Pulp Fiction Forever
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| PULP FICTION FOREVER - Daren Foster talks about his recent column -- Quentin Tarantino's career, famous first films and what celebrity he would like endorsing his column! |
PULP FICTION FOREVER
By Daren Foster
**Quentin Tarantino.. the new Roger Corman.**
The year is 1994. International Year of the Family, according to the United Nations. With Rock’n’Roll Kids, Ireland wins the 39th Eurovision Song Contest. George Andrew Olah wins the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work with carbocations and superacids. Nancy Kerrigan’s leg is viciously assaulted in a hit ordered by her skating rival, Tonya Harding’s ex-husband. Whatever happened to Nancy Kerrigan and her gimpy leg, I wonder?
And in 1994, Quentin Tarantino becomes a household name with his movie Pulp Fiction. He and it revive the flagging careers of both John Travolta and Bruce Willis while establishing Uma Thurman as the new It Girl. Miramax bulks up into a serious, serious industry player. American independent film comes into being. Getting medieval on your ass joins the catch phrase pantheon.
Sprawled on the couch, re-watching Tarantino’s contribution to the Grindhouse double bill, Death Proof, my mind wandered back to those heady days, nearly a decade and a half ago, wondering just what the hell happened to the promise that was Tarantino. Not that Death Proof is a dog. Within the confines of a B-movie spoof, it’s fun, well acted (except for Tarantino) with tight dialogue, visually interesting, appropriately cartoonishly gruesome. All of the trademarks we have come to expect in a Tarantino movie. It’s just that, I wondered, why has the once-boy wonder restricted himself to such narrow confines?
By now anyone with even a passing interest in movie-based celebrity trivia knows his story. The product of a broken home, young Quentin busied his youthful days absorbing movies, following the logical trajectory of becoming an insufferable, know-it-and-seen-it-all video store clerk. (To all my young, downloading only readership: a video store was once a place you went to rent copies of movies you wanted to see in the comfort of your own home. A video store clerk was a person you paid in exchange for the rented movies and who usually made you feel like a thick-headed philistine for your taste in movies.) A script Tarantino wrote while video store clerking caught the attention of some serious Hollywood types to such a degree that he was able to both direct and act in it. Reservoir Dogs went on to Sundance acclaim in 1992 and off and running young Quentin went.
After the monster success of Pulp Fiction, his next film, Jackie Brown, suffered the inevitable let-down brought on by impossibly high expectations. It’s a shame because in many ways Jackie Brown is a far more mature film than Pulp Fiction but it’s quieter, less slick. It even has a much better catch phrase. AK-47. The very best there is. When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfucker in the room, accept no substitutes.
Then the whole world or at least, the whole movie world waits for Tarantino’s next foray. Not as a producer. Not as a writer. And good god, not as an actor. But as a writer-director. They wait for the next Quentin Tarantino film. And wait. And wait. 
Filling the gaping hole created by Tarantino’s absence, rumours swirled. It was said that he was ensconced somewhere up in the Hollywood Hills in a movie poster and pot smoke filled house, watching TV, a 1,600 page (rumours have a way of exponentially multiplying facts) WWII script that he just couldn’t pull the trigger on. He popped up with a guest appearance in Alias. Were we witnessing the making of another Orson Welles? Early promise, giving way to indecision and a failure of nerve.
Six interminably long years on, with American independent film fully incorporated to the point of meaninglessness and both John Travolta and Bruce Willis having squandered the opportunity for greatness that Pulp Fiction offered them (not to mention Samuel L. Jackson. I mean, both Shaft and 
S.W.A.T.? Seriously, dude, what’s up with that!?), the two volumes of Kill Bill arrive for our viewing pleasure. A sad sigh is heard. We waited 6 years for this?
Like Death Proof, the Kill Bills aren’t terrible movies. They are certifiably Tarantino. Slick, funny, brutal, brutally funny. They just don’t resonate beyond the initial viewing. Versions or adaptations of the Hong Kong action flicks young Quentin so thoroughly immersed himself in, they leave no more an impression than, well, a Hong Kong action flick. Sorry to all those fans of Hong Kong action movies out there but it is a genre that merely fills time; in some cases happily, in most, completely and utterly forgettably. It’s cookie cutter movie making and one had hopes that Tarantino would eventually rise above all of that. After Kill Bill and Death Proof, such hopes seem ill-placed.
