Quentin Tarantino

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Quentin Jerome Tarantino would have known his father had it not been for the fact that the three-for-a-room musician ran away when he learned that his 16-year-old girlfriend Connie was pregnant. Connie named the boy after his favorite series, Gunsmoke , because the protagonist was called Quint, and Connie believed that the name came from Quentin. As a kid, his mom would catch him swearing while he played with the GI Joes, but he’d say, “It’s not me, it’s the dolls.” Mistreated by his alcoholic grandmother, Quentin could only be taken away from the television to go to the movies.

In the 1960s, Hollywood left the Hays code, and the screens were filled with violence that shocked Tarantino. He had problems in school, because of his tendency to talk fast and because he wanted to be a tough guy. “The teachers said to be careful, that one day I would mess with the wrong guy. Well, I wanted to be the wrong guy.” At 16 he traded high school for acting school, and formed a group of cronies who lobbied the school to let them use real firearms in performances. When he finished, he got a job in the aviation industry. But one day they offered him a lower-paid position in a video store and he accepted. There he became the guru of the clients, who came in and said: “What do I want to see today, Mr. Tarantino?” If anyone asked about a difficult film,

With a group of freaks he launched into shooting My Best Friend’s Birthday , a modest feature filming that lasted three years. His friends would get fat or grow beards, which led to hilarious continuity failures. Apparently he was boring, but manager Cathryn James trusted him, and moved the scripts from him. But Point Blank Love and From Dusk Till Dawn wouldn’t be filmed until Quentin became famous. One night, the police arrested him for not paying his traffic tickets. He spent a week in jail, and his cellmates inspired the script for Natural Born Killers . When he left, the manager had gotten him a contract to play an Elvis impersonator in The Golden Girls.. Then he was hired to sell videos over the phone at a major, and there he met producer Lawrence Bender, who would help him find financing for Reservoir Dogs . Finally, an independent production company, Live Entertainment, entered the project, which fascinated Harvey Keitel , who would become an actor and producer. The hallmarks of the most influential director of the 90s were present in the tape: imaginative shots, surprising dialogues that paid homage to everything the director liked, wild and parodic violence, love for pop culture…

It had such an impact that the aforementioned projects were given the green light, using the screenwriter’s name as a publicity claim, an unprecedented case. Miramax later produced Pulp Fiction , which established him among the general public, winning at Cannes and giving him an Oscar. Jackie Brown followed , disappointing some of his fans. And after being ‘missing’ for several years, he has delivered his double volume of Kill Bill .