Quentin Tarantino reveals his two favourite Steven Spielberg movies
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Credit: AVARYdotcom
The classic modern movie Roger Avary calls “horseshit”
There’s no doubt that Pulp Fiction remains one of the most iconic movies of all time, let alone one of the definitive films of the 1990s. Solidifying Quentin Tarantino’s status as one of the most promising filmmakers of his generation, Palme d’Or-winning crime movie is thought to be the director’s self-made magnum opus even though the film was co-written by the forgotten scribe Roger Avary.
Working closely with Tarantino early on in their careers, Avary, who was a director at the time, had planned to make an anthology movie with the famed director consisting of three short films, with two being taken by each of them and the third rumoured to be made by the writer of Small Soldiers, Adam Rifkin. When this idea never materialised, the two directors went their separate ways and turned their respective stories into full-length screenplays.
Tarantino’s short film concept went on to become the basis of his debut feature film, Reservoir Dogs, the movie that would splatter his name onto the circuit of art cinema. Avary’s story, however, named Pandemonium Reigns, ended up forming the foundations of the ‘Gold Watch’ chapter of Pulp Fiction, with further scenes, originally written for True Romance, also being reworked for use in the opening of the chapter, ‘The Bonnie Situation’.
Coming together once more, shortly after the release of Reservoir Dogs, the two writers combined each other’s scenes to create the first draft of Pulp Fiction, before Avary left to film 1993s Killing Zoe. Later reporting to The State Hornet in 2002, Avary stated, “Quentin [Tarantino] and I, we were buddies and we would write together. We wrote Pulp Fiction not really thinking that it would turn into what it turned into. It surprised us as much as anybody else. All of a sudden it’s the cultural barometer it became and to be perfectly frank with you my writing range went through the roof”.
Still good friends, the pair recently appeared on the ReelBlend podcast to discuss their favourite movies and promote the release of their brand new show, The Video Archives Podcast.
In one particularly heated conversation, Avary and Tarantino discuss their dislike for modern movies directed by some of the industry’s greatest names. Whilst the latter isn’t too keen on hating on the work of his respected peers, Avary isn’t as fearful, stating at one point towards the end of the show, “I have no problem saying, I think [David] Fincher’s Mank is horseshit, I think it’s an insult actually”.
Written by Fincher’s late father in the 1990s, Mank reassesses the life of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz as he battles to complete the script for the iconic movie and retain authorship of the story itself. Separated by a properly formatted title card that proceeds many scenes, the film feels less like several long sequences and more like multiple static vignettes, bouncing back and forth through Kane’s production timeline with Gary Oldman at the helm as the title character.
In the very same conversation, Quentin Tarantino revealed his love for two specific Steven Spielberg movies, Jaws and one other surprising film that few consider to be the filmmaker’s best.
