Quentin Tarantino broke his own golden rule for Spike Lee: “I did something I said I would never do”
Many celebrated filmmakers emerged during the 1990s – a time in which American cinema was rapidly changing in a way that almost mirrored the New Hollywood boom of the 1970s – but few made such an impact as Quentin Tarantino did. The director’s first film, Reservoir Dogs, made him an unforgettable presence in the industry; the movie was as violent as it was stylish, leaving many viewers horrified.
When Tarantino released his second feature, Pulp Fiction, he proved he wasn’t a one-hit wonder kind of filmmaker; instead, he was more than capable of delivering another impressive piece of work that demonstrated his ability to write memorable dialogue, utilise unconventional narrative structure, and craft incredibly iconic characters. Pulp Fiction was a landmark moment for indie cinema, grossing $213.9million despite its budget of just $8m.
Since then, Tarantino has continued to make acclaimed films, but something that makes him stand out from his contemporaries is his insistence on starring in his own movies. For example, the filmmaker played Mr Brown in Reservoir Dogs, Jimmie in Pulp Fiction, and Robert in Django Unchained (doing a very unique accent), and he even narrated The Hateful Eight.
The director had taken acting classes when he was working at Video Archives before becoming a successful filmmaker, and while Tarantino has never given any performances you’d exactly consider award-worthy, he has appeared in various movies by other filmmakers, often just in a small cameo role.
You can find Tarantino playing minor parts in films like Somebody to Love, Desperado, and Sleep With Me, although his penchant for making cameos eventually led him to break one of his golden rules. He once revealed in a 1996 interview with Us, “I did something I said I would never do. I said I would never play a director in a movie.”
That year, Tarantino could be seen playing a director in Spike Lee’s Girl 6, an offer that was seemingly too good for him to turn down. While the film actually performed rather poorly, receiving rather negative reviews from critics, at least Tarantino could say he’d appeared in a Spike Lee movie. The film also starred Ron Silver as another director who sits in the audition room with Tarantino, pressuring the protagonist to expose her chest to them.
Tarantino added: “I just felt I wanted to do it for Spike. I have the first scene in the movie. It’s this white-boy hip-hop director making this Black movie, and it starts off with a screen test for Theresa Randle. The whole idea of the scene is for me to get her to take her clothes off.”
This isn’t the only time Tarantino has broken his golden rule, however. In his popular 2019 film Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, the filmmaker cameoed as the director of a Red Apple Cigarettes commercial, clearly letting his rule slide following his appearance in Girl 6. Tarantino now joins various auteurs who have played directors in movies, from François Truffaut in Day for Night and Alain Robbe-Grillet in Trans-Europ Express to Mel Brooks in Silent Movie.
While Tarantino enjoyed working with Lee, the pair have since engaged in somewhat of a feud, with Lee criticising the filmmaker’s overuse of racial slurs in his films. He told Variety, “I’m not against the word, and I use it, but not excessively. And some people speak that way. But Quentin is infatuated with that word. What does he want to be made – an honorary Black man?”
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