He imprinted on films early, with his parents taking him to films that were wildly inappropriate for his age, and which continued into his tweens and teens. After his parents’ divorce, Tarantino writes that his mother dated Black men exclusively for a few years, which further expanded his moviegoing tastes, since they took him to other parts of town like the South Bay and downtown L.A. to see movies at second-run houses, particularly Blaxploitation flicks. (He mentions that a former Black roommate of Tarantino’s mom also became a second mother to him, whose kids became de facto siblings, taking him to a Pussycat adult film theater when he was 14, noting that he was tall for his age.)
After setting up his childhood, subsequent chapters focus on some of the movies that he particularly admired, like Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Deliverance, The Getaway, and others…but the book soon broadens and morphs. One chapter focused on an assessment of various reviewers in the Los Angeles Times he grew up reading, like Sheila Benson, Charles Champlin and Kevin Thomas—this chapter particularly amused me since I read these critics as well as an L.A. transplant after I moved here in 1980 for college.
Throughout the book, you can clearly hear Tarantino’s voice, an enthusiastic film geek blessed with a motor mouth and strong opinions. His zealousness can’t be denied, however, and it’s infectious. He talks about thematic elements as well as craft, often reinforcing his observations and judgment through research and, better yet, the direct access he has gained as a fellow successful filmmaker to people like Martin Scorcese, Brian DePalma, John Milius, Paul Shrader and others, who he has no doubt peppered with questions about their films over the years.
Tarantino is 13 months younger than me and grew up in California as an only child of a single mother who worked hard to make ends meet; in contrast, I grew up a bit more sheltered and was far less exposed to the kind of films that Tarantino embraced in his youth. As a result, I don’t have the same feel or love of the films he covers, especially of the lower-bill films he saw. (Indeed, I have to admit that the book made me question my own film cred—I’ve always considered myself fairly knowledgeable about films and film history, but Tarantino mentions and discusses movies I’d never even heard of, much less seen. Early on, I semi-jokingly thought that Tarantino should have given spoiler alerts—but realized that if you hadn’t seen the films, that’s on the reader, not Tarantino.)
In the end, I didn’t feel necessarily compelled to see all the films Tarantino highlights since, as I said, I know most of those films aren’t in my wheelhouse. But his descriptions and breakdowns are hugely entertaining and readable, and he did inspire me to watch Bullitt, with Steve McQueen, for the first time, followed by Dirty Harry, which I hadn’t seen since the early ‘80s. (This in turn led me to watch the next two Dirty Harry films, Magnum Force and the Enforcer*. Personally, while I could appreciate Bullitt for being groundbreaking, I didn’t feel it had particularly aged well, especially compared to Dirty Harry, made only about three years later, which I found to be a much better (and slicker) production.
[* What amazed me about Magnum Force was seeing Tim Matheson, David Soul and Tom Urich playing three fellow motorcycle cops in the film, which I didn’t recall. And I was curious to watch the Enforcer since I remembered Tyne Daly being in the film.]
The last chapter (though it’s called an endnote) was a bit of a left turn and made for a touching ending—it’s an appreciative account of his relationship with an older Black man named Floyd Ray Wilson, who dated one of his mother’s roommates, and turned out to be a bit of a filmgoing mentor/companion/father figure (of sorts) to young Tarantino. Although the guy wasn’t quite father material, he nevertheless was a film aficionado, who treated Tarantino like an adult and exposed him to a wider world of film and music, with his own similarly uniquely strong eclectic and unpredictable opinions on actors and films (“Don Knotts is a mother fuckin’ comic genius!”)
It’s a great read that viscerally reflects Tarantino’s love and passion for films, and gives you an appreciation for the movies he writes about, even if they aren’t the reader’s particular fancy.
Throughout the book, you can clearly hear Tarantino’s voice, an enthusiastic film geek blessed with a motor mouth and strong opinions. His zealousness can’t be denied, however, and it’s infectious. He talks about thematic elements as well as craft, often reinforcing his observations and judgment through research and, better yet, the direct access he has gained as a fellow successful filmmaker to people like Martin Scorcese, Brian DePalma, John Milius, Paul Shrader and others, who he has no doubt peppered with questions about their films over the years.
Tarantino is 13 months younger than me and grew up in California as an only child of a single mother who worked hard to make ends meet; in contrast, I grew up a bit more sheltered and was far less exposed to the kind of films that Tarantino embraced in his youth. As a result, I don’t have the same feel or love of the films he covers, especially of the lower-bill films he saw. (Indeed, I have to admit that the book made me question my own film cred—I’ve always considered myself fairly knowledgeable about films and film history, but Tarantino mentions and discusses movies I’d never even heard of, much less seen. Early on, I semi-jokingly thought that Tarantino should have given spoiler alerts—but realized that if you hadn’t seen the films, that’s on the reader, not Tarantino.)
In the end, I didn’t feel necessarily compelled to see all the films Tarantino highlights since, as I said, I know most of those films aren’t in my wheelhouse. But his descriptions and breakdowns are hugely entertaining and readable, and he did inspire me to watch Bullitt, with Steve McQueen, for the first time, followed by Dirty Harry, which I hadn’t seen since the early ‘80s. (This in turn led me to watch the next two Dirty Harry films, Magnum Force and the Enforcer*. Personally, while I could appreciate Bullitt for being groundbreaking, I didn’t feel it had particularly aged well, especially compared to Dirty Harry, made only about three years later, which I found to be a much better (and slicker) production.
[* What amazed me about Magnum Force was seeing Tim Matheson, David Soul and Tom Urich playing three fellow motorcycle cops in the film, which I didn’t recall. And I was curious to watch the Enforcer since I remembered Tyne Daly being in the film.]
The last chapter (though it’s called an endnote) was a bit of a left turn and made for a touching ending—it’s an appreciative account of his relationship with an older Black man named Floyd Ray Wilson, who dated one of his mother’s roommates, and turned out to be a bit of a filmgoing mentor/companion/father figure (of sorts) to young Tarantino. Although the guy wasn’t quite father material, he nevertheless was a film aficionado, who treated Tarantino like an adult and exposed him to a wider world of film and music, with his own similarly uniquely strong eclectic and unpredictable opinions on actors and films (“Don Knotts is a mother fuckin’ comic genius!”)
It’s a great read that viscerally reflects Tarantino’s love and passion for films, and gives you an appreciation for the movies he writes about, even if they aren’t the reader’s particular fancy.
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