Quentin Tarantino on “worst time for action filmmaking”
Half of Quentin Tarantino’s brilliance lies not in the content of his moves but in his encyclopaedic knowledge of cinema history. The Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood director spent his youth working in the Video Archives in Manhattan Beach, where he was given access to the dizzying range of titles on offer – films that would come to inspire his blood-smattered filmography. Here, Tarantino discusses the dark age of action cinema.
Many years ago, Quentin Tarantino sat down to discuss some of the people who had inspired his debut offering. On the second page of his Reservoir Dogs script, he chose to include a dedication to 12 key individuals. From Timothy Carey to Jean-Luc Godard, these filmmakers, actors and writers were responsible for informing Tarantino’s captivating brand of hyperviolent drama. “I actually wanted to put it at the beginning of the movie, but I thought it would be too cheap to me like, ‘like me for who I like,’ so I thought it would work better without it,” he said.
One of the individuals on that list was John Woo. Born in southern China and raised in Hong Kong, Woo worked as an assistant director for Shaw Brothers Studios before directing his first feature in 1973. He went on to release countless films in a range of genres, with 1986’s A Better Tomorrow cementing his reputation as a pioneer of highly stylized, ultra-violent gangster movies. His 1989 film The Killer cemented him as a cult icon in America, but Tarantino was already well ahead of the curve. “John Woo was a major hero to me at the time – I was just so influenced by Hong Kong cinema,” he said. “To this day, I still think it’s the most invigorating cinema that’s made in the world.”
Woo’s arrival came at the perfect time. As Tarantino explained, the 1980s were “the worst time for action filmmaking ever”. After the brilliance of films like The Warriors and The Driver, American director Walter Hill “was off his game”. And that wasn’t the worst of it: “All the older guys had died,” Tarantino continued. “It was really just James Cameron, and that was it. And he was fantastic, but there had not been a Sergio Leone to come out and show us what we’d seen before but with new eyes until John Woo.”
John Woo has made a truckload of hugely enjoyable films. Some of his best include: 1992’s Hard Boiled, 1989’s The Killer, 1986’s A Better Tomorrow, 1990’s A Bullet in The Head, and the incredibly refreshing 2008 historical epic Red Cliff. He also directed cult favourite Face/Off, starring John Travolta and Nicolas Cage in one of his most memorable roles.
You can watch Tarantino discussing his 12 greatest inspirations below.
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