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Cinema Speculation
The long-awaited first work of nonfiction from the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: a deliriously entertaining, wickedly intelligent cinema book as unique and creative as anything by Quentin Tarantino.
In addition to being among the most celebrated of contemporary filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive. For years he has touted in interviews his eventual turn to writing books about films. Now, with Cinema Speculation, the time has come, and the results are everything his passionate fans—and all movie lovers—could have hoped for. Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time, this book is as intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining. At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting, and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice recognizable immediately as QT’s and with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the greatest practitioners of the artform ever.
In addition to being among the most celebrated of contemporary filmmakers, Quentin Tarantino is possibly the most joyously infectious movie lover alive. For years he has touted in interviews his eventual turn to writing books about films. Now, with Cinema Speculation, the time has come, and the results are everything his passionate fans—and all movie lovers—could have hoped for. Organized around key American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time, this book is as intellectually rigorous and insightful as it is rollicking and entertaining. At once film criticism, film theory, a feat of reporting, and wonderful personal history, it is all written in the singular voice recognizable immediately as QT’s and with the rare perspective about cinema possible only from one of the greatest practitioners of the artform ever.
391 pages, Hardcover
First published October 1, 2022
About the author
Quentin Tarantino
44 books1,606 followersQuentin Jerome Tarantino is an Academy Award- and Palme d'Or-winning American film director, screenwriter and actor. He rose to fame in the early 1990s as an independent filmmaker whose films used nonlinear storylines and stylized violence. His films include Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (Vol. 1 2003, Vol. 2 2004), Death Proof (2007), and Inglourious Basterds (2009).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,642 reviews
October 27, 2022
This is absolutely the most fun I've had reading a book of film/criticism/history. Hands down. And the best volume of film criticism that I've read in years. Partly because Tarantino and I are roughly the same age, and I grew up enjoying similar movies, when I could see them.
But mostly because of his knowledge, and outright enthusiasm for the movies he's discussing. We don't get bogged down in technical analysis, although when it's offered it's illuminating and to the point.
Also, his biographical asides, and memories of seeing the films add a personal touch that is missing from a great deal of film criticism. (Add to the fact that he writes the way normal people talk- Like reading Steinbeck. This is not a dry academic tome.)
Every so often, I say this about a book. This is the book that makes me so glad I'm a book seller, because I cannot wait to share it with people.
One last thing. Based on his first two books, not to mention his screenplays, Quentin is one hell of an author. Regardless of how many more movies he makes, I sincerely hope he keeps writing.
But mostly because of his knowledge, and outright enthusiasm for the movies he's discussing. We don't get bogged down in technical analysis, although when it's offered it's illuminating and to the point.
Also, his biographical asides, and memories of seeing the films add a personal touch that is missing from a great deal of film criticism. (Add to the fact that he writes the way normal people talk- Like reading Steinbeck. This is not a dry academic tome.)
Every so often, I say this about a book. This is the book that makes me so glad I'm a book seller, because I cannot wait to share it with people.
One last thing. Based on his first two books, not to mention his screenplays, Quentin is one hell of an author. Regardless of how many more movies he makes, I sincerely hope he keeps writing.
January 20, 2023
Cinema Speculation is everything I hoped it might be and more. Published in 2022, this book of film history and criticism is by two-time Academy Award winning screenwriter Quentin Tarantino, who's directed nine feature films from his screenplays--Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill among them--with no bad ones. The "worst" feature in Tarantino's filmography--my vote there is for Django Unchained--is better than the very best some other filmmakers can boast of theirs, and as this book demonstrates, his ideas for movies he could make but would prefer just to speculate about are more compelling than a lot of what gets produced.
Tarantino bookends with a memoir, sketching for the reader what "Little Q" was up to in Los Angeles of the 1970s, not only what movies he was watching as a boy, but where he was watching them, who he was with, and how those adults impacted his development. The core of the book are enthusiastic essays on more than a dozen films he bought tickets for in this formative period, from 1972 to 1981, with many footnotes and asides along the way, as well as sourcing from directors he's talked to, like Peter Bogdanovich, Walter Hill and "Big" John Milius.
-- Because I was allowed to see things the other kids weren't, I appeared sophisticated to my classmates. And because I was watching the most challenging movies of the greatest movie-making era in the history of Hollywood, they were right, I was.
At some point, when I realized I was seeing movies other parents weren't letting their children see, I asked my mom about it.
She said, "Quentin, I worry more about you watching the news. A movie's not going to hurt you."
Right fucking on, Connie!
After being exposed to all these images, did any of them disturb me? Of course, some did! But that didn't mean I didn't like the movie.
When they removed the naked dead girl out of the hole in Dirty Harry, it was totally disturbing. But I understood it.
Just making a list of the wild violent images I witnessed from 1970 to 1972 would appall most readers. But just listing grotesque moments--out of context of the movies they were in--isn't entirely fair to the films in question. And my mother's point of view--that she later explained to me--was always a question of context. In those films, I could handle the imagery, because I understood the story.
-- Now, I knew of Super Fly because she already owned the smash hit soundtrack album, and it was played constantly in the apartment. The movie was also advertised heavily on Soul Train. And in our apartment, come Saturday, we never missed Soul Train. By this point I was living with my mother in a pretty hip apartment building that she shared with two cocktail waitresses that were her best friends at the time, Jackie (black) and Lillian (Mexican).
All three were young, hip, good-looking women in the funky seventies, with a penchant for dating athletes. Three sexy women (at the time my mother looked like a cross between Cher and Barbara Steele), one white, one black, one Mexican, sharing an apartment with the white one's ten-year-old son: we were practically a sitcom.
-- The importance of Neile McQueen to Steve's success as a movie star can't be overemphasized.
It was Neile who read the scripts. It was Neile who narrowed down the material. It was Neile who was good at choosing material that would be best for Steve. Steve's agent, Stan Kamen, would read ten scripts that were being offered, then narrow that down to five and send those off to Neile. She'd read those five scripts, write a synopsis on the material, narrow it down to the two she liked best, and then tell Steve the stories and explain her reasons why she liked them for him. Which would usually end up in him reading the one Neile liked the most. Now of course the director was important, how much they were paying him, the location they were shooting the film at--all those things were important. But so was Neile weighing in. Naturally, directors who'd worked with Steve before--that he liked--got preferential treatment. But if Neile didn't like the script, it was an uphill battle. And it was thanks to Neile's good taste and her keen understanding of her husband's ability and his iconic persona that she steered her husband, starting with The Cincinnati Kid, into the biggest winning streak of the second half of the sixties (a Neile McQueen is what Elvis needed).
-- I've always had an alternative reading of the Body Snatchers movies (Siegel's, Kaufman's, and Ferrara's). Each movie presents the Pod People in a sinister light. Yet really, almost nothing they do on screen bears out this sinister interpretation. If you're one who believes that your soul is what makes you you, then I suppose the Pod People are murdering the Earthlings they duplicate and replace. However, if you're more of the mind that it is your intellect and your consciousness that make you who you are, then the Pod People transformation is closer to a rebirth than a murder. You're reborn as straight intellect, with a complete possession of your past and your abilities, but unburdened by messy human emotions. You also possess a complete fidelity to your fellow beings and a total commitment to the survival of your species. Are you inhuman? Of course, they're vegetables. But the movies try to present their lack of humanity (they don't have a sense of humor, they're unmoved when a dog is hit by a car) as evidence of some deep-seated sinisterness. That's a rather species-specific point of view. As human beings it may be our emotions that make us human, but it's a stretch to say it's what makes us great. Along with those positive emotions--love, joy, happiness, amusement--come negative emotions--hate, selfishness, racism, depression, violence, and rage.
-- I saw Alligator three times that year (one of those times was on a triple feature with Rolling Thunder and a Canadian trucker flick called High-Ballin' with Peter Fonda and Jerry Reed), and I agreed wholeheartedly with Kevin Thomas about the charm of Forster and Riker. So much so, when I did my top ten movies at the end of the year, and wrote my little awards (best actress, best actor, best director) it was Robert Forster who was my choice for best male performance of that year (Robert DeNiro for Raging Bull was number two).
Fifteen years later, I was writing my adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch (which I retitled Jackie Brown), and I had to consider who was to play the novel's likable lead male character, bail bondsman Max Cherry. I had a few choices. Gene Hackman was an obvious choice, as was Paul Newman. I also considered John Saxon. But there was something about Forster in Alligator that really stuck with me. I watched the movie again and felt that the character from Alligator could be Max Cherry, just fifteen years earlier. So I started writing the script as if he was, right down to the discussion with Jackie about his thinning hair. Would I have done that without Kevin Thomas highlighting Forster so positively in his review?
No.
In the end, what made Kevin Thomas so unique in the world of seventies and eighties film criticism, he seemed liked one of the only few practitioners who truly enjoyed their job, and consequently, their life. I loved reading him growing up and practically considered him a friend.
In 1994 I won an award for Pulp Fiction from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. When I stepped up to the podium and looked out before the audience of L.A. critics, my first remarks to the room were: "Gee, thanks, now I finally know what Kevin Thomas looks like."
-- I remember, before seeing Stallone's film, being at some neighborhood kid's house and the TV spot for Rocky came on. The kid wondered out loud, "What's that?" And his mother glanced at the TV screen and said dismissively, "Oh, just another movie about some guy and his problems." Today it's very easy to romanticize that cynical seventies era--especially since it's long gone--seemingly never to return. But from 1970 to at least 1977, every other movie that came out did seem like it was about "some guy and his problems." Part of the elation tied to the audience's response to the climactic fight in Rocky was after five years of seventies cinema, we didn't really expect things to work out for Balboa. And I don't even mean we didn't expect him to win the heavyweight championship of the world. He was never going to fucking win! We just hoped he didn't look like a fucking joke. That's why the ending was so surprisingly moving and cathartic. That's why when he knocked Apollo Creed flat on his back we hit the roof. Because from that point on, no matter whatever else happened, Rocky proved he wasn't a joke. But by the time you get to the last round--and Rocky has Apollo Creed on the ropes--hitting him with a left and a right and a left and a right and the crowd in the boxing arena was chanting: "Roc-ky ... Roc-ky ..." Oh my fucking god!
