Visit Quentin Tarantino’s favourite spots in Los Angeles
Quentin Tarantino and Los Angeles are two seemingly inseparable forces of Hollywood. While Tarantino himself was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, his mother met his father, an aspiring actor, during a trip to the City of Angels in the early 1960s. Young Quentin would move to LA in 1966 and call the city his home for eternity.
Tarantino has based several of his movies in Los Angeles. They often serve as love letters to the wildly varying areas of the city and the craziest of its inhabitants and locations. Who could forget the iconic diner scene in Pulp Fiction or the street sections of Reservoir Dogs, not to mention the entirety of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood, a homage to the second age of Hollywood?
Tarantino once noted a number of his favourite spots in LA, which gives us several clues as to the inspiration for his works. Let’s begin with breakfast, the most important meal of the day. Tarantino’s favourite spot to grab an early morning meal is at Uncle Bill’s Pancake House in Manhattan Beach.
While talking to The LA Times, Tarantino said of the spot and its influence on his 1992 film: “The best breakfast places are in the beachside towns, and you know it’s a good place if they close after lunch. A great breakfast place is closed before dinner. Uncle Bill’s is a great place. In the script for Reservoir Dogs, the first scene takes place there. We didn’t shoot there, though; it was small inside. But that’s where the script said they were.”
One thing of vital importance to Tarantino, though, after breakfast, is finding a good place to get some work done, in his case, some writing. He sees two places in particular to have a good atmosphere conducive to work. The first is Barney’s Beanery on Santa Monica Boulevard. “It’s such a great experience,” Tarantino said of the Beanery. “It’s one of the few places that has been around for so long. There’s one booth there, too, that I love. It’s a little one, and there’s a post there that kind of cuts you off. It helps you concentrate a little bit too.”
The other place for getting your head down into some writing is Toi on Sunset Boulevard, which is a good spot if you really want to get some long hours in. “It’s open really late; the food is great,” Tarantino noted. “I come in to write. During the day, it’s way kicked back. They always play good music. I can sit for five hours, order some coffee and just work. I’ve been doing that at Toi for 15 years.”
Yet, given the true cinephile he is, where would a list of Tarantino’s favourite LA hangouts be without cinemas? He’s in admiration of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, which he called “fantastic” and one of his “favourites”. But when push comes to shove, Tarantino can’t resist the call of the Magic Johnson Theatre on Marlton Avenue.
He commented on the Magic Johnson and its competitor: “If there’s one place I like to go to see my movies, that’s the place. A lot of people are into the ArcLight, but I don’t like the rules. I don’t like the fact that you have to sit in assigned seating. That’s the European approach, and I despise that stuff. They’re trying to turn movies into opera. That’s garbage. And you can’t come in late? Hey, my audience is 15 minutes late for everything.”
And finally, to finish the day with a bit of reading, Tarantino normally heads to Larry Edmunds Bookshop on Hollywood Boulevard to pick up some new reads. He said: “I like speciality bookstores; they’re a lot of fun. Larry Edmunds is probably one of the best for cinema books. When you ask me my favourite bookstore, I actually think of places in New York, London and Paris. Here in LA, I’d have to say that one, though.” So, there you have it, a day in the LA life of Quentin Tarantino.
Quentin Tarantino’s favourite spots in Los Angeles:
- Uncle Bill’s Pancake House – 1305 Highland Ave., Manhattan Beach
- Barney’s Beanery – 8447 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood
- Toi – 1/2 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles
- Grauman’s Chinese Theatre – 6925 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood
- Magic Johnson Theatre – 4020 Marlton Ave., Los Angeles
- Larry Edmunds Bookshop – 6644 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles
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