The ‘Friends’ actor Quentin Tarantino described as an “icon of the era”
From the restaurants themed in their honour to callbacks in TV shows of the future, Quentin Tarantino is not content with simply making great movies; he is obsessive about the whole package. For him, a film is not a roll of celluloid that flickers away for two hours before the curtain falls and judgement awaits. For Tarantino, it’s about the posters, the popcorn experience, the soundtrack vinyl and all the iconography that goes along with it. When he creates a movie, he’s also got the pyjamas and placemats in mind.
Reflecting on his approach, Tarantino once said: “I like the idea of creating a new pop-culture, folkloric hero character that I created with ‘Django’ that I think is going to last for a long time.” That’s an ethos that goes beyond filmmaking and looks at the transcendent side of pop culture in general. It’s an outlook that looks at the way it encroaches into our dismal daily lives and adds a dose of colour. This was a realisation that was just coming to the fore when the 1960s got swinging, and stars weren’t just people who read lines in the pictures–but three-dimensional figures of influence.
Fame became a platform that changed acting. It meant you had thespians and you had movie stars–two separate entities entirely. As Tarantino recently said of Brad Pitt: “He’s one of the last remaining big-screen movie stars. He suggests an older-style movie star. It’s just a different breed of man. And frankly, I don’t think you can describe exactly what that is because it’s like describing starshine.” Perhaps natural charisma is as close as you’ll get.
However, you didn’t (and don’t) have to be a bombastic name to be defined as a star; you simply have to have something transcendent about you, and in the 1960s, Elliott Gould had this sewn up. He was a hip figure that reflected the times effortlessly. “Gould was a political revolutionary radical before that was fashionable to be that,” Tarantino told Kim Morgan.
The star is perhaps best known to the modern generation as Jack Geller from Friends, the docile father of Ross and Monica. He was happy playing the affable elder goon in this classic series. However, back in the 1960s, he was a figure who upheld the affable side of counterculture in a much more prominent and impactful sense, adding humour with a side of cool style to pictures like Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. It was this largely forgotten classic that helped to inspire Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Tarantino dubbed it one of his favourite films ever.
Nevertheless, there is one movie that defined his place in the counterculture with even more vigour. As the movement mutated into the ‘70s, he starred as Harry Bailey in the magnificent Richard Rush movie Getting Straight. Based on the Ken Kolb novel of the same name, the film saw Gould’s wayward character trying to get back in line with society as an ageing student returning to college after Vietnam to complete his master’s degree. In some ways, this was a paradigm of many children of the revolution who saw their flower power wane towards normal civility. The money they were spending on pot and Sgt Peppers was suddenly being banked into white goods as they realised you can’t live of peace and love forever, and you can’t feed the kids ‘good vibes’.
All the same, what made the movie so magical was how Gould retained an outsider air, proving you can still be round and fit in a square hole. The problem was upholding that amid a radical campus movement. That was his struggle, and he masterfully portrays that with bracing comedy and a style that preserves the zeitgeist in amber. For Tarantino, it was this ability that made him a star. As he explains, “It may be his most iconic role.”
However, aside from the stardom that Tarantino has heaped upon him, perhaps the best way he defined the ‘60s is how he really didn’t fit in and only sought to be himself. And in this outlaw way, he upheld a beautiful message of spiritualism—a sort of unity through not conforming. As he puts it himself: “Everybody is a star. I am gratified, grateful and appreciative to have been able to continue to work through all of this in relation to my purpose, in relation to what I would hope would be the purpose of all of us.”
Profoundly adding: “What does it feel like to be alive? What does it feel like to function and have a purpose? What does it feel like to participate and to contribute? It’s a privilege, it’s very humbling, and I believe in true humility—by which I mean, ‘No one of us can be any more than the least of us.’” In a world where too many of us celebrate our own good luck and berate others for their lack of it, that’s an important message.
That’s also an important message when framing Gould’s career. Although his role in Friends might not scream iconic status, he was still contributing to culture in the same way he did in the ‘60s and ‘70s–it was just the screen time that had changed.
Never Miss A Take
The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter
All the latest Quentin Tarantino content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.