There had simply never been anything like it.
-- So who exactly was this Floyd character I was referring to earlier?
His name was Floyd Ray Wilson and he was a black guy of about thirty-seven, who for about a year and a half in the late seventies lived in my house. He used to date my mom's best friend Jackie and he hung around in their circle. Years earlier, from time to time, he would visit the apartment my mom and I shared with her roommates Jackie and Lillian. And every time he came by it was exciting, because I thought Floyd was really cool and I could talk movies with him. And since he was a hip guy who saw a lot of shit, he could keep up (at least compared to the adults I knew). He especially knew all the action movies and Blaxploitation films. I remember when Jackie introduced us (I was ten), she said, "Quentin, Floyd's who you should talk to about movies. He knows as much as you."
So I--a ten-year-old white boy--started testing this grown-ass black man on his knowledge of black movies.
"Do you know who Brenda Sykes is?" I tested.
"Of course I do," he said.
I told him, "I think she's the prettiest black actress in movies."
"You damn right she is," he answered.
"What's your favorite Jim Kelly movie?" Again a test.
If he answered Enter the Dragon, he's just like everybody else.
"Three the Hard Way, obviously," he answered correctly.
Lillian just stared at the two of us and said to the room, "I don't know who any of these people are."
So from that moment on, whenever Floyd visited the apartment, it was practically like a holiday for me. Because finally, I was going to be able to talk to somebody about movies who knew what the fuck I was talking about. So when Floyd would come over I'd attach myself to him like a tick. But also during this time, I realized the hard way that Floyd was a flakey guy who couldn't be counted on. On at least two occasions when Floyd was visiting, he played the big man and told me he'd come over next Saturday to take me to the movies.
In spite of its fantastic title, Tarantino devotes just one chapter to "cinema speculation,” imagining Brian DePalma—one of his favorite directors from this era or any other—directing Taxi Driver instead of Martin Scorsese. (Tarantino envisions a political thriller in DePalma's hands, with Jeff Bridges playing Travis Bickle instead of Robert DeNiro, Amy Irving or DePalma's future wife Nancy Allen playing Betsy with more screen time, and a bravura assassination attempt edited like the prom massacre in DePalma's Carrie). Diagnosing movies like The Getaway, Deliverance and Rolling Thunder, he does inevitably tease us with what a Tarantino remake of those guy classics might look like.
It's the autobiographical sections of Cinema Speculation that struck a chord with me. By no means comprehensive--his biological parents are sketched more like older siblings than parents and with no explanation, Tarantino casually mentions his mother sending him to live with his "alcoholic hillbilly" grandparents in Tennessee--but I recognized the devotion to watching, cataloging, writing about and even making scrapbooks on movies as a child, as well as his education working at a video store (Tarantino refers to Video Archives the way college grads do their alma maters).
Cinema Speculation also did something that's almost unheard of when I finish a book. When I was done, I sat down and wrote a film essay of my own, speculating how director John Carpenter's career might've turned out if The Thing, today regarded as a masterpiece, was a commercial or even critical success in 1982. While I wouldn't put Tarantino's book on the shelf right next to On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (Tarantino doesn't instruct anyone how to write or direct a good movie, per se) they are related in that I came away with a profound appreciation for the craft and my own potential.
Tarantino bookends with a memoir, sketching for the reader what "Little Q" was up to in Los Angeles of the 1970s, not only what movies he was watching as a boy, but where he was watching them, who he was with, and how those adults impacted his development. The core of the book are enthusiastic essays on more than a dozen films he bought tickets for in this formative period, from 1972 to 1981, with many footnotes and asides along the way, as well as sourcing from directors he's talked to, like Peter Bogdanovich, Walter Hill and "Big" John Milius.
-- Because I was allowed to see things the other kids weren't, I appeared sophisticated to my classmates. And because I was watching the most challenging movies of the greatest movie-making era in the history of Hollywood, they were right, I was.
At some point, when I realized I was seeing movies other parents weren't letting their children see, I asked my mom about it.
She said, "Quentin, I worry more about you watching the news. A movie's not going to hurt you."
Right fucking on, Connie!
After being exposed to all these images, did any of them disturb me? Of course, some did! But that didn't mean I didn't like the movie.
When they removed the naked dead girl out of the hole in Dirty Harry, it was totally disturbing. But I understood it.
Just making a list of the wild violent images I witnessed from 1970 to 1972 would appall most readers. But just listing grotesque moments--out of context of the movies they were in--isn't entirely fair to the films in question. And my mother's point of view--that she later explained to me--was always a question of context. In those films, I could handle the imagery, because I understood the story.
-- Now, I knew of Super Fly because she already owned the smash hit soundtrack album, and it was played constantly in the apartment. The movie was also advertised heavily on Soul Train. And in our apartment, come Saturday, we never missed Soul Train. By this point I was living with my mother in a pretty hip apartment building that she shared with two cocktail waitresses that were her best friends at the time, Jackie (black) and Lillian (Mexican).
All three were young, hip, good-looking women in the funky seventies, with a penchant for dating athletes. Three sexy women (at the time my mother looked like a cross between Cher and Barbara Steele), one white, one black, one Mexican, sharing an apartment with the white one's ten-year-old son: we were practically a sitcom.
-- The importance of Neile McQueen to Steve's success as a movie star can't be overemphasized.
It was Neile who read the scripts. It was Neile who narrowed down the material. It was Neile who was good at choosing material that would be best for Steve. Steve's agent, Stan Kamen, would read ten scripts that were being offered, then narrow that down to five and send those off to Neile. She'd read those five scripts, write a synopsis on the material, narrow it down to the two she liked best, and then tell Steve the stories and explain her reasons why she liked them for him. Which would usually end up in him reading the one Neile liked the most. Now of course the director was important, how much they were paying him, the location they were shooting the film at--all those things were important. But so was Neile weighing in. Naturally, directors who'd worked with Steve before--that he liked--got preferential treatment. But if Neile didn't like the script, it was an uphill battle. And it was thanks to Neile's good taste and her keen understanding of her husband's ability and his iconic persona that she steered her husband, starting with The Cincinnati Kid, into the biggest winning streak of the second half of the sixties (a Neile McQueen is what Elvis needed).
-- I've always had an alternative reading of the Body Snatchers movies (Siegel's, Kaufman's, and Ferrara's). Each movie presents the Pod People in a sinister light. Yet really, almost nothing they do on screen bears out this sinister interpretation. If you're one who believes that your soul is what makes you you, then I suppose the Pod People are murdering the Earthlings they duplicate and replace. However, if you're more of the mind that it is your intellect and your consciousness that make you who you are, then the Pod People transformation is closer to a rebirth than a murder. You're reborn as straight intellect, with a complete possession of your past and your abilities, but unburdened by messy human emotions. You also possess a complete fidelity to your fellow beings and a total commitment to the survival of your species. Are you inhuman? Of course, they're vegetables. But the movies try to present their lack of humanity (they don't have a sense of humor, they're unmoved when a dog is hit by a car) as evidence of some deep-seated sinisterness. That's a rather species-specific point of view. As human beings it may be our emotions that make us human, but it's a stretch to say it's what makes us great. Along with those positive emotions--love, joy, happiness, amusement--come negative emotions--hate, selfishness, racism, depression, violence, and rage.
-- I saw Alligator three times that year (one of those times was on a triple feature with Rolling Thunder and a Canadian trucker flick called High-Ballin' with Peter Fonda and Jerry Reed), and I agreed wholeheartedly with Kevin Thomas about the charm of Forster and Riker. So much so, when I did my top ten movies at the end of the year, and wrote my little awards (best actress, best actor, best director) it was Robert Forster who was my choice for best male performance of that year (Robert DeNiro for Raging Bull was number two).
Fifteen years later, I was writing my adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Rum Punch (which I retitled Jackie Brown), and I had to consider who was to play the novel's likable lead male character, bail bondsman Max Cherry. I had a few choices. Gene Hackman was an obvious choice, as was Paul Newman. I also considered John Saxon. But there was something about Forster in Alligator that really stuck with me. I watched the movie again and felt that the character from Alligator could be Max Cherry, just fifteen years earlier. So I started writing the script as if he was, right down to the discussion with Jackie about his thinning hair. Would I have done that without Kevin Thomas highlighting Forster so positively in his review?
No.
In the end, what made Kevin Thomas so unique in the world of seventies and eighties film criticism, he seemed liked one of the only few practitioners who truly enjoyed their job, and consequently, their life. I loved reading him growing up and practically considered him a friend.
In 1994 I won an award for Pulp Fiction from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. When I stepped up to the podium and looked out before the audience of L.A. critics, my first remarks to the room were: "Gee, thanks, now I finally know what Kevin Thomas looks like."
-- I remember, before seeing Stallone's film, being at some neighborhood kid's house and the TV spot for Rocky came on. The kid wondered out loud, "What's that?" And his mother glanced at the TV screen and said dismissively, "Oh, just another movie about some guy and his problems." Today it's very easy to romanticize that cynical seventies era--especially since it's long gone--seemingly never to return. But from 1970 to at least 1977, every other movie that came out did seem like it was about "some guy and his problems." Part of the elation tied to the audience's response to the climactic fight in Rocky was after five years of seventies cinema, we didn't really expect things to work out for Balboa. And I don't even mean we didn't expect him to win the heavyweight championship of the world. He was never going to fucking win! We just hoped he didn't look like a fucking joke. That's why the ending was so surprisingly moving and cathartic. That's why when he knocked Apollo Creed flat on his back we hit the roof. Because from that point on, no matter whatever else happened, Rocky proved he wasn't a joke. But by the time you get to the last round--and Rocky has Apollo Creed on the ropes--hitting him with a left and a right and a left and a right and the crowd in the boxing arena was chanting: "Roc-ky ... Roc-ky ..." Oh my fucking god!
There had simply never been anything like it.
-- So who exactly was this Floyd character I was referring to earlier?
