YouSaid · the spoken record

Quentin Tarantino

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19
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2024-03-30
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2024-03-30
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  1. “Like one of the only few practitioners who truly enjoyed their job, and consequently their life, I loved reading him growing up and practically considered him a friend. In nineteen ninety four I won an award for pulp fiction from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. When I stepped up to the podium and looked out before the audience of LA critics, my first remarks to the room were G, thanks. Now I finally know what Kevin Thomas looks like.”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Lead performances was a young Robert Forster. Remember, Quentin is 18 years old when he's reading this review about this performance of this actor named Robert Forster. Fifteen years later, when I was writing my adaptation to what would turn into the movie Jackie Brown, I had to consider who was going to play the likable lead male character Bale Bondsman Max Cherry. There was something about Forrester in alligator that really stuck with me. I watched the movie again and I felt that the character from Alligator could be Max Cherry just fifteen years earlier. So I started writing the script as if he was. Would I have done that without Kevin Thomas's highlighting Forrester so positively in his review? No, in the end what made Kevin Thomas so unique in the world of the seventies and eighties film criticism”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Never did let them stop me. Viewers can accept my work or rejected. They can deem it good, bad, or with indifference, but this is such an interesting, there's a great line, such an interesting idea. But I've always approached my cinema with a fearlessness of the eventual outcome, a fearlessness that comes to me naturally. I've always approached my cinema with a fearlessness of the eventual outcome, a fearlessness that comes to me naturally. And you know that is true because he is going against the trend. He is swimming. Remember last week, David Ogave said only dead fish go with the flow? Tarantino is not a dead fish. He's not going with the flow. He's making reservoir dogs coming off the 80s. And so he says the people making movies at this time didn't think audience cared whether or not the happy endings they gave them made sense or not.”

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  4. “And their response should be Quentin, they won't let you do that to which I replied back Who the fuck are they and who is going to stop me? They can go fuck themselves. I wasn't a professional filmmaker back then. I was a brash know it all film geek. Okay. His self-confidence, obviously, when you hear him speak, when you hear him write, excessively high. It was like that way before belief comes before ability. Before he ever made a movie, he had self-confidence that he could make the movie. And one of his great friends is the other filmmaker, Robert Rodriguez, and he even brought it up in the interview. Like, oh, we know you're obviously very self-confident. And they were self-confident back when they were like kids. They were talking about hanging out when they were, they were first trying to make it. They'd go like Quentin's like crappy apartment and watch movies all day. I think they were in like their early 20s when they were doing this. And Quentin was like that back then. And so you see this like, you know, I'm not going to let them stop me, forget them. I wasn't a professional filmmaker back then. I was a brash know it all geek. Yet once I graduated to a professional filmmaker, I knew.”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Myself and told him I was writing a book on film directors, and could we get together an interview, and could I interview him about his career? And he agreed. And we set a time and he invited me over to come over to his house and conduct the interview. As we sat down in his living room to conduct the interview, I began asking my questions and testing my theories about rolling thunder. I was so inexperienced at what I was doing that I brought my tape recorder with me, but I only brought one cassette. I could not imagine him giving me more than an hour. So one obviously did. So once both sides of the tape were done, I didn't want to look like an idiot, so I just kept flipping it over and re-recording over what I had just recorded. So all the stuff on his early career was lost forever. That is the end of that story. That is why I titled that story How Bad Do You Want It? There's another story that you and I have talked about in the past. Steve Jobs was 14 years old. Looks up Bill Hewlett, who's the founder, the co-founder of”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “They would replay movies over and over again. I don't even think they do this now. And then he would go all over the city of Los Angeles looking for this. I did this before I knew how to drive a car or before I had a car. I would travel by bus hours away from my home to some really sketchy neighborhoods to see rolling thunder. After I watched the film a few times I began to have a deeper understanding of it. Again, this is another thing. He will tell over and over again. You hear this in conversations, you hear this in writing. He's like, oh yeah, watch that movie 15 times. I watch that movie six times. It's not one or two movies he did this for. Repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition. You know what's insane? Tarantino made his own read-wise. He made his own founder's notes. He had scrapbooks. So this is what he does. He's comparing his love and dedication to films compared to this other director. And he says, this guy didn't. Nor did he keep scrapbooks, make notes, and”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Put together. Again, this is why I think it was so helpful to me to constantly put off. I sat down. I was like, oh, I'm not ready. I'm not ready. I can't. I keep finding more interesting things because I didn't understand the full context around this till two weeks, maybe a week and a half after I read this. The massive theater full of blackmails cheered in a way that nine-year-old little me had never experienced in a movie before. At the time, remember, I kept asking, where's Quentin's dad? Where's Quentin's dad? At the time, living with a single mother, it was the most masculine experience I had ever been part of. Remember the scene that reappears over and over again in these books? You can always understand the son by the story of his father, the story of the father is embedded in the son. Quentin didn't know his father. And so I'm watching this. I might do it a completely separate episode on it because it's so excellent. I'm going to have to do another Quentin episode down the line. But he's being interviewed by Ron.”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “That his mom were dating. And in some of those men, Quentin would watch movies with. And one of those guys introduced him to this genre that's going to be, that came out in the 70s that is hugely influential to Quentin's movie career. And I think it's pronounced Black's ploitation. And so Reggie introduces him to this genre because he says, my little face was the only white face in the audience. That was my first movie in an all-black movie theater in a black neighborhood. And he absolutely loved it. He says, as far as I was concerned, mom could marry this cat. To one degree, now this is crazy. This is all going to tie together. And then you see the influence on his work later. But it says, to one degree or another, I've spent my entire life since both attending movies and making them trying to recreate that experience of watching a brand new Jim Brown film on a Saturday night in a black cinema in nineteen seventy two.”