Not that there’s anything wrong with being a technically brilliant but substantively vacuous B-movie director. There are worse claims staked. We’re all looking at you, Michael Bay. Hell, the very notion of B-movie suggests an absence of both technique and substance. It just once seemed that Quentin Tarantino was too sharp, too talented with words and images to remain an exclusive resident of that particular ghetto.
Yet it seems to be the pool he likes to swim in. 
Or maybe he’s just more comfortable splashing around the shallow end. Maybe Quentin doesn’t actually know how to swim in the deep end. His whole life and perspective seems to be entirely wrapped up in movies and the movie business. In interviews, he talks of nothing but movies. There isn’t a film or genre he doesn’t appear to know inside out. Tarantino was weaned on movies. The world outside of the movie house does not exist for him.
To expect anything more significant than a finely polished bauble from such a limited POV is to be set up for a let down. There can’t be more because that’s all there is, folks. Blood from a stone and all that.
If Inglourious Basterds is the WWII film Tarantino’s long been clucking over, there’s no reason to expect any real creative breakthrough. Apparently based on a 1970s Italian B-movie (surprise, surprise), it features Nazis and the Jewish-American soldiers who scalp and brutally murder them. In Paris, a Jewish teenager runs a movie theatre and is being pressured by the Germans to show Nazi propaganda films while she harbours thoughts of revenge for her family who were exterminated in the concentration camps.While maybe it would be too much to think Tarantino might try walking in the cinematic footsteps of David Lean or even Billy Wilder, would Samuel Fuller and his The Big Red One be entirely out of the question? No slagging of ol’ Sam but as a moviemaker, Tarantino has it over him in spades. It would just seem that he has neither the heart nor the brains Fuller possessed.
With the wild success of Pulp Fiction including a screenplay Oscar, Tarantino must’ve been able to write his own ticket. Miramax was at his beck and call. There wasn’t an actor who didn’t want to work with him. The world was his oyster. Either Tarantino blinked or we just didn’t know at the time that Pulp Fiction was the best we were ever going to get from him.
READ MORE COLUMNS BY DAREN FOSTER
November 17 2008 - CHARLIE KAUFMAN UNLEASHED - Brainy scriptwriter goes for broke in directorial debut.
November 10 2008 - A GOLDEN AGE - TV's renaissance amidst the ruins.
November 3 2008 - POLITICS AS UNUSUAL - Media tales fail to take flight.
October 27 2008 - EYES HAVE IT 2 - Joe the Plumber 4 President!
October 20 2008 - EYES HAVE IT - You say pollster. I say huckster.
October 13 2008 - MUSLIM COMEDY REVIEW - Ahmed's now your wacky next door neighbour!
October 6 2008 - BVLGARI VVLGARIS - Celebrity overseas whoring.
September 29 2008 - COMEDY TODAY
September 22 2008 - FALLEN SEASON EXPECTATIONS
September 15 2008 - CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
September 8 2008 - KILL THE BATMAN - Seriously. Put him out of his misery.
September 1 2008 - MY SUMMER VACATION
August 25 2008 - PHONING IT IN
August 18 2008 - GUNGA GULUNGA
August 11 2008 - EMMY DAZE - Where is The Wire
August 4 2008 - ME TALK GOOD
July 28 2008 - TAKE THE CANNOLI
July 21 2008 - TECHNO BEAT 2
July 14 2008 - TECHNO BEAT 1
July 7 2008 - THE INDIGESTIBLE HULK
June 30 2008 - KING GEORGE
June 23 2008 - PLAYING ONE ON TV
June 16 2008 - NEW MONDAY MORNING COLUMN - LIFE IS TOO SHORT - Finally, I saw the last episode of The Wire.
June 4 2008 - FLIP THIS CHANNEL - Buying first house leads to having many things on the mind.
May 29 2008 - BE AFRAID VERY AFRAID - The Canadian military is no longer some namby-pamby, truce-brokering, do-gooding, adventure-seeking, peacekeeping bunch of pacifiers
May 22 2008 - STONE COLD BORING ANGEL - All about The Stone Angel
May 15 2008 - HARD TO SWALLOW CANDY - Madonna is back!
May 8 2008 - THE DUMBEST GUYS IN THE ROOM