His name was Floyd Ray Wilson and he was a black guy of about thirty-seven, who for about a year and a half in the late seventies lived in my house. He used to date my mom's best friend Jackie and he hung around in their circle. Years earlier, from time to time, he would visit the apartment my mom and I shared with her roommates Jackie and Lillian. And every time he came by it was exciting, because I thought Floyd was really cool and I could talk movies with him. And since he was a hip guy who saw a lot of shit, he could keep up (at least compared to the adults I knew). He especially knew all the action movies and Blaxploitation films. I remember when Jackie introduced us (I was ten), she said, "Quentin, Floyd's who you should talk to about movies. He knows as much as you."
So I--a ten-year-old white boy--started testing this grown-ass black man on his knowledge of black movies.
"Do you know who Brenda Sykes is?" I tested.
"Of course I do," he said.
I told him, "I think she's the prettiest black actress in movies."
"You damn right she is," he answered.
"What's your favorite Jim Kelly movie?" Again a test.
If he answered Enter the Dragon, he's just like everybody else.
"Three the Hard Way, obviously," he answered correctly.
Lillian just stared at the two of us and said to the room, "I don't know who any of these people are."
So from that moment on, whenever Floyd visited the apartment, it was practically like a holiday for me. Because finally, I was going to be able to talk to somebody about movies who knew what the fuck I was talking about. So when Floyd would come over I'd attach myself to him like a tick. But also during this time, I realized the hard way that Floyd was a flakey guy who couldn't be counted on. On at least two occasions when Floyd was visiting, he played the big man and told me he'd come over next Saturday to take me to the movies.
In spite of its fantastic title, Tarantino devotes just one chapter to "cinema speculation,” imagining Brian DePalma—one of his favorite directors from this era or any other—directing Taxi Driver instead of Martin Scorsese. (Tarantino envisions a political thriller in DePalma's hands, with Jeff Bridges playing Travis Bickle instead of Robert DeNiro, Amy Irving or DePalma's future wife Nancy Allen playing Betsy with more screen time, and a bravura assassination attempt edited like the prom massacre in DePalma's Carrie). Diagnosing movies like The Getaway, Deliverance and Rolling Thunder, he does inevitably tease us with what a Tarantino remake of those guy classics might look like.
It's the autobiographical sections of Cinema Speculation that struck a chord with me. By no means comprehensive--his biological parents are sketched more like older siblings than parents and with no explanation, Tarantino casually mentions his mother sending him to live with his "alcoholic hillbilly" grandparents in Tennessee--but I recognized the devotion to watching, cataloging, writing about and even making scrapbooks on movies as a child, as well as his education working at a video store (Tarantino refers to Video Archives the way college grads do their alma maters).
Cinema Speculation also did something that's almost unheard of when I finish a book. When I was done, I sat down and wrote a film essay of my own, speculating how director John Carpenter's career might've turned out if The Thing, today regarded as a masterpiece, was a commercial or even critical success in 1982. While I wouldn't put Tarantino's book on the shelf right next to On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King (Tarantino doesn't instruct anyone how to write or direct a good movie, per se) they are related in that I came away with a profound appreciation for the craft and my own potential.
November 24, 2022
“So if you’re reading this cinema book hopefully to learn a little something about cinema, and your head is swimming from all the names you don’t recognize, congratulations, you’re learning something.”
I did learn a little something from this book, especially what influenced the author as a director. There are a lot of biographical details that explain what formed the author’s love of movies. This love seems to be limited to pretty narrow time periods and genres - but you stick to what you like. I also learned some interesting backstories about movies. Even though the book is full of actors I’ve never heard of and movies I have not seen (and still don’t want to see), I found the book entertaining because of the author’s enthusiasm for his subject.
I did learn a little something from this book, especially what influenced the author as a director. There are a lot of biographical details that explain what formed the author’s love of movies. This love seems to be limited to pretty narrow time periods and genres - but you stick to what you like. I also learned some interesting backstories about movies. Even though the book is full of actors I’ve never heard of and movies I have not seen (and still don’t want to see), I found the book entertaining because of the author’s enthusiasm for his subject.
July 11, 2023
95% of this book is Quentin’s vastly knowledgeable vastly excitable helter-skelter through the film decade they call THE SEVENTIES, and when we say THE SEVENTIES we mean here a whole ton of violent movies made in America very often about revenge in the 70s. Other types of film do not get a look in. Do not come here expecting a consideration of the romcom or a finely balanced critique of the works of Werner Herzog, Agnes Varda or Walerian Borowcyk.
And it is very entertaining to follow Quentin’s mind moving fast, finding what is real about this or that movie, and always you will be arguing with him.
(Note – before we proceed any further, let the record show that Quentin is a very foulmouthed film critic who can hardly let a paragraph go by without a generous helping of f words. This will annoy some of the straighter-laced.)
HUGELY INAPPROPRIATE
Now, Quentin was born in 1963, so it came as something of a shock to read about the movies he saw at the age of 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 – stuff like Dirty Harry, Deliverance, The Wild Bunch, Carnal Knowledge and Joe – he makes a great point of how lucky he was to hoover up all these movies at such a young age:
At the age of seven, I first attended a show at the Tiffany when my mother and my stepfather took me to see a double feature: John G Avildsen’s Joe and Carl Reiner’s Where’s Poppa?
Wait a minute, you saw a double feature of Joe and Where’s Poppa at seven?
You bet I did.
You may not know Joe (I saw it only recently) it’s all about a drunken factory worker named Joe, who hates hippies, Black people, and is continually ranting and raving about them and fantasizing about killing a hippy or a black person. There is unadulterated racism through the whole movie which ends with a gun massacre. It’s not a comedy. Peter Boyle’s performance as the vile Joe is terrifying and unforgettable.
Quentin says
At the time I saw Joe it was easily the ugliest movie I’d ever (a spot it held till four years later when I saw The Last House on the Left)
Wait! He saw that famous video nasty which the wimpy British Board of Film Classification banned until 2008 at the age of 11! One critic said :
Last House on the Left is a sick, disgusting and unrelenting dirge of a horror film. If you enjoy watching women being raped and tortured to the most inappropriate music imaginable, this is for you.
I imagine that would make both the 11 year old Quentin and the current 59 year old Quentin lol till they could lol no more.
So the very young Quentin saw all these R rated movies because you could do that IF accompanied by an adult, which was either his mother or his mother’s boyfriend, or both. He had a very irresponsible mother. We should be grateful, he surely was.
I didn’t see The Texas Chain Saw Massacre when it was first released in 1974 [he was 11]. Then, I was still dependent on an adult taking me to see something like that. It wasn’t like my mother forbade me to see it. It’s just that she wasn’t interested in going out and seeing something called The Texas chain Saw Massacre… I did see it about two years later [when he was 13]
WHAT WE SEE WHEN WE SEE A MOVIE
I remember once Quentin said that he didn’t want Reservoir Dogs to be remembered as “you know, the one where the guy cuts his ear off” but as we read these rollicking assessments of some of his (frequently obscure) favourites we find that a movie can indeed be great for only one thing – for instance Steve McQueen’s ineffable cool in Bullitt
Bullit does have a story. But it’s not a memorable story, nor does it have anything to do with what you respond to in the movie…. Nobody in the history of movies did nothing like Steve McQueen
In Supervixens there’s a “bathtub murder scene” and Quentin loves the movie for that one single scene. Movies can be great for a single scene, a single actor, an opening sequence, the script, a soundtrack, the cinematography, when the rest of the movie is junk. A great performance in a movie with a ridiculous script. A wonderful sequence in a throwaway thriller. Of course some rare times everything comes together in a perfect movie. Example of a perfect movie for Quentin : The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. (Example of a perfect movie for me : City of Lost Children).
But when they consider the movie as a whole, instead of disassembling it into its parts, movie fans like Quentin see metaphor everywhere, I mean like everywhere. Taxi Driver is a paraphrase of John Ford’s The Searchers, which is itself a giant metaphor about American racism. And what about Carrie?
What’s the bucket of pig blood scene but an assassination scene? Carrie White and Tommy Ross win an election (king and queen of the prom). The victorious candidates are brought on stage where they’re applauded by their cheering constituency.
And then
The filled-to-the-brim bucket of pig blood, falling with its full weight onto Carrie White’s face, is like Jackie getting JFK’s brains blown in her face.
Is this fanciful? It’s up to you, but movie fans love to do this kind of thing.
PEOPLE ARE STRANGE…. ACTUALLY, THE DOORS WERE WRONG, PEOPLE ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE
Quentin describes the 1977 movie Rolling Thunder directed by John Flynn :
When I first saw Rolling Thunder with my mother and her boyfriend Marco in 1977 on the film’s opening night in Los Angeles it blew my fucking mind. …. I loved Rolling Thunder so much that…for a period of ten years…I followed it all over Los Angeles, whenever and wherever it played… it was the best combination of character study and action film ever made. And it still is.
So, excited by this, I watched Rolling Thunder for the first time, and discovered it to be a routine revenge flick with a shootout at the end you have seen a million times, neanderthal villains dialled up from central casting, and a passive adoring girlfriend tagging along in the middle of it all who the hero drops like a hot potato when he goes off to do what a man’s gotta do and gun down the lowlives who slaughtered his family. What part of this is original? No part.
Quentin loves this movie, just loves it, and I thought it was tiresomely predictable with all the action picture cliches in place. Who can figure people’s taste? Hell is other people’s music, and other people’s movies. Quentin is not a fool, he is a smart cookie but he loves some very bad movies and he thinks they are good. And he would say the same about me. And I would say the same thing about him.
TAXI DRIVER
Is this movie a movie about a racist, or is it a racist movie?
Such a great question, QT. And can be asked many times about movies and books.
Is this a movie about a misogynist or is this a misogynist movie? Is another variation. Maybe it depends on who’s making the movie or book.
But I digress. Paul Schrader the scriptwriter gave the (old) script to Brian DePalma; he liked it but he was busy; so the director was going to be Robert Mulligan (Summer of 42); and Travis Bickle was going to be played by Jeff Bridges; and Harvey Keitel’s role was going to be black. Imagine that version! A movie starts out as one thing then mutates as it slides unpleasantly through the alimentary canal of the movie business.
Example : Quentin reads the script of one of his fave movies Rolling Thunder, featuring a monosyllabic back-from-Vietnam damaged guy, and in the script there are pages of dialogue spoken by this character. After reading one page of monologue Quentin yelps “Who the fuck is this guy? I mean, Jesus Christ, that’s more dialogue than Charlie says in the whole fucking movie!” Then he explains:
Well, it turned out the final author of the character of Charlie Rane was not the screenwriters but the actor playing the role….
Yeah, the actor, William Devane, who the studio loved at the time, just said “I’m not gonna say all this” and threw out the dialogue. This is like the opposite of the scene in Taxi Driver you all remember, with Travis in front of the mirror and he says “You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?” etc and the screenplay just says Travis talks to himself in the mirror.
BOOK VERSUS FILM : A DIGRESSION
Quentin is not bothered about books, only movies, but he made the difference between the two crystal clear. In a movie your experience is not pure, it’s always crisscrossed with multidimensional readings. Inhabiting every character there is the actor who you already know (and who may overwhelm the character they are playing) and behind the actor is the director and behind the director is the producer. There’s a lot going on. In a book there’s the author, the characters, and you.
QUENTIN SEES HIS FAVOURITE MOVIES MORE THAN ONCE
I’ve watched The Getaway many times with theatre audiences…
What comes across very strongly in this book is the joys of seeing a movie at the cinema with an audience, the experience that dwindled away as fast as people could start watching movies at home. For instance Quentin is ticking someone off for badmouthing Halloween and he remembers when he saw Halloween
not in a practically empty screening room but in a packed cinema of teenagers hooting, hollering, screaming, laughing, and basically having the time of their lives
And later
Trust me, I’ve seen Rolling Thunder with every type of audience imaginable.
So Quentin watches his favourite movies MANY times…. I never do that. Three times, max. Man, life is too short!
QUENTIN!
Yeah I know he’s annoying. He started with a huge bang with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown and then for me went off the rails. But this is the best version of QT, joyful, rambunctious and unapologetic, the opposite of quiet and contemplative, the opposite of an old fart. If he likes violent movies from a violent decade, if he thinks movies from the 50s and the 80s sucked, if he knows he comes across as the teenage movie freak who never grew up, that’s okay, it’s your problem, certainly isn’t his.
Recommended for all movie fans.
And it is very entertaining to follow Quentin’s mind moving fast, finding what is real about this or that movie, and always you will be arguing with him.
(Note – before we proceed any further, let the record show that Quentin is a very foulmouthed film critic who can hardly let a paragraph go by without a generous helping of f words. This will annoy some of the straighter-laced.)
HUGELY INAPPROPRIATE
Now, Quentin was born in 1963, so it came as something of a shock to read about the movies he saw at the age of 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 – stuff like Dirty Harry, Deliverance, The Wild Bunch, Carnal Knowledge and Joe – he makes a great point of how lucky he was to hoover up all these movies at such a young age:
At the age of seven, I first attended a show at the Tiffany when my mother and my stepfather took me to see a double feature: John G Avildsen’s Joe and Carl Reiner’s Where’s Poppa?
Wait a minute, you saw a double feature of Joe and Where’s Poppa at seven?
You bet I did.
You may not know Joe (I saw it only recently) it’s all about a drunken factory worker named Joe, who hates hippies, Black people, and is continually ranting and raving about them and fantasizing about killing a hippy or a black person. There is unadulterated racism through the whole movie which ends with a gun massacre. It’s not a comedy. Peter Boyle’s performance as the vile Joe is terrifying and unforgettable.
Quentin says
At the time I saw Joe it was easily the ugliest movie I’d ever (a spot it held till four years later when I saw The Last House on the Left)
Wait! He saw that famous video nasty which the wimpy British Board of Film Classification banned until 2008 at the age of 11! One critic said :
Last House on the Left is a sick, disgusting and unrelenting dirge of a horror film. If you enjoy watching women being raped and tortured to the most inappropriate music imaginable, this is for you.
I imagine that would make both the 11 year old Quentin and the current 59 year old Quentin lol till they could lol no more.
So the very young Quentin saw all these R rated movies because you could do that IF accompanied by an adult, which was either his mother or his mother’s boyfriend, or both. He had a very irresponsible mother. We should be grateful, he surely was.
I didn’t see The Texas Chain Saw Massacre when it was first released in 1974 [he was 11]. Then, I was still dependent on an adult taking me to see something like that. It wasn’t like my mother forbade me to see it. It’s just that she wasn’t interested in going out and seeing something called The Texas chain Saw Massacre… I did see it about two years later [when he was 13]
WHAT WE SEE WHEN WE SEE A MOVIE
I remember once Quentin said that he didn’t want Reservoir Dogs to be remembered as “you know, the one where the guy cuts his ear off” but as we read these rollicking assessments of some of his (frequently obscure) favourites we find that a movie can indeed be great for only one thing – for instance Steve McQueen’s ineffable cool in Bullitt
Bullit does have a story. But it’s not a memorable story, nor does it have anything to do with what you respond to in the movie…. Nobody in the history of movies did nothing like Steve McQueen
In Supervixens there’s a “bathtub murder scene” and Quentin loves the movie for that one single scene. Movies can be great for a single scene, a single actor, an opening sequence, the script, a soundtrack, the cinematography, when the rest of the movie is junk. A great performance in a movie with a ridiculous script. A wonderful sequence in a throwaway thriller. Of course some rare times everything comes together in a perfect movie. Example of a perfect movie for Quentin : The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. (Example of a perfect movie for me : City of Lost Children).
But when they consider the movie as a whole, instead of disassembling it into its parts, movie fans like Quentin see metaphor everywhere, I mean like everywhere. Taxi Driver is a paraphrase of John Ford’s The Searchers, which is itself a giant metaphor about American racism. And what about Carrie?
What’s the bucket of pig blood scene but an assassination scene? Carrie White and Tommy Ross win an election (king and queen of the prom). The victorious candidates are brought on stage where they’re applauded by their cheering constituency.
And then
The filled-to-the-brim bucket of pig blood, falling with its full weight onto Carrie White’s face, is like Jackie getting JFK’s brains blown in her face.
Is this fanciful? It’s up to you, but movie fans love to do this kind of thing.
PEOPLE ARE STRANGE…. ACTUALLY, THE DOORS WERE WRONG, PEOPLE ARE INCOMPREHENSIBLE
Quentin describes the 1977 movie Rolling Thunder directed by John Flynn :
When I first saw Rolling Thunder with my mother and her boyfriend Marco in 1977 on the film’s opening night in Los Angeles it blew my fucking mind. …. I loved Rolling Thunder so much that…for a period of ten years…I followed it all over Los Angeles, whenever and wherever it played… it was the best combination of character study and action film ever made. And it still is.
So, excited by this, I watched Rolling Thunder for the first time, and discovered it to be a routine revenge flick with a shootout at the end you have seen a million times, neanderthal villains dialled up from central casting, and a passive adoring girlfriend tagging along in the middle of it all who the hero drops like a hot potato when he goes off to do what a man’s gotta do and gun down the lowlives who slaughtered his family. What part of this is original? No part.
Quentin loves this movie, just loves it, and I thought it was tiresomely predictable with all the action picture cliches in place. Who can figure people’s taste? Hell is other people’s music, and other people’s movies. Quentin is not a fool, he is a smart cookie but he loves some very bad movies and he thinks they are good. And he would say the same about me. And I would say the same thing about him.
TAXI DRIVER
Is this movie a movie about a racist, or is it a racist movie?
Such a great question, QT. And can be asked many times about movies and books.
Is this a movie about a misogynist or is this a misogynist movie? Is another variation. Maybe it depends on who’s making the movie or book.
But I digress. Paul Schrader the scriptwriter gave the (old) script to Brian DePalma; he liked it but he was busy; so the director was going to be Robert Mulligan (Summer of 42); and Travis Bickle was going to be played by Jeff Bridges; and Harvey Keitel’s role was going to be black. Imagine that version! A movie starts out as one thing then mutates as it slides unpleasantly through the alimentary canal of the movie business.
Example : Quentin reads the script of one of his fave movies Rolling Thunder, featuring a monosyllabic back-from-Vietnam damaged guy, and in the script there are pages of dialogue spoken by this character. After reading one page of monologue Quentin yelps “Who the fuck is this guy? I mean, Jesus Christ, that’s more dialogue than Charlie says in the whole fucking movie!” Then he explains:
Well, it turned out the final author of the character of Charlie Rane was not the screenwriters but the actor playing the role….
Yeah, the actor, William Devane, who the studio loved at the time, just said “I’m not gonna say all this” and threw out the dialogue. This is like the opposite of the scene in Taxi Driver you all remember, with Travis in front of the mirror and he says “You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me?” etc and the screenplay just says Travis talks to himself in the mirror.
BOOK VERSUS FILM : A DIGRESSION
Quentin is not bothered about books, only movies, but he made the difference between the two crystal clear. In a movie your experience is not pure, it’s always crisscrossed with multidimensional readings. Inhabiting every character there is the actor who you already know (and who may overwhelm the character they are playing) and behind the actor is the director and behind the director is the producer. There’s a lot going on. In a book there’s the author, the characters, and you.
QUENTIN SEES HIS FAVOURITE MOVIES MORE THAN ONCE
I’ve watched The Getaway many times with theatre audiences…
What comes across very strongly in this book is the joys of seeing a movie at the cinema with an audience, the experience that dwindled away as fast as people could start watching movies at home. For instance Quentin is ticking someone off for badmouthing Halloween and he remembers when he saw Halloween
not in a practically empty screening room but in a packed cinema of teenagers hooting, hollering, screaming, laughing, and basically having the time of their lives
And later
Trust me, I’ve seen Rolling Thunder with every type of audience imaginable.
So Quentin watches his favourite movies MANY times…. I never do that. Three times, max. Man, life is too short!
QUENTIN!
Yeah I know he’s annoying. He started with a huge bang with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown and then for me went off the rails. But this is the best version of QT, joyful, rambunctious and unapologetic, the opposite of quiet and contemplative, the opposite of an old fart. If he likes violent movies from a violent decade, if he thinks movies from the 50s and the 80s sucked, if he knows he comes across as the teenage movie freak who never grew up, that’s okay, it’s your problem, certainly isn’t his.
Recommended for all movie fans.
December 9, 2022
The second book by Quentin Tarantino is Cinema Speculation, a collection of nonfiction essays on 13 notable movies from between 1968 and 1981 mixed in with autobiography about his experience with these films. Let’s run through the checklist - how many of these have you seen?
Bullitt (1968), Dirty Harry (1971), Deliverance (1972), The Getaway (1973), The Outfit (1973), Sisters (1973), Daisy Miller (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Rolling Thunder (1977), Paradise Alley (1978), Escape From Alcatraz (1979), Hardcore (1979) and The Funhouse (1981).
For me it’s a paltry 3: Bullitt, Deliverance and Taxi Driver - to be fair the only other two I’ve even heard of are the Clint Eastwood movies Dirty Harry and Escape From Alcatraz! I’m just not a huge fan of movies from this era.
As a lifelong Tarantino fan, it was always going to be a pleasure to read about his enthusiasms and criticisms of these movies, whether or not I’ve heard of or seen them, and the additional memoir stuff is gravy. Some of the movie essays though are disappointingly dull - not quite having the same spicy behind-the-scenes stories, colourful characters, or interesting trivia as others, as are some of the nonspecific movie essays, and could’ve been excised for a snappier read.
Bullitt is compelling, unlike the movie itself, and Tarantino tries his best to finagle an explanation for why the movie is good in its badness - it’s a clever apologia but unconvincing, to me anyway. The best essays - Dirty Harry, Deliverance, The Getaway, and Taxi Driver - made me want to watch the movies, even if I’d seen them before. The Paradise Alley essay turned out to be a secret Rocky mash note that made me want to re-watch Rocky and Rocky II rather than Paradise Alley!
The lesser essays read like a list of meaningless names to little or no effect. Like The Outfit essay which devolves into Tarantino reeling off names of ‘70s actors who I didn’t know that he thought could play characters in the movie. This kind of stuff is fine if you’re someone reading this book looking to actively learn about actors from this time period, but that’s not me. I’m reading this to hear what Tarantino has to say about these movies and nothing more - if I learn something, whoopty doo, but it’s primarily entertainment to me, and reading Tarantino display his esoteric knowledge of little-known actors from this time wasn’t entertaining.
The Rolling Thunder essay was when the book started to become a bit of a chore to get through (it didn’t seem like it warranted the page count for the kind of story it was) while I remember little to nothing about his final movie choice, The Funhouse - except for when he says at the start that Tobe Hooper’s previous, and vastly more famous, movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is what he considers a perfect move. And says nothing further on that matter. So frustrating - write about that movie instead of The Funhouse!!
Tarantino’s really into Brian De Palma and I’ve never seen what other people see in this director - aside from Scarface and The Untouchables, he’s really bad (and I’ve not seen either of those movies in years). After his gushing over Sisters, I saw a couple of De Palma movies he’d mentioned: Dressed to Kill (1980) and Blow Out (1981). Don’t bother with either. Dressed to Kill has its moments but it’s really dumb and over-the-top - that’s what I thought until I saw just how dumb and over-the-top De Palma gets with Blow Out! Awful movies.
He carries on with his De Palma praise in his titular essay Cinema Speculation: What If Brian De Palma Directed Taxi Driver Instead of Martin Scorsese? which didn’t tickle me so much. I get that it would be different in certain ways but I’m just not such a cinephile that this kind of conjecture does anything for me.
The Daisy Miller essay is the shortest and features the first of the Tarantino flourishes that I expect in his movies, because it’s really about the little known actor Barry Brown, who appears in the movie, and who killed himself shortly after. Tarantino not only appreciated Brown’s acting but also his writing - Brown turned out to be a film journalist in his youth, writing a fine piece on Bela Lugosi’s drug addiction and sad final days that appeared in Castle of Frankenstein magazine issue #10 and is reprinted in full here.
This is maybe what’s most laudable about Tarantino in this book: he champions great stuff, whether it’s high profile and well-known (Taxi Driver, Brian De Palma) as much as he does the lesser-known to completely forgotten. Who else would resurrect the memory of actor Barry Brown and underline his writing ability? Or, out of all the famous film critics of the 20th century - Pauline Kael, Siskel and Ebert, Richard Corliss - who would single out Kevin Thomas of the LA Times, as he does in his appreciation essay Second-String Samurai?
That’s a quality that makes for a great critic/reviewer - they’re discerning in their tastes but not in their choices. They’ll experience a wide range of both “high/low brow” content and have no problems in critiquing the former and recommending the latter if they find them so, regardless of whether or not it’s the prevailing view of the day.
Hence his essay New Hollywood in the Seventies: The Post-Sixties Anti-Establishment Auteurs vs The Movie Brats, that highlights the evolution in cinematic tastes (for the better, to make for more vital cinema) in how older directors adapted “literature” (eg. Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon) while the younger directors picked the bestsellers of the day (eg. Spielberg’s Jaws). And it’s partly why Tarantino is critical of Paul Schrader’s Hardcore, for that movie’s disdain towards adult entertainers, who he sticks up for in his essay.
(Complete tangent: Kubrick also directed The Shining, which was a bestseller at the time as well, which kinda upends Tarantino’s thesis. I wonder why Tarantino never comments on Stanley Kubrick in this book - there’s only a passing remark on Kubrick in The Funhouse essay but no opinion offered. Maybe because he’s an outlier who was “Old Hollywood” but transcended that label to become more popular over time, during “New Hollywood” and beyond? Maybe Tarantino is aware of how well-respected Kubrick is and doesn’t want to throw shade on him - out of respect for what he did for cinema, more than anything? It’s a strange omission that, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre comment, I wish he’d addressed in greater detail.)
Tarantino combines this adoration of the less-respected side of cinematic art in his final literary flourish of the book. There are footnotes throughout but The Funhouse has a footnote that requires an entire chapter(!), and is also the chapter that closes the book. It’s called Floyd, about a drifter who babysat Tarantino when he was a kid and who took him to see great grindhouse movies in black theatres - and was also an aspiring screenwriter whose magnum opus (never produced and forever lost) was about a black cowboy hero.
Years later, Tarantino would win the Oscar for the Django Unchained screenplay, which was about a black cowboy hero, and mentions in his essay that it was Floyd’s screenplay that first inspired him to start writing screenplays and get it into his head to write one about such a character. He regrets not thanking Floyd in his Oscar acceptance speech but acknowledges him here, keeping his memory alive (he died long ago), in this book.
As entertaining as some of the movie review chapters are, I liked the autobio essays the best. Floyd is a great closer, bookending perfectly with the opening chapter, Little Q Watching Big Movies, which really takes you into the cinema experience of the late ‘60s and ‘70s - its communal conviviality and its own brand of entertainment, like when audiences hated a movie and heckled it, much to young Quentin’s amusement.
It’s a shame he doesn’t write about modern movies but I understand why he doesn’t - he’s still a working director and knows many people within the industry and doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, or burn bridges for his final movie or other projects, etc. - and why he picked movies from 50 years ago where most of the people who worked on them are dead and can’t be upset with his opinions.
Tarantino also recently started a film podcast where he reviews old movies with his friend Roger Avary (the co-writer of Pulp Fiction, among other things) called The Video Archives Podcast, so if you liked what you read here and want a weekly dose, then check that out.
Cinema Speculation is an uneven collection of film essays, some of which are fun, some that are blase, and a few that are flat out boring. But, I found it worthwhile overall and also got some film recs that I’ll make an effort to see (Dirty Harry, The Getaway). Even if I read a lot of film criticism (and I don’t), I feel like I’d still appreciate this book because Tarantino has such a unique approach to film, in all its facets, and his genuine passion for and erudition of the medium comes across strongly on every page. He’s a really good writer too, as if you didn’t already know, who can write very enjoyably for the most part, educating and entertaining at the same time. If you’re a Tarantino or general movie fan, you’ll get something out of this one - if you’re neither, then prolly not.
Cut!
Bullitt (1968), Dirty Harry (1971), Deliverance (1972), The Getaway (1973), The Outfit (1973), Sisters (1973), Daisy Miller (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), Rolling Thunder (1977), Paradise Alley (1978), Escape From Alcatraz (1979), Hardcore (1979) and The Funhouse (1981).
For me it’s a paltry 3: Bullitt, Deliverance and Taxi Driver - to be fair the only other two I’ve even heard of are the Clint Eastwood movies Dirty Harry and Escape From Alcatraz! I’m just not a huge fan of movies from this era.
As a lifelong Tarantino fan, it was always going to be a pleasure to read about his enthusiasms and criticisms of these movies, whether or not I’ve heard of or seen them, and the additional memoir stuff is gravy. Some of the movie essays though are disappointingly dull - not quite having the same spicy behind-the-scenes stories, colourful characters, or interesting trivia as others, as are some of the nonspecific movie essays, and could’ve been excised for a snappier read.
Bullitt is compelling, unlike the movie itself, and Tarantino tries his best to finagle an explanation for why the movie is good in its badness - it’s a clever apologia but unconvincing, to me anyway. The best essays - Dirty Harry, Deliverance, The Getaway, and Taxi Driver - made me want to watch the movies, even if I’d seen them before. The Paradise Alley essay turned out to be a secret Rocky mash note that made me want to re-watch Rocky and Rocky II rather than Paradise Alley!
The lesser essays read like a list of meaningless names to little or no effect. Like The Outfit essay which devolves into Tarantino reeling off names of ‘70s actors who I didn’t know that he thought could play characters in the movie. This kind of stuff is fine if you’re someone reading this book looking to actively learn about actors from this time period, but that’s not me. I’m reading this to hear what Tarantino has to say about these movies and nothing more - if I learn something, whoopty doo, but it’s primarily entertainment to me, and reading Tarantino display his esoteric knowledge of little-known actors from this time wasn’t entertaining.
The Rolling Thunder essay was when the book started to become a bit of a chore to get through (it didn’t seem like it warranted the page count for the kind of story it was) while I remember little to nothing about his final movie choice, The Funhouse - except for when he says at the start that Tobe Hooper’s previous, and vastly more famous, movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is what he considers a perfect move. And says nothing further on that matter. So frustrating - write about that movie instead of The Funhouse!!
Tarantino’s really into Brian De Palma and I’ve never seen what other people see in this director - aside from Scarface and The Untouchables, he’s really bad (and I’ve not seen either of those movies in years). After his gushing over Sisters, I saw a couple of De Palma movies he’d mentioned: Dressed to Kill (1980) and Blow Out (1981). Don’t bother with either. Dressed to Kill has its moments but it’s really dumb and over-the-top - that’s what I thought until I saw just how dumb and over-the-top De Palma gets with Blow Out! Awful movies.
He carries on with his De Palma praise in his titular essay Cinema Speculation: What If Brian De Palma Directed Taxi Driver Instead of Martin Scorsese? which didn’t tickle me so much. I get that it would be different in certain ways but I’m just not such a cinephile that this kind of conjecture does anything for me.
The Daisy Miller essay is the shortest and features the first of the Tarantino flourishes that I expect in his movies, because it’s really about the little known actor Barry Brown, who appears in the movie, and who killed himself shortly after. Tarantino not only appreciated Brown’s acting but also his writing - Brown turned out to be a film journalist in his youth, writing a fine piece on Bela Lugosi’s drug addiction and sad final days that appeared in Castle of Frankenstein magazine issue #10 and is reprinted in full here.
This is maybe what’s most laudable about Tarantino in this book: he champions great stuff, whether it’s high profile and well-known (Taxi Driver, Brian De Palma) as much as he does the lesser-known to completely forgotten. Who else would resurrect the memory of actor Barry Brown and underline his writing ability? Or, out of all the famous film critics of the 20th century - Pauline Kael, Siskel and Ebert, Richard Corliss - who would single out Kevin Thomas of the LA Times, as he does in his appreciation essay Second-String Samurai?
That’s a quality that makes for a great critic/reviewer - they’re discerning in their tastes but not in their choices. They’ll experience a wide range of both “high/low brow” content and have no problems in critiquing the former and recommending the latter if they find them so, regardless of whether or not it’s the prevailing view of the day.
Hence his essay New Hollywood in the Seventies: The Post-Sixties Anti-Establishment Auteurs vs The Movie Brats, that highlights the evolution in cinematic tastes (for the better, to make for more vital cinema) in how older directors adapted “literature” (eg. Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon) while the younger directors picked the bestsellers of the day (eg. Spielberg’s Jaws). And it’s partly why Tarantino is critical of Paul Schrader’s Hardcore, for that movie’s disdain towards adult entertainers, who he sticks up for in his essay.
(Complete tangent: Kubrick also directed The Shining, which was a bestseller at the time as well, which kinda upends Tarantino’s thesis. I wonder why Tarantino never comments on Stanley Kubrick in this book - there’s only a passing remark on Kubrick in The Funhouse essay but no opinion offered. Maybe because he’s an outlier who was “Old Hollywood” but transcended that label to become more popular over time, during “New Hollywood” and beyond? Maybe Tarantino is aware of how well-respected Kubrick is and doesn’t want to throw shade on him - out of respect for what he did for cinema, more than anything? It’s a strange omission that, like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre comment, I wish he’d addressed in greater detail.)
Tarantino combines this adoration of the less-respected side of cinematic art in his final literary flourish of the book. There are footnotes throughout but The Funhouse has a footnote that requires an entire chapter(!), and is also the chapter that closes the book. It’s called Floyd, about a drifter who babysat Tarantino when he was a kid and who took him to see great grindhouse movies in black theatres - and was also an aspiring screenwriter whose magnum opus (never produced and forever lost) was about a black cowboy hero.
Years later, Tarantino would win the Oscar for the Django Unchained screenplay, which was about a black cowboy hero, and mentions in his essay that it was Floyd’s screenplay that first inspired him to start writing screenplays and get it into his head to write one about such a character. He regrets not thanking Floyd in his Oscar acceptance speech but acknowledges him here, keeping his memory alive (he died long ago), in this book.
As entertaining as some of the movie review chapters are, I liked the autobio essays the best. Floyd is a great closer, bookending perfectly with the opening chapter, Little Q Watching Big Movies, which really takes you into the cinema experience of the late ‘60s and ‘70s - its communal conviviality and its own brand of entertainment, like when audiences hated a movie and heckled it, much to young Quentin’s amusement.
It’s a shame he doesn’t write about modern movies but I understand why he doesn’t - he’s still a working director and knows many people within the industry and doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, or burn bridges for his final movie or other projects, etc. - and why he picked movies from 50 years ago where most of the people who worked on them are dead and can’t be upset with his opinions.
Tarantino also recently started a film podcast where he reviews old movies with his friend Roger Avary (the co-writer of Pulp Fiction, among other things) called The Video Archives Podcast, so if you liked what you read here and want a weekly dose, then check that out.
Cinema Speculation is an uneven collection of film essays, some of which are fun, some that are blase, and a few that are flat out boring. But, I found it worthwhile overall and also got some film recs that I’ll make an effort to see (Dirty Harry, The Getaway). Even if I read a lot of film criticism (and I don’t), I feel like I’d still appreciate this book because Tarantino has such a unique approach to film, in all its facets, and his genuine passion for and erudition of the medium comes across strongly on every page. He’s a really good writer too, as if you didn’t already know, who can write very enjoyably for the most part, educating and entertaining at the same time. If you’re a Tarantino or general movie fan, you’ll get something out of this one - if you’re neither, then prolly not.
Cut!
April 29, 2023
Is there something like narrative film criticism? Well, there certainly is now: I have seen almost none of the movies QT discusses in his first work of non-fiction, but his mixture of personal anecdotes and captivating essays reads like a smart, complex adventure story. For someone who loves to ponder aesthetic, social, economic, historical and political aspects of novels, it's such a pleasure to witness and follow how Tarantino thinks, how he pairs his passion for films with profound knowledge and develops intelligent conclusions. It's not even important if one agrees with his assessments or not: Art criticism is about formulating good arguments, starting and moving the conversation, and QT is clearly an expert on that.
I deeply distrust all self-described book nerds who applaud every book, because if you love an art form, you'll have strong opinions - and unsurprisingly, QT has plenty regarding movies. He talks about - among others - "Dirty Harry", "Taxi Driver", and "The Getaway", so classic movies that had a strong influence on his own work, and pairs his observations with stories from his life (which he reads himself for the audio book).
Great fun, I hope the guy will write more books - maybe even a stand alone novel after his tenth and final production as a director?
I deeply distrust all self-described book nerds who applaud every book, because if you love an art form, you'll have strong opinions - and unsurprisingly, QT has plenty regarding movies. He talks about - among others - "Dirty Harry", "Taxi Driver", and "The Getaway", so classic movies that had a strong influence on his own work, and pairs his observations with stories from his life (which he reads himself for the audio book).
Great fun, I hope the guy will write more books - maybe even a stand alone novel after his tenth and final production as a director?
February 18, 2023
"I consider myself a student of the cinema. It's almost like I am going for my professorship in cinema, and the day I die is the day I graduate. It is a lifelong study." -- Quentin Tarantino
In a move that will surprise absolutely no one familiar with the chatterbox director / screenwriter / actor - although that's not meant to sound like a slight - 'QT' pens his first non-fiction work with the essay collection Cinema Speculation. Given his own silver-screen output thus far, his choice of films worthy of discussion largely adhere to crime and suspense dramas or revenge flicks from the 70's from when he was just an impressionable pre-teen or adolescent trolling the double features of his neighborhood's grindhouses and movie palaces in that pre-multiplex era. So readers get his take on movies such as Bullitt (yes!), Dirty Harry (yes!), Deliverance, The Getaway, The Outfit, Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder,Escape from Alcatraz, and Hardcore along with the odd inclusions of the forgotten comedy-drama Daisy Miller (one of director Peter Bogdanovich's less-remembered efforts) and the somewhat-obscure horror film The Funhouse (its director Tobe Hooper is still best-known for the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Tarantino is in his element when discussing these and many other title-dropped films - and I'm a fan of both Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood, so as Leonardo DiCaprio's Calvin Candie quipped in Django Unchained that "You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention" - and it was fun and informative book. Additionally, Tarantino also composes a couple of offbeat chapters focusing on the L.A. Times film critic Kevin Thomas as well the 60's 'New Hollywood' segue into the 70's 'movie brat' transition of directors. However, a fair amount of page time (two chapters) was also devoted to Taxi Driver, and since that was never one of my favorite films those sections seemed to drag on a little bit. Still, it's been said that Hollywood briefly had its second 'Golden Era' in the 70's, and Tarantino's take on some of the films from that period helps to support that claim.
In a move that will surprise absolutely no one familiar with the chatterbox director / screenwriter / actor - although that's not meant to sound like a slight - 'QT' pens his first non-fiction work with the essay collection Cinema Speculation. Given his own silver-screen output thus far, his choice of films worthy of discussion largely adhere to crime and suspense dramas or revenge flicks from the 70's from when he was just an impressionable pre-teen or adolescent trolling the double features of his neighborhood's grindhouses and movie palaces in that pre-multiplex era. So readers get his take on movies such as Bullitt (yes!), Dirty Harry (yes!), Deliverance, The Getaway, The Outfit, Taxi Driver, Rolling Thunder,Escape from Alcatraz, and Hardcore along with the odd inclusions of the forgotten comedy-drama Daisy Miller (one of director Peter Bogdanovich's less-remembered efforts) and the somewhat-obscure horror film The Funhouse (its director Tobe Hooper is still best-known for the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre). Tarantino is in his element when discussing these and many other title-dropped films - and I'm a fan of both Steve McQueen and Clint Eastwood, so as Leonardo DiCaprio's Calvin Candie quipped in Django Unchained that "You had my curiosity, but now you have my attention" - and it was fun and informative book. Additionally, Tarantino also composes a couple of offbeat chapters focusing on the L.A. Times film critic Kevin Thomas as well the 60's 'New Hollywood' segue into the 70's 'movie brat' transition of directors. However, a fair amount of page time (two chapters) was also devoted to Taxi Driver, and since that was never one of my favorite films those sections seemed to drag on a little bit. Still, it's been said that Hollywood briefly had its second 'Golden Era' in the 70's, and Tarantino's take on some of the films from that period helps to support that claim.
December 8, 2022
In this book Tarantino talks about the movies he watched as a kid; those he liked, those he didn’t care for and those which influenced and inspired him later.
Despite not having seen half the movies he mentions, this book was highly engaging and illuminating.
Despite not having seen half the movies he mentions, this book was highly engaging and illuminating.
July 11, 2023
QT writes like he talks, and that's a good thing.
August 23, 2023
A friend of mine who's an art professor once said to me:
"Great critics can make chicken shit taste like chicken salad."
A great critic doesn't just tell you if a work is good or bad. They help you learn to express your own appreciation for the works you love.
Because love is difficult to define. It's completely mad. It's irrational (no matter how many excuses we make for it) and trying to explain love is like trying to catch moonlight in a bottle.
But some times if a critic's heart is in the right place, and the stars are aligned, they can catch that moonlight. Just for a moment.
Maybe just for a sentence.
Or a word.
And like that?
It's magic.
Their connection to the art they love can be expressed so enthusiastically that they can even make people reexamine films or books or art that the audience hated or dismissed.
Or they can walk people into the door and make them check out films or books or art they otherwise would never have wanted to experience. They got the conviction and emotional sincerity to make you at least say "Lets look at that again." Or "I wanna check that out".
And once that happens the critic has served their purpose. They got you into the artist's web. And it's up to the artist to finish the job. If they're as good as the critic says? They will. And the proof will be in the pudding. Fifty years later people will still be talking about the film they saw or that book they read.
If not? Well, the critic just has 'eccentric' or 'contrarian' tastes.
Le shrug. Love is blind.
But a great critic turns that into a learning experience too. Sometimes a work that a critic adores will be absolute dog-balls to you. But their love of those dog-balls can challenge your own experience. Your own perspective. And that makes you want to defend or better express your love for the work you enjoy or your position.
Can their taste be wrong for you? Of course. Does that mean their taste is wrong? Nope. Because art can exist in more than one state at the same time.
Art changes based on the perspective of the audience. Changes based on the age and the era. Just like you. Just like me. Art is a reflection of us. And that mirror is different for everybody who looks into it. And it can change every single time you look into it.
A great critic that can explain to audiences their perspective, whether their connection to the work is personal, emotional, analytical, or even anecdotal (or all of the above) can help audiences mature and expand their appreciation for art in general.
So. I'll say this about Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation. I read this book in 4 hours and as soon as I put it down, I went and watched Rolling Thunder on Tubi.
Did I enjoy it as much as Tarantino? No.
Did Tarantino talk me right into watching that film? Hell yeah.
And I'm gonna re-watch The Getaway and De Palma's Sisters, Taxi Driver, Dirty Harry and Bullitt. I'm even gonna read The Getaway novel and some of those Richard Stark novels featuring Parker, because now I'm intrigued.
Motherfucker got me curious. Gave me an itch I have to scratch.
That's good criticism.
Even though I already love Taxi Driver and Bullitt Tarantino's got me excited to go back and see them again. He talks about these films like they're old friends. And I think for him, they are. And I think he's right.
He appreciates them, flaws and all because sometimes flaws are what define us and make us interesting. There's no such thing as "Safe art" just like there's no such thing as a "Nice Guy". Because nice and safe is what you are in relation to something and someone. It's not what you are as a whole. We're all nice, we're all screwed up, we're all flawed, we're all problematic. All of us. We all have biases and blind-spots. And sometimes the difference between a total bastard and someone's true love, is a matter of perspective.
What they value in the moment. What they see and appreciate in a heartbeat.
And even if you disagree you can understand Tarantino's perspective on why he loves these movies.
And he does love them.
That gives you a deeper appreciation for film and for art in general. And maybe even the human experience. And it can walk you in that theatre. Where you can take another chance on a movie you might have missed or dismissed or go back to a classic you haven't seen in awhile and want to revisit like an old war buddy.
Grab some popcorn, maybe some Twizzlers or candy (unless you're on a date, you don't want people to think you're childish, right Floyd?) and then just sit back and let the artist do their work.
Tarantino wanted to explain why he loves movies. In this book he catches some moonlight in a bottle.
And it's magic. 9/10
"Great critics can make chicken shit taste like chicken salad."
A great critic doesn't just tell you if a work is good or bad. They help you learn to express your own appreciation for the works you love.
Because love is difficult to define. It's completely mad. It's irrational (no matter how many excuses we make for it) and trying to explain love is like trying to catch moonlight in a bottle.
But some times if a critic's heart is in the right place, and the stars are aligned, they can catch that moonlight. Just for a moment.
Maybe just for a sentence.
Or a word.
And like that?
It's magic.
Their connection to the art they love can be expressed so enthusiastically that they can even make people reexamine films or books or art that the audience hated or dismissed.
Or they can walk people into the door and make them check out films or books or art they otherwise would never have wanted to experience. They got the conviction and emotional sincerity to make you at least say "Lets look at that again." Or "I wanna check that out".
And once that happens the critic has served their purpose. They got you into the artist's web. And it's up to the artist to finish the job. If they're as good as the critic says? They will. And the proof will be in the pudding. Fifty years later people will still be talking about the film they saw or that book they read.
If not? Well, the critic just has 'eccentric' or 'contrarian' tastes.
Le shrug. Love is blind.
But a great critic turns that into a learning experience too. Sometimes a work that a critic adores will be absolute dog-balls to you. But their love of those dog-balls can challenge your own experience. Your own perspective. And that makes you want to defend or better express your love for the work you enjoy or your position.
Can their taste be wrong for you? Of course. Does that mean their taste is wrong? Nope. Because art can exist in more than one state at the same time.
Art changes based on the perspective of the audience. Changes based on the age and the era. Just like you. Just like me. Art is a reflection of us. And that mirror is different for everybody who looks into it. And it can change every single time you look into it.
A great critic that can explain to audiences their perspective, whether their connection to the work is personal, emotional, analytical, or even anecdotal (or all of the above) can help audiences mature and expand their appreciation for art in general.
So. I'll say this about Quentin Tarantino's Cinema Speculation. I read this book in 4 hours and as soon as I put it down, I went and watched Rolling Thunder on Tubi.
Did I enjoy it as much as Tarantino? No.
Did Tarantino talk me right into watching that film? Hell yeah.
And I'm gonna re-watch The Getaway and De Palma's Sisters, Taxi Driver, Dirty Harry and Bullitt. I'm even gonna read The Getaway novel and some of those Richard Stark novels featuring Parker, because now I'm intrigued.
Motherfucker got me curious. Gave me an itch I have to scratch.
That's good criticism.
Even though I already love Taxi Driver and Bullitt Tarantino's got me excited to go back and see them again. He talks about these films like they're old friends. And I think for him, they are. And I think he's right.
He appreciates them, flaws and all because sometimes flaws are what define us and make us interesting. There's no such thing as "Safe art" just like there's no such thing as a "Nice Guy". Because nice and safe is what you are in relation to something and someone. It's not what you are as a whole. We're all nice, we're all screwed up, we're all flawed, we're all problematic. All of us. We all have biases and blind-spots. And sometimes the difference between a total bastard and someone's true love, is a matter of perspective.
What they value in the moment. What they see and appreciate in a heartbeat.
And even if you disagree you can understand Tarantino's perspective on why he loves these movies.
And he does love them.
That gives you a deeper appreciation for film and for art in general. And maybe even the human experience. And it can walk you in that theatre. Where you can take another chance on a movie you might have missed or dismissed or go back to a classic you haven't seen in awhile and want to revisit like an old war buddy.
Grab some popcorn, maybe some Twizzlers or candy (unless you're on a date, you don't want people to think you're childish, right Floyd?) and then just sit back and let the artist do their work.
Tarantino wanted to explain why he loves movies. In this book he catches some moonlight in a bottle.
And it's magic. 9/10
November 2, 2022
A+ on Quentin’s mom’s black boyfriends. The stuff on cinema, not so much.
Recommendation to QT: take a breather from seventies movies. For one year solid—all of 2023–watch only the works of 1932.
Recommendation to QT: take a breather from seventies movies. For one year solid—all of 2023–watch only the works of 1932.
January 13, 2023
Audiobook….read by Quentin Tarantino and Edoardo Ballerini
…..10 hours and 9 minutes
I had a blast of enjoyment listening to this very macho masculine heavy testosterone Quentin Tarantino “Cinema Speculation”…..
Tarantino sure sounded like a wonderful-rascal-film-loving-child to me.
As a very young boy he was raised on mature-R-rated movies. A very bright kid — he learned the rules quickly: if he wanted to be a tagalong to the movies (rather than stay home with a babysitter) with his mother, step-father and their friends, it was his job to shut up and not even act like a kid… Don’t ask questions - don’t be childlike (until ‘after’ the movie)….
NO WONDER Tarantino films are filled with grizzly dark humor ….crime, thrillers, political, comedy, and violence. He was feed a gourmet steady diet of dark humor, crime, thrillers, mobsters, political themes, racial divides, comedy, and violence his entire life > with some of the best hot-stud, cool, calm, and collective male movie stars in the business…
I had so much fun simply enjoying the enthusiastic tone in which Tarantino read his own book…. rattling off names of actors (a ‘few’ actresses), and movies quicker and faster with more juicy seasonings than the next.
This was one very high energy exciting audiobook….( I almost passed on it— so glad I didn’t)
The type of movies mentioned are not - even close - to being my own favorite movies — but it didn’t matter ….
TO WITNESS - FEEL - EXPERIENCE- another person’s passion…..
is a wonderful LIFE HIGH….
Want me to drop a few names and movies mentioned? Sure….why not …..(not that it’s necessary)…. Fans of old time Hollywood films can pretty much guess…..
We’ve got……in no particular order…..
Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Elvis Presley, Robert De Niro, clear Eastman, Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Woody Allen, Humphrey Bogart, Dustin Hoffman,Ernest Borgnine, Rock Hudson, John Wayne, John Travolta, Charles Bronson, Sylvester Stallone, lee Marvin, Gene Hackman Carman Bruce Willis, Martin Scorsese, Harrison Ford, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Mike Nichols, Jeff bridges, Albert Brooks, Anthony Hopkins….etc….
Women: Cybill Shepard, Ali MacGraw, Jodie Foster, to name a few…
The movies….were ENDLESS lists filled with details…
Dirty Harry, Goldfinger, From Russia with Love, Play it again Sam, Casablanca, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Deliverance, The Exorcist, The French Connection, The House of Dark Shadows, The Getaway, Easy Rider, Daisy Miller, Rolling Thunder, Escape from Alcatraz, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Little Big Man, The Three Musketeers, Taxi Driver, Paper Moon, Whose That Knocking at My Door, Billie the Kid, ….etc….
Tarantino’s love for the 70s era classic movies….and his digestion of Bank Robberies, Black Panthers, Hit Men, Race Car Drivers, hippies, druggies, rebels, nudist, Woodstock lovers, humorous seekers, frustrated older Americans…..and watching all those TOUGH GUYS…. putting their best feet forward offering up polished performances….through Tarantino’s eyes was pure dazzling kick-as entertaining.
…..10 hours and 9 minutes
I had a blast of enjoyment listening to this very macho masculine heavy testosterone Quentin Tarantino “Cinema Speculation”…..
Tarantino sure sounded like a wonderful-rascal-film-loving-child to me.
As a very young boy he was raised on mature-R-rated movies. A very bright kid — he learned the rules quickly: if he wanted to be a tagalong to the movies (rather than stay home with a babysitter) with his mother, step-father and their friends, it was his job to shut up and not even act like a kid… Don’t ask questions - don’t be childlike (until ‘after’ the movie)….
NO WONDER Tarantino films are filled with grizzly dark humor ….crime, thrillers, political, comedy, and violence. He was feed a gourmet steady diet of dark humor, crime, thrillers, mobsters, political themes, racial divides, comedy, and violence his entire life > with some of the best hot-stud, cool, calm, and collective male movie stars in the business…
I had so much fun simply enjoying the enthusiastic tone in which Tarantino read his own book…. rattling off names of actors (a ‘few’ actresses), and movies quicker and faster with more juicy seasonings than the next.
This was one very high energy exciting audiobook….( I almost passed on it— so glad I didn’t)
The type of movies mentioned are not - even close - to being my own favorite movies — but it didn’t matter ….
TO WITNESS - FEEL - EXPERIENCE- another person’s passion…..
is a wonderful LIFE HIGH….
Want me to drop a few names and movies mentioned? Sure….why not …..(not that it’s necessary)…. Fans of old time Hollywood films can pretty much guess…..
We’ve got……in no particular order…..
Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Elvis Presley, Robert De Niro, clear Eastman, Burt Reynolds, Jon Voight, Woody Allen, Humphrey Bogart, Dustin Hoffman,Ernest Borgnine, Rock Hudson, John Wayne, John Travolta, Charles Bronson, Sylvester Stallone, lee Marvin, Gene Hackman Carman Bruce Willis, Martin Scorsese, Harrison Ford, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Mike Nichols, Jeff bridges, Albert Brooks, Anthony Hopkins….etc….
Women: Cybill Shepard, Ali MacGraw, Jodie Foster, to name a few…
The movies….were ENDLESS lists filled with details…
Dirty Harry, Goldfinger, From Russia with Love, Play it again Sam, Casablanca, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, Deliverance, The Exorcist, The French Connection, The House of Dark Shadows, The Getaway, Easy Rider, Daisy Miller, Rolling Thunder, Escape from Alcatraz, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Little Big Man, The Three Musketeers, Taxi Driver, Paper Moon, Whose That Knocking at My Door, Billie the Kid, ….etc….
Tarantino’s love for the 70s era classic movies….and his digestion of Bank Robberies, Black Panthers, Hit Men, Race Car Drivers, hippies, druggies, rebels, nudist, Woodstock lovers, humorous seekers, frustrated older Americans…..and watching all those TOUGH GUYS…. putting their best feet forward offering up polished performances….through Tarantino’s eyes was pure dazzling kick-as entertaining.
March 7, 2023
When someone loves something with a passion, it is often infectious. You simply can’t help but share in the love, even if it’s something you may not love yourself. I’m not a fan of baseball, but one can clearly see the love of the game in Michael Lewis’s “Moneyball” or Philip Roth’s “The Great American Novel”. I’m not an astrophysicist, but it’s clear to see the passion that Cixin Liu has for the stars and planets in his novel “The Dark Forest”. I could care less about MTV’s The Real World, but Chuck Klosterman’s love for the show is strangely contagious in “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs”.
Likewise, Quentin Tarantino’s obvious love for movies jumps off the page and into your heart in his latest (and first nonfiction) book “Cinema Speculation”. It is, I’ll admit, not a book that I expected to love so much, and I daresay that it is my favorite nonfiction book of the past year.
Part memoir, part film criticism, “Cinema Speculation” is an all-out gushing love-fest for movies. At least, a very specific era and genre of movies.
The era is the 1970s. Tarantino was 6 when his mother took him to see a double feature. These weren’t kid’s films, either. The first film of the double feature was a film called “Joe”, starring Peter Boyle as a disgruntled blue collar worker who goes on a murderous rampage in a hippy commune. It was basically a Trumper wet dream, long before the Trumpers. It was controversial, even for 1970. And Tarantino saw it at age six.
His childhood abounded with a plethora of excellent, fantastic, totally age-inappropriate films: “Bullitt”, “Rolling Thunder”, “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice”, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, “The Getaway”, “Sisters”, “Hardcore”, “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song”, “Deliverance, “The Outfit”, “Paradise Alley”, “Halloween”, “Mean Streets”, and “Taxi Driver”.
Tarantino brilliantly and lovingly dissects the films of his childhood, pointing out the things he loved about them, what he hated about them, how they influenced his own filmography, and his checkered history with cinematic violence. It’s a very reflective, intelligent, fun, and energetic examination of the Grindhouse film era as only Tarantino can tell it.
Likewise, Quentin Tarantino’s obvious love for movies jumps off the page and into your heart in his latest (and first nonfiction) book “Cinema Speculation”. It is, I’ll admit, not a book that I expected to love so much, and I daresay that it is my favorite nonfiction book of the past year.
Part memoir, part film criticism, “Cinema Speculation” is an all-out gushing love-fest for movies. At least, a very specific era and genre of movies.
The era is the 1970s. Tarantino was 6 when his mother took him to see a double feature. These weren’t kid’s films, either. The first film of the double feature was a film called “Joe”, starring Peter Boyle as a disgruntled blue collar worker who goes on a murderous rampage in a hippy commune. It was basically a Trumper wet dream, long before the Trumpers. It was controversial, even for 1970. And Tarantino saw it at age six.
His childhood abounded with a plethora of excellent, fantastic, totally age-inappropriate films: “Bullitt”, “Rolling Thunder”, “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice”, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, “The Getaway”, “Sisters”, “Hardcore”, “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadassss Song”, “Deliverance, “The Outfit”, “Paradise Alley”, “Halloween”, “Mean Streets”, and “Taxi Driver”.
Tarantino brilliantly and lovingly dissects the films of his childhood, pointing out the things he loved about them, what he hated about them, how they influenced his own filmography, and his checkered history with cinematic violence. It’s a very reflective, intelligent, fun, and energetic examination of the Grindhouse film era as only Tarantino can tell it.
June 12, 2023
If you’re one who believes that your soul is what makes you you, then I suppose the Pod People are murdering the Earthlings they duplicate and replace. However, if you’re more of the mind that it is your intellect and your consciousness that make you who you are, then the Pod People transformation is closer to a rebirth than a murder.
Tarantino gives us a 370 page set piece. He notes that Brian de Palma didn't care for films featuring extensive dialogue, think Rio Bravo or Reservoir Dogs. Everything here is expressed in conversational form, prone to hyperbole and exclamation (That's a bingo, Hans Landa says with glee). The scope of the book is autobiographical, rather analytical. Tarantino devotes chapters to the films which molded his understanding of cinema. Nearly all of these films are form the 1970s, a time of studio revolution and something approximate to auteur theory. Tarantino's conceptual motility isn't anchored in manifesto but rather a stylized coolness. This is the aura of Steve McQueen. I am not sure it works for me. I was so excited to have this in front of me that I dove in and barely halted until I had finished. There's a cache of the anecdotal but not as much as you'd imagine. There's a short list of films I want to see but nothing of an urgent sort. There are exactly three references to John Woo in the index and not a single one for Harvey Weinstein.
There were moments of hesitation as I read this. I kept thinking that the author doesn't want me to appreciate cinema. he has another agenda. Perhaps this was a transference on my part? I know that cinema as such changed in my life. I am much inclined to long form serials now than what could be considered Art House Cinema. Much of my foreign language cinema is absorbed through TCM with Netflix being a second. I miss video stores, the notion of community. I felt Tarantino didn't elaborate on this. He focused on race and childhood vulnerability. I can understand that. I have seen interviews that Elvis Mitchell conducted with Tarantino and I was dazzled by the erudition. That somehow didn't make it into this work.
Tarantino gives us a 370 page set piece. He notes that Brian de Palma didn't care for films featuring extensive dialogue, think Rio Bravo or Reservoir Dogs. Everything here is expressed in conversational form, prone to hyperbole and exclamation (That's a bingo, Hans Landa says with glee). The scope of the book is autobiographical, rather analytical. Tarantino devotes chapters to the films which molded his understanding of cinema. Nearly all of these films are form the 1970s, a time of studio revolution and something approximate to auteur theory. Tarantino's conceptual motility isn't anchored in manifesto but rather a stylized coolness. This is the aura of Steve McQueen. I am not sure it works for me. I was so excited to have this in front of me that I dove in and barely halted until I had finished. There's a