Quentin Tarantino names the filmmaker who “taught me cinema”
Instead of going to film school, not that he was in a position to afford it anyway, Quentin Tarantino decided the easier and cheaper option to pick up everything he ever wanted to know about filmmaking was to watch as many movies as humanly possible.
Working as a video store clerk came in very handy in that respect, with the writer and director developing a level of knowledge that ‘encyclopaedic’ may not cover. In terms of how much he knows, Tarantino is right up there with Martin Scorsese, even if their areas of interest are very different.
Whereas Scorsese will be able to recall certain shots from an obscure film that he only saw once half a century beforehand, Tarantino would much rather dive into the specificities of how a character was gratuitously murdered in a 1970s exploitation splatter-fest the majority of people have never heard of.
Of course, it’s served them equally well, considering how their careers have panned out, but Scorsese was never a huge influence on Tarantino. A fan of the grindhouse he may be, but the latter’s eclectic range of inspirations hailed from all corners of the film world, even if there’s one that stands out as being the most indelible by far.
In a conversation with Alexandre Rockwell, the Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction mastermind singled out Howard Hawks, Jean-Luc Godard – with the caveat “early Godard, not that stuff he does now” – and Brian De Palma. “I learned different things from all three,” he explained before breaking down how two of them taught him very important elements of creating a work of cinema.
“What I learned from Hawks is how to constantly entertain an audience, constantly keep them engaged,” Tarantino offered. “He was a storyteller. Not plot, plot, plot. Story. And he knew how to make characters that were totally engaging.” Obviously, it goes without saying that entertainment value and riveting characters have been prevalent in his own films since the very beginning.
“De Palma taught me cinema,” Tarantino said, placing him on his own pedestal. “To me, he’s the most cinematic director there is.” One of the most stylish and provocative auteurs of his era, the brains behind Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Scarface, Body Double, The Untouchables, and many more, was all about crafting the best possible imagery for the biggest possible screen.
While Hawks informed Tarantino’s eventual status as the foremost raconteur in screenwriting, it was De Palma who drilled into him the importance of spectacle. Cinema means many different things to a lot of different people, but for a director who’d go on to change the face of the American independent scene before becoming a one-man brand, that lifelong desire to command attention through composition came directly from his De Palma fandom.
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