Quentin Tarantino names the five “greatest writers in the history of Hollywood”
Naturally, Quentin Tarantino couldn’t compile a list of the five finest screenwriters in Hollywood history without including Quentin Tarantino, and it would be more of a surprise if he didn’t, honestly.
It’s entirely true that the two-time Academy Award-winning scribe and auteur is one of modern cinema’s most impactful, influential, and important filmmakers, but it gets on a lot of people’s tits that he’s willing to remind everyone of that fact so much.
A little modesty goes a long way, and while Tarantino has always carried himself with an air of self-confidence that regularly topples over into outright arrogance, there’s still something off-putting about the director calling himself one of the two best in the business, alongside David Fincher.
Is he one of the top two? That’s entirely up for debate, and his army of adoring fans would say that he is. Even if you disagree, he’s right up there alongside the rest of the usual suspects, but you wouldn’t hear Paul Thomas Anderson, Bong Joon-ho, Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, or any of the others patting themselves on the back like that.
That’s Tarantino in a nutshell, though; he’s good, and he knows it. In terms of Oscars recognition, he’s not the best, and it clearly annoys him. He’s one of the few writers who’ve nabbed a pair of prizes for their scripts, but unless his tenth and final feature wins him another ‘Best Original Screenplay’ gong, he won’t be a record-breaker or history-maker.
“I’m very, very happy with my writing Oscars,” he told Vulture. “I will brag about this; I’m one of five people who have won two ‘Original Screenplay’ Oscars. The other four are Woody Allen, Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, and Paddy Chayefsky. I actually didn’t know that until somebody wrote it on a website. I went, ‘Holy shit!’ Those are the greatest writers in the history of Hollywood.”
He still craves that third one, and even suggested that if he does win it and goes level with three-time winner and largely disgraced creep Allen, the Academy should rename it as ‘The Quentin’. They won’t, but that goes to show how his mind works, and he’s only got one chance left to complete the hattrick.
However, Tarantino can’t beat Brackett, who won both of the ‘Original Screenplay’ Oscars he was nominated for, as well as an ‘Adapted Screenplay’ victory from four nods. The Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained scribe’s two out of three isn’t bad, it puts him level with Chayefsky, and it’s a better winning percentage than Wilder’s two from four and Allen’s three from 16.
Does he deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Hollywood’s all-time greatest screenwriters? Maybe, maybe not, but he thinks he does, and nobody will ever be able to change his mind.
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