The director Quentin Tarantino called a genius: “I owe this man a huge debt”
Though he is certainly one of the finest filmmakers of the last 30 years, Quentin Tarantino is, first and foremost, a movie-lover. And, unlike some of his contemporaries, the director’s love of cinema defies genre and origins, instead, he watches movies and contributes to cinema with a passion for pretty much anything that runs over a 60-minute runtime.
Though he may not be well known for his forays into the horror genre, he is certainly influenced by its legacy, inspired by old Grindhouse films as well as brand new horror efforts, as illustrated in his 2007 film Death Proof.
“Violence is just one of many things you can do in movies,” the director once said. “People ask me, ‘Where does all this violence come from in your movies?’ I say, ‘Where does all this dancing come from in Stanley Donen movies?’ If you ask me how I feel about violence in real life, well, I have a lot of feelings about it. It’s one of the worst aspects of America. In movies, violence is cool. I like it.”
He added, later: “I feel like a conductor, and the audience’s feelings are my instruments. I will be like, ‘Laugh, laugh, now be horrified’. When someone does that to me, I’ve had a good time at the movies,” he said, offering a deeper understanding of his approach to violence. “If a guy gets shot in the stomach and he’s bleeding like a stuck pig then that’s what I want to see — not a man with a stomach ache and a little red dot on his belly,” he added.
Notable inspiration for Quentin Tarantino comes in the form of Toshiya Fujita’s Lady Snowblood as well as Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale, both of which were influential in the final design for 2003s Kill Bill, starring Uma Thurman. A further Japanese icon that Quentin Tarantino is enamoured by is Takashi Miike, director of Ichi the Killer, Dead Alive and Sukiyaki Western Django where Tarantino even makes an eccentric cameo. Quentin Tarantino would even call Miike’s 1999 horror, Audition “true masterpiece if ever there was one” in an interview with Sky Movies.
It is not unusual for Tarantino to share his opinion on filmmakers. In fact, he enjoys it so much that he even engaged with a podcast, on which, he routinely went through some of the most obscure movies known to man and offered both his joyous appreciation and scathing critique. However, more often than not, his love for directors is real. Whilst Quentin Tarantino is certainly enamoured by Takashi Miike, alongside a plethora of other directors, there is another filmmaker; however, he holds in even higher regard.
Presenting the Mastermind Award for George Romero at the Scream awards, Tarantino stated, “here’s why I’m here tonight. To stand up for one of the coolest, the craziest, the scariest and America’s greatest regional moviemakers of all time”. Continuing, he added, “I owe this man a huge debt and so does every filmmaker who ever dared to declare their own independence because George Romero did it first and he did it with more guts and more gore than anybody!”.
Punctuating his love for the iconic horror director, Quentin Tarantino introduces George Romero by calling him “a f**king genius”, making his opinion on the filmmaker abundantly well known.
12 years after George Romero’s final movie, and four years after his death in 2017, The Amusement Park was released in 2021, salvaged from two badly-faded 16mm prints, digitally scanned into 4K resolution. It’s a gentle reminder that we don’t require Tarantino to let us know that Romero’s contribution to cinema is just as vital now as it ever was.
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