Quentin Tarantino: Encyclopedia II - Quentin Tarantino - Career history

Quentin Tarantino - Career history

While employed as a video store clerk, Tarantino penned the script for "From Dusk Till Dawn." He sold the script to a movie make-up company for $1,500.00 and the promise to do the make-up on a future film that would turn out to be "Reservoir Dogs." His first major break came with the sale of another script called True Romance, written with Roger Avary. It was made into a film starring Patricia Arquette and Christian Slater. He also wrote the original screenplay for Natural Born Killers as part of the longer screenplay that True Romance came from. It should be acknowledged that it was changed significantly by subsequent writers (including Oliver Stone), so much so that he declined a Screenwriting credit in lieu of a Story credit.

The sale of True Romance (eventually released in 1993) garnered him attention. He met Lawrence Bender at a Hollywood party and Bender encouraged Tarantino to go write a film. The end product was Reservoir Dogs (1992), a stylish, witty, and blood-soaked heist movie that set the tone for his later films. The script was read by director Monte Helman who helped secure funding from Live Entertainment and also Tarantino's directorship of the film. Harvey Keitel heard of the script through his wife, who attended a class with Tarantino. He read the script and also contributed to funding, took an Executive Producer role, and a lead in the movie.

Following the success of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino was approached by Hollywood and offered numerous projects, including Speed and Men In Black. He instead retreated to Amsterdam to work on his script for Pulp Fiction. When finally released, the film won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the 1994 Cannes film festival and practically revolutionised the independent film industry. It was a complexly plotted film with a similarly brutal wit. It featured many critically acclaimed performances, and was noted for reviving the career of John Travolta. Pulp Fiction also earned Tarantino and Avery Oscars for Best Original Screenplay, and it was also nominated for Best Picture.

After Pulp Fiction he directed episode four of Four Rooms, The Man from Hollywood, a remake of an Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode that starred Steve McQueen. Four Rooms is a collaborative effort with filmmakers Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell and Robert Rodriguez.

Tarantino's next film was Jackie Brown (1997), an adaptation of a novel by his mentor Elmore Leonard. An homage to blaxploitation films, it also starred Pam Grier, who starred in many of that genre's films of the 1970s. In 1998, he turned his attention to the Broadway stage, where he starred in a revival of Wait Until Dark.

He had then planned to make the war film Inglorious Bastards. However, he postponed that to write and direct Kill Bill (released as two films, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2), a highly stylized "revenge flick" in the cinematic traditions of Wuxia (Chinese martial arts), Japanese film, and Spaghetti Westerns. It was based on a character (The Bride) and plot that he and Kill Bill's lead actor, Uma Thurman had developed during the making of Pulp Fiction. In 2004, Tarantino returned to Cannes where he served as President of the Jury. Kill Bill was not in competition, but it did screen on the final night in its original 3+ hour version.

Tarantino is given credit as "Special Guest Director" for his work directing the car sequence between Clive Owen and Benicio Del Toro of the 2005 neo-noir film Sin City.

On February 24, 2005 it was announced he would direct the season finale of CSI. The two-hour episode, "Grave Danger," was aired on May 19 to stellar ratings and reviews. Although Tarantino is best known for his work behind the camera, he's also made recent appearances on the small screen in the first and third seasons of the TV show Alias.

As of September, 2005, Tarantino has announced his current project is Grind House, which he is co-directing with Robert Rodriguez. He has stated he will "probably" follow that with Inglorious Bastards, but that he needed to spend another year working on the script before filming, making a 2006 release extremely unlikely. Among his current producing credits are the horror flick, Hostel (which included numerous references to his own Pulp Fiction), the adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Killshot (which Tarantino had once written a script for) and Hell Ride (written & directed by Kill Bill star Larry Bishop).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Career history", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki