Quentin Tarantino: Inglorious Basterd

Quentin Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tenn. in 1963 but grew up in California. He is of Italian, Irish and Cherokee Indian heritage. While in junior high school Quentin Tarantino dropped out of school to take up acting but later realized he would rather be a movie director than actor.

In 1987 while working as a clerk at the video store Video Archives, Tarantino wrote and sold two scripts; both would be made into movies, True Romance in 1993 and Natural Born Killers in 1994. From these scripts, Quentin Tarantino was able to finance the production of his next movie, Reservoir Dogs, in which he wrote the screenplay, directed and acted.

In 1992 Tarantino introduced Reservoir Dogs at the Sundance Film festival. It was a huge hit. With Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino established his movie style and the small budget over-the-top crime put him on the up-and-coming list for entertainment writers and magazines. Of Reservoir Dogs, The New York Times reported, “Mr. Tarantino not only can write superb dialogue, but he also has a firm grasp of narrative construction.”

In 1993 True Romance released; but it was 1994’s Pulp Fiction, in which Tarantino wrote and directed that was his break-out success. Rolling Stone magazine said of the movie, “Pulp Fiction is ferocious fun without a trace of caution, complacency or political correctness to inhibit its 154 deliciously lurid minutes.”

After Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino released Jackie Brown, which paid homage to the blaxploitation movies of the 1970s, in 1997. And then in 2003 and 2004 Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. He followed the success of the Kill Bill movies with Death Proof in 2007. Pulp Fiction won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Tarantino's summer 2009 movie, Inglorious Basterds is a World War II epic, the story of a group of U.S. guerilla soldiers in Nazi-occupied France. The movie’s opening weekend proved to be the best of Quentin Tarantino’s career. USA Today reported the movie raked in $37.6 million, according to box office tracking firm Nielsen EDI. The stellar opening beats 2004’s “Kill Bill Volume 2,” which debut’s earned $25.1 million. “Inglorious Basterds” stars stars Brad Pitt, Eli Roth and Diane Kruger and so far has garnered generally good reviews.

Entertainment industry giving partial credit for the movie’s success to the promotional efforts by Tarantino and Brad Pitt; their movie promotional efforts have gone far beyond the Quentin Tarantino’s fan base. Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger and others involved in the movie have appeared on a wide variety of magazines including Wired magazine, The New York Times magazine and women’s magazines like Glamour magazine.

The strategy paid off according to USA Today, as Inglorious Basterds attracted an audience that was 42% female — high for a Tarantino movie. Of Inglorious Basterds, Entertainment Weekly magazine reported, “Few young-to-middle-aged American filmmakers have the nerd-centric depth of movie knowledge and technique that Tarantino brings to his high-flying projects, and fewer still have the confidence to simultaneously glorify and deconstruct genre as he can, whether the genre is blaxploitation, Hong Kong action, '70s grindhouse fare, or, in this case, war movies and '40s noir.”

By: Jessica Vandelay

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For more, visit www.magazines.com/category/entertainment-tv Jessica Vandelay is a freelance writer in New York City.