Quentin Tarantino names the greatest directorial debut in cinema history: “Really terrific”
Having entered the exclusive club himself when Reservoir Dogs premiered in 1992, Quentin Tarantino seems like he’d be qualified to comment on which movie can be called the single greatest directorial debut in cinema history.
Trying to whittle down the field to a solitary film is a tough ask, though, since Reservoir Dogs is just one of many. There’s Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane to consider, as well as David Lynch’s Eraserhead, Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple, and Dennis Hopper’s Easy Rider, and there are many more worth contemplating.
Even in 21st-century cinema, audiences have been gifted Jordan Peele’s Get Out, Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, Alejandro G Iñárritu’s Amores perros, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Mysterious Object at Noon, to name just four, so calling one the definitive first-time feature is a tall order, even for someone as knowledgeable as Tarantino.
However, the two-time Academy Award-winning auteur made one basic and fundamental error; the picture he called his favourite from a debuting filmmaker wasn’t even their first movie. He knows that, obviously, but some folks may not take too kindly to Tarantino’s erasure of Edgar Wright’s A Fistful of Fingers in favour of Shaun of the Dead.
“My favourite directorial debut, even though he did a cheapie debut movie he doesn’t like to talk about,” he told Bret Easton Ellis, ranking it as his ninth-top pick of the century. “I loved how much he loved the Romero universe he recreated. The script is really terrific; it’s one of the most quotable films on this list. I still quote the line, ‘Dogs don’t look up’. It’s not a spoof of zombie movies, it’s a real zombie movie, and I appreciate the distinction.”
Tarantino’s Shaun of the Dead fandom is well known; he also called it the best British movie of the 21st century, but he’s wrong on more than one count. Not only was it Wright’s second feature-length undertaking, which immediately excludes it from the conversation, claiming that he doesn’t like to talk about it is also pretty wide of the mark.
How do we know? Because Wright didn’t only talk about A Fistful of Fingers, but he did so fairly extensively and at length to Far Out. Not to pat ourselves on the back for dismantling Tarantino’s theory that the low-budget spaghetti western-inspired comedy is a black mark that its creator would rather not discuss, but that’s as untrue as calling Shaun of the Dead his first movie.
The Pulp Fiction mastermind will apparently continue to pretend that it doesn’t exist, though, even if it wouldn’t have changed a thing had he simply referred to the rom-zom-com as one of his favourite films of the 21st century without suggesting that A Fistful of Fingers is better off being banished to cinematic purgatory, never to be seen or heard from again.
You’d expect more from one of Hollywood’s most famous cinephiles, but as far as Tarantino is concerned, the greatest directorial debut he’s ever seen isn’t even a directorial debut at all.
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