The first movie scene that disturbed Quentin Tarantino: “All of a sudden, I’m afraid”
In Cinema Speculation, Quentin Tarantino wrote about his history as a young movie buff growing up in the 1960s and ’70s. It was one part memoir, one part history of Hollywood in that era, and one part Tarantino’s chance to wax lyrical about all the wildly unsuitable movies he saw as a child.
Indeed, perhaps the most eye-opening aspect of the book is Tarantino’s recollection of accompanying his mum and stepfather to the cinema, because it explains so much about why he is the way he is. For example, in 1970, seven-year-old QT sat with his parents and watched a double bill of John G Avildsen’s vigilante drama Joe and Carl Reiner’s black comedy Where’s Poppa?
Neither of these movies should have been witnessed by someone so young – Joe, in particular, featured a man bludgeoning a junkie and his own daughter to death – but Tarantino loved feeling like a grown-up. He even found himself laughing along with the audience at jokes he wouldn’t understand until he was much older.
Following this formative experience, Tarantino continued to accompany his parents to movies, and after a while, began to understand that he was being allowed to see things his schoolmates weren’t. When he asked his mum why this was the case, she told him she was more worried about him watching the news than any movie, even one laced with violence and sex. She felt he understood, even at his young age, that he was watching a film and it wasn’t real, whereas the news was a different kettle of fish altogether.
Whether or not you agree with Mrs Tarantino’s approach to parenting, Tarantino’s exposure to screen violence when he wasn’t old enough to truly comprehend it must have shaped his work in later years. His films have always been known for their sharp bursts of violence, which often come out of nowhere, yet often aren’t depicted realistically. Tarantino makes ‘movie violence,’ not violence that is meant to look ‘real’ – and that might be because he was deeply disturbed by the first harrowingly realistic depiction of violence he ever saw in a cinema.
During an appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2022, Tarantino was asked about the first thing he saw in a cinema that genuinely frightened him. To Meyers’ surprise, he didn’t cite a horror movie or violent action extravaganza, instead recalling when his mum took him to see Karel Reisz’s Isadora, a biopic of the contemporary dance pioneer Isadora Duncan. She died tragically in 1927, and Reisz’s movie ends with that unexpected, out-of-nowhere demise, which young QT had no idea was coming.
“So, the ending is, she’s in the back of a roadster and she’s wearing this long, flowing scarf that’s just hanging down,” Tarantino explained, before miming star Vanessa Redgrave’s joyous laughter in his characteristically manic way. “They’re driving around. I think she even has a champagne glass in her hand. And then the scarf gets caught in the wheel of the roadster and strangles her to death.”
Naturally, as Tarantino described Duncan’s tragic death, he pantomimed being choked to death by an errant scarf. He then admitted to being “thoroughly bored” by the movie up until this shocking moment, but the thought of death by scarf made such an impression on him that he badgered his mum with questions about it on the way home.
“All of a sudden, I’m so afraid of this,” Tarantino laughed, before revealing that his mother simply turned around to look at him, and said, “Quentin, you have nothing to worry about. I would never, ever, under any circumstances, let you wear a long, flowing scarf in a convertible roadster.” Now that’s parenting!
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.