown, Tuesday, January 5, 2016. 30 x 20 inches. |
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| TCL Chinese Theatre IMAX®, Hollywood, California. Quentin Tarantino Forecourt ceremony, Tuesday, January 5, 2016. Quentin Tarantino looks up at the cameras while placing his hands in the wet cement. |
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