Quentin Tarantino opens up about watching ‘Deliverance’ as a child
Whenever Quentin Tarantino is asked to advise aspiring filmmakers, he always reminds everyone that he never went to film school. Tarantino’s film education consisted of watching American classics at a young age before graduating to more niche selections from world cinema during his video store days.
During a recent interview with Deadline, Tarantino opened up about watching John Boorman’s disturbing 1972 thriller Deliverance at the age of seven. While most parents would never let their kids watch such a film at that age, Tarantino was lucky to be exposed to great cinema early on.
The director said: “I wasn’t thinking that much about it at the time because that was just the way it was. They’re fucking movies, right? It’s not that big of a deal… Frankly, I don’t think it’s that much different than if I grew up with theatre-loving parents that were taking me to see Chekhov at a very early age, where maybe I don’t understand Uncle Vanya at seven but by nine, I sort of do.”
While reflecting on other kids’ perception of him, Tarantino commented: “I had my own problems, but to the other kids, because of all the movies I saw, I appeared sophisticated. I was watching the greatest era of American movies ever known, and I was seeing them at that young age, and so, they were right.”
The filmmaker also revealed that he learnt how to cuss by watching The French Connection: “And not that I cussed all the time, but when I was with other kids, I cussed, all right. Their cussing was tied to their parents’ cussing. But my cussing could be tied to Buddusky [Jack Nicholson] in The Last Detail. My cussing could be tied to Popeye Doyle [Gene Hackman] in The French Connection. After I saw The Outfit, after hearing that line that Joe Don Baker has, I was constantly saying, ‘I don’t give a rat’s ass.”
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