The real-life hero Quentin Tarantino calls his “favourite American”
In addition to crafting several memorable protagonists himself, Quentin Tarantino has never shied away from naming the characters who stood out to him as some of cinema’s greatest-ever heroes.
Clint Eastwood endures as a performer the filmmaker holds in the highest regard as one of the medium’s top-tier good guys, while he became so enamoured with Chow Yun-fat and his iconic association with John Woo that he spent months dressing like the Hong Kong superstar.
In recent years, the writer and director has pivoted away from tales of modernity to focus on the past but always viewed through his distinct lens. Inglourious Basterds saw him take on World War II and completely rewrite the history books, Django Unchained told a riveting revenge story through the unsavoury prism of the slavery era, while Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was a love letter to Los Angeles with plenty of artistic and creative liberties applied.
Tarantino appreciates a good hero when he sees one, and he’s displayed an increasing fondness for dipping into the history books and then repainting actual events in his own colours, but the person he named as “my favourite hero in American history” was a very real person. Not only that, but Tarantino even considered mounting a biopic of sorts, although it ended up being placed on the back burner like so many other ideas he picks up before eventually putting it down.
That hesitation feels telling, and Tarantino has built a career on reshaping myth and bending fact to suit his narrative impulses, but tackling a figure as combustible as John Brown would require a different calibration. The line between righteous fury and historical sensitivity is far thinner when the subject is not fictional.
Decades before the American Civil War, John Brown was established as one of the abolitionist movement’s figureheads, and he was inspired and influenced by his faith to try to end slavery by any means necessary. To accomplish those goals, he decided to turn to violence when his efforts at peaceful resolution continually failed, gaining notoriety when he and his sons killed five slavery supporters in the ‘Pottawatomie Massacre’ in Kansas.
In death, he ended up getting what he wanted in a roundabout way, with Brown being tried for treason and murder for the incitement of a slave rebellion in October 1859, where he was sentenced to death by hanging. His trial and subsequent execution raised tensions even higher in the United States, with the Civil War erupting shortly afterwards in 1861.
For a filmmaker drawn to moral extremities, Brown represents a paradoxical kind of heroism. He was uncompromising to the point of martyrdom, a man whose convictions manifested in bloodshed rather than speeches. It is precisely that volatility that makes him such a provocative figure for Tarantino to admire.
Although the biopic at large has never appealed to him, Tarantino nonetheless told Charlie Rose the “one story that I could be interested in” telling on the big screen was Brown’s, who he called “my favourite American who ever lived”. The filmmaker credited him for laying the groundwork for the end of slavery “basically single-handedly,” noting how “he killed people to do it.”
There hasn’t been a major feature-length retelling of Brown’s story as of yet, but Ethan Hawke did play the role in 2020’s seven-episode miniseries The Good Lord Bird. With just one film left before his retirement, though, Tarantino’s number one American hero is unlikely to get the same treatment from the director who holds him in such regard.
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