Tarantino and his role models:
Author: Denis Vukoja
Homage to the king of homage
in a number of small details. Thus, Travolta and particularly Samuel L. Jackson are literally copies of some of the
characters in that film (Jackson in his
suit, with the hair and the moustache,
looks like a cloned Sy Richardson from
Straight to Hell).
Many had resented Brian De Palma for copying
Hitchcock, but when Quentin Tarantino used a similar
approach, everyone was simply thrilled, calling
it a postmodernist pun. Nowadays Tarantino is
undoubtedly one of the most influential contemporary
authors who has changed the film industry with his
work and caused a flood of similar films, which are
generally described as Tarantinoesque. Quentin himself
has never concealed his role models, sometimes
copying favorite scenes to the last detail and calling it
homage rather than stealing.
Seeing as he had worked in a video store
and had thousands of different films at
his disposal, it is no wonder then that
Quentin Tarantino drew his inspiration
from the French New Wave and American
classic films, as well as film noir, trash
films, Samurai films and westerns, Blaxploitation works etc. All those influences
are easily found even in the films that he
didn’t direct but only wrote scripts for
(From Dusk till Dawn is an homage to Rio
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Bravo and Assault on Precinct 13, Natural Born Killers echoes Malick’s classic
film Badlands, and Howard Hawks’ His
Girl Friday has influenced most of his
films).
RESERVOIR DOGS
Quentin Tarantino’s debut isn’t flawless
(Tarantino has improved greatly as a
director in the meantime); nonetheless,
despite his inexperience, the film is im-
pressive from first to last minute. When
writing the script for this film and directing it, Tarantino found his inspiration in
the action film City on Fire (1987) by the
Hong Kong action master Ringo Lam. The
story follows a policeman (Chow Yunfat) infiltrated in a gang of thieves and
torn between his loyalty to the force and
his newly found friends in the criminal
milieu. Besides finding the idea in that
storyline, Tarantino has also duplicated
some of the scenes from Lam’s film in
Reservoir Dogs. Naturally, he spiced it all
up with pop culture references, explicit
violence, humor in unexpected situations and a disheveled plotline, making
an entirely different film from the one
that he used as his model.
Alongside Lam’s film, Reservoir Dogs has
been influenced by Stanley Kubrick’s
early crime film The Killing, and the iconic scene in which Michael Madsen tortures the policeman tied to a chair was
borrowed from The Big Combo (1955),
while the color pseudonyms came from
the praised TV crime film The Taking of
Pelham One Two Three. Finally, there are
also echoes of Scorsese’s Taxi driver and
a bunch of other films.
PULP FICTION
As the film’s title suggests, Pulp Fiction
has been inspired by the hardboiled
crime novels written by Mickey Spillane
(father of the cult detective Mike Hammer) and Dashiell Hammett, as well as
by the French New Wave and the noir film,
including the 1955 film Kiss Me Deadly by
the great director Robert Aldrich (based
on a novel by Spillane), in which a mysterious briefcase appears that everyone
wants to get their hands on. Indirectly,
Pulp Fiction was also influenced by Brian
De Palma whom Tarantino had admired
(rightly so, seeing as De Palma had been
doing for decades what Quentin later became famous for, even though the latter
had been smarter and borrowed mostly
from less known and obscure films, while
De Palma referred to well-known classics). Thus, one of the lead roles in the
film went to John Travolta, whom Tarantino loved for his role in De Palma’s crime
film Blow Out.
Furthermore, it is quite clear that, when
writing Pulp Fiction, Tarantino and his
co-writer Roger Avery greatly enjoyed
in the cult film Straight to Hell directed
by the iconic Alex Cox, as can be seen
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KILL BILL
The story about a bride, a former assassin, who is seeking revenge on her
ex-colleagues who crashed her wedding party and massacred everyone
there, drew inspiration from the Hong
Kong martial arts films produced by
the legendary Shaw brothers (their
production company’s logo can be
seen at the beginning of the film),
Japanese anime films, yakuza- and
samurai-related films, Italian spaghetti westerns, and trash films that,
it seems, Tarantino particularly likes.
The story of a woman seeking revenge
on a gang that murdered her family
was borrowed from the Japanese classic Lady Snowblood (1973). Furthermore, Tarantino found inspiration in
the film’s visual identity and many of
its characters (O-Ren Ishii was based
on the Lady Snowblood character),
while the title song performed by the
leading lady Meiko Kaji also found its
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way on Kill Bill’s soundtrack. Reportedly, Tarantino would show the Japanese film to his crew during breaks on
the set. The second part of Kill Bill echoes the atmosphere of the spaghetti
westerns, which is no surprise seeing
as Sergio Leone is one of Tarantino’s
role models. Tarantino also admitted in
an interview that during preparations,
Daryl Hannah had, at his suggestion,
watched the Swedish film Thriller: A
Cruel Picture (They Call Her One Eye).
Finally, it is also no coincidence that in
the film Uma Thurman is wearing a yellow track suit just like Bruce Lee had
worn in his last film Game of Death.
JACKIE BROWN
This adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch is also the first adaptation
from Tarantino and pays homage to the
Blaxploitation films; it is no wonder then
that Pam Grier plays the title role. Tarantino changed the skin color of most of
the characters from white to black in
order to get what he wanted, while Grier also starred in Coffy and Foxy Brown
(which he used for the title of the film),
both of which served as inspiration to
Tarantino. Even the posters for the film
called to mind the Pam Grier posters
from a few decades earlier.
DEATH PROOF
At one point in his career, Tarantino, a
proven lover of the grindhouse films, had
to pay homage to that particular genre,
and he did it by making a film about a
psychopathic stunt double murdering
women in staged car accidents using
his indestructible death-proof stunt car.
Even though Death Proof is actually the
worst film he has ever made, it is still a
successful homage to the slasher and
grindhouse films he saw in his youth.
One of them is the Australian road film
Road Games in which a serial killer finds
his victims on the roads in the Australian
outback (Tarantino often said the film in
question was his favorite Australian film).
Furthermore, he wanted to use CGI as
fewer times as possible and do live stunts
in front of the cameras, just as had been
done in the films he was paying homage
to.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
The already mentioned Robert Aldrich
has inspired not only Tarantino’s Pulp
Fiction, but also his Inglourious Basterds
– more precisely, his legendary war film
The Dirty Dozen (just as the then popular
war films such as Kelly’s Heroes, whose
script is overflowing with unusual characters and quirky dialogues as if Taran-
tino himself had written it, The Guns of
Navarone and Where Eagles Dare). All
those films also inspired the Italian film
The Inglorious Bastards, directed by
Enzo G. Castellari, from whom Quentin
borrowed his title (with minor changes)
– Tarantino also said it was the best Italian exploitation film ever. Not to mention
the fact that the first 20-odd minutes of
Tarantino’s film was his overt homage to
Leone, particularly to the beginning of
his epic Once Upon a Time in the West.
DJANGO UNCHAINED
Leone’s films were also an inspiration to
Tarantino’s first western, and Tarantino
even said The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
was the best example of a film genre’s
refreshment. “Unbelievably brutal, hysterically funny, bloody, with a great film
score and iconic elements. What more
could one want?” said Quentin in an interview. All those compliments can be used
for his film as well. Alongside Leone, the
obvious inspiration was Sergio Corbucci’s
spaghetti western Django. Tarantino said
Corbucci portrayed “the most violent Wild
West in the history of the genre”. The star
of Corbucci’s film Franco Nero appeared
in a minor role in Tarantino’s version, while
the Italian film’s title song was also used
in Tarantino’s version.
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