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  9. “Stepdad. And then when Quentin is 10 years old, this is what I meant about one of the main themes that this kid had to grow up, this guy, I should say, or I guess he was a kid. This kid grew up fast. And so now he's living with his mother in an apartment. He grew up in LA, okay? They're all cocktail waitresses, and it's his mom and her two best friends, Jackie and Lilyian. And so he describes this time in his life. He says all three were young, hip, good-looking women in the funky 70s with a penchant for dating professional athletes. Remember, he is ten. During this time, my mother was dating a professional football player named Reggie. Reggie asked to hang out with me. Being a football player, he asked, does Quentin like football? She told him no, he likes movies. Well, as luck would have it, so did Reggie, and this winds up being a very important Reggie's not going to stick around.”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “But due to Floyd's inspiration, I tried writing screenplays. I usually never got that far, but I tried, and eventually I succeeded. So what happened to the script for Billy Spencer? Nothing. I'm sure at the time of his death, Floyd was the only one who stole out a copy of it, and whenever he died, wherever he was, it was disposed of with the rest of his meager possessions. And whatever trash can it was tossed into was the final resting place of Floyd, Ray Wilson's dream of a black cowboy hero named Billy Spencer. My dream of a black cowboy hero Django Unchained was not only red, it was made by me into a worldwide smash, a smash that resulted in me winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. By the time I walked up to that podium.”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “To accomplish in that script an epic western with a black heroic cowboy at its center was the very heart of what I was trying to accomplish with Django unchained, but even more influential than any script was having a man trying to be a screenwriter living in my house. Him writing, him talking about a script, me reading it made me consider for the first time writing movies. It would be a long road from that year of nineteen seventy eight to me completing my first feature length screenplay True Romance in september nineteen eighty seven, so another theme that's eleven years.”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “On her teenage son, he couldn't have been doing so well. Floyd was a very personable guy, yet he never had friends from the old days visit him, which I can't say rang any bells back then. But now I think it's due to the fact that he didn't have any old friends. People were in Floyd's life for a while, and then they weren't. But Floyd did have an ambition. Floyd wanted to be a screenwriter. By the time he moved into my house he had written two screenplays Floyd's two screenplays were the first two screenplays I ever read. The script that I loved I ever read was Floyd's Epic Western saga called Billy Spencer. The story featured an incredibly cool black cowboy named Billy Spencer.”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “He was gone never to be seen or heard from again. And that was the story of Floyd. I didn't hold it against Floyd for not keeping in touch. I'm sure he had enough of me, and by that time he had done things to dischant everybody in our circle. He was personan grata with my mom due to some jewelry in a pawn shop, and I'm sure other things that I wasn't aware of. Nevertheless, Floyd Ray Wilson left a lasting impression on the fifteen and sixteen year old boy he mentored in the year of nineteen seventy eight, as well as a bit of legacy that he could have never imagined. What exactly Floyd did for a living all these years was open to wild speculation. Like everyone I've ever met like him, he always had stories of the days when he was living the high life. But if he's thirty seven years old and moving into his old girlfriend's best friend's spare room and made to keep a lookout.”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Floyd liked me, we had a good time together. You see, a guy like Floyd could like you and simultaneously not give a fuck whether you lived or died. One doesn't contradict the other. If you're a guy like Floyd. Not to say Floyd didn't have affection for me, but he was always looking out for number one, and that wasn't me. It's very much like Ordell Robbie and Jackie Brown. And it wasn't the worst thing in the world to hang around an adult who didn't treat you with kid gloves, who told it to you like it is without too much concern for your feelings. Floyd never lied to me about me. He didn't care enough about me to lie to me. Obviously sometimes this hurt my feelings, but through Floyd I received an authentic glimpse on the impression I was making on others. Floyd moved out in nineteen seventy nine when Floyd moved out.”

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  15. “Having her very impressionable young son spend so much time around such a sketchy dude. It was sort of like moving Samuel L. Jackson's character in Jackie Brown or Dell Robbie into your home and having him look after your sixteen year old boy for over a year. And if you've seen Jackie Brown, then you know that Ordell Robbie was a character that was a gun runner, killed people, and attempted to manipulate every single person around him. During the year of 1978 and some of 1979, Floyd and I saw a lot of movies together. During this time, the only family I had around me was my mom. But to us, her close circle of friends were our family. Her best friend Jackie was like my second mom. Her friend Lily was like my aunt. Jackie's brother Don was like my uncle, and they all looked out for me. Floyd, in his own way, looked out for me too. The difference between Floyd and them was while they loved me, Floyd didn't give a shit about me. Don't get me wrong.”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Wise guy who thought he was tough, so mom rented Floyd a spare room in our house with the provision that she keep an eye on her sixteen year old son. I still thought Floyd was the coolest. Yeah, yeah, years ago he stood me up, but since that time I had gone through the whole trauma of being sent to Tennessee and put in the care of Hillbilly Alcoholics, I think that was his grandparents. So by that time, Floyd being a flake was easy to forgive, but it equipped me with two pieces of information that would prove valuable as our relationship moved forward. One, I could not count on Floyd, and two, I cared more for Floyd than he cared for me. I'm sure my mom thought she came up with the perfect solution for the whole what to do with Quentin problem. At the time, I don't think she was aware of what a shady cat Floyd really was. Nor did she consider the ramifications of having”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “And I'd be waiting for him. And he said, Of course no problem. See you next Saturday. And the fucking guy did it to me again. But this time I wasn't heartbroken. I felt lousy, but not crushed. It was just now I knew who Floyd really was. He was an adult I couldn't count on. This is a theme that's going to reappear over and over again, Quentin's fierce self belief and fierce independence because he was surrounded by a bunch of adults he couldn't count on. He was an adult I couldn't count on. I also promised myself when I grew up that I'd never do that to a kid. Now cut to 1978. I'm fifteen going on sixteen. My mom's work is requiring her to spend more and more time away from the house, or she wanted to, and that was a good excuse, so she ran with it, which happened to coincide with the age that I started getting in trouble a lot, a lot of fights in school, skipping school, and staying out late. I was a young”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Floyd was a flaky guy who couldn't be counted on. On at least two occasions he told me he'd come over next Saturday and take me to the movies. Oh boy, I thought, not just talking about movies with Floyd, but actually going to the movies of Floyd. But when Saturday came, no Floyd, no call, no excuse, no apology, just no show. He either forgot or he didn't give a shit. And I was so excited too. As the hours passed and I waited and I waited and I waited and it got later and later I finally realized he wasn't coming. I wasn't mad. I was heartbroken. I didn't even think of myself as a kid, but even I knew you didn't do that to a kid, but I forgave Floyd and played it cool the next time he came by. And a few visits later he promised to take me out again. I made sure when he left that he remembered that we had plants.”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So who exactly was this Floyd character I was referring to earlier? His name was Floyd Ray Wilson, and he was about thirty seven, and for a year and a half in the late nineteen seventies he lived in my house. He used to date my mom's best friend Jackie, and years earlier he would visit the apartment that my mom and I shared with her two roommates, Jackie and Lily. And every time he came by it was exciting, because I thought Floyd was really cool, and I could talk movies with him, and since he was a hip guy who saw a lot of shit, he could keep up. I remember when Jackie introduced us, I was ten years old, and she said Quentin, Floyd's who you should talk to about movies he knows as much as you do. So I, a ten year old, started testing this grown ass man on his knowledge of movies. Finally, I was able to talk to somebody about movies who knew what the fuck I was talking about. Also during this time I realized the hard way that”

    2024-03-30 · Founders · #344 Quentin Tarantino · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source