Inside Quentin Tarantino’s love for Phil Ochs
Quentin Tarantino doesn’t really seem like the kind of person who looks at music and movies as two separate entities. Everything is done in service to art, and some of the greatest moments in any of Tarantino’s films come from when he can take his cinematic vision and put just the right song to fit the mood. Although any Tarantino soundtrack seems like one of the greatest mixtapes that no one has ever heard of, the acclaimed director had a special place in his heart for Phil Ochs.
Then again, most of what Ochs did usually came back to the sounds of folk music, years before rock and roll had even been invented. Although he did have his influence on modern song poets like Buddy Holly and Woody Guthrie, Ochs saw every song as an opportunity for him to express himself, whether that was talking about problems with the world or quoting something that he felt in his heart.
As relentless as Tarantino can be behind the camera, it’s not like he wasn’t thinking in the same way whenever he made his masterpieces. For as much fun as it can be watching a movie like Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction for the first time, there are always going to be those few elements that only enhance the film once you’ve noticed them after seeing it again and again.
Even though Ochs rose to prominence in the same folk-rock spheres that birthed Dylan, he came at his music from a different perspective. Throughout his time, Ochs’s poetry practically served as a map to where the counterculture was moving, either making damning protest songs like ‘Here’s to the State of Mississippi’ or observations on the larger problems facing the world like ‘Talkin’ Vietnam’.
While Dylan had his place in history, Tarantino thought that Ochs took his music one step further than just preaching, telling Uncut, “Ochs was a musical journalist: He was a chronicler of his time, filled with humour and compassion. He’d write songs which would seem very black and white, and then, in the last verse, he’d say something which, like, completely shattered you”.
Despite Ochs being one of the premiere songwriters of his time, it’s hard to emulate anything that he tried to do. Since most of his music was entrenched in the time that it was created, how the hell does someone take those ideals and try to shoehorn them into their own art?
Although Tarantino has never claimed to make anything on Och’s level, his knack for making a dramatic shift in his movies feels inspired by Och’s work. Much like Och keeps the listener hanging on his every word until the final gut punch, Tarantino never lets his viewers off the leash, either, only to drop a massive puzzle piece in their lap at the last second.
Take the ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, for instance. Even though the heart of the movie has everyone invested in Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton as he tries to adapt to Hollywood, seeing him transition into a blowtorch-wielding badass who stops the Tate murders is the kind of thing that no one sees coming when they sit down in the theatre for the first time.
That’s not the kind of setup that someone stumbles on by accident. This comes from years of meticulously focusing on every word that comes out of the character’s mouths, and Tarantino has developed an ability to take that style that he learned from Ochs and turn his movies into cinematic spectacles.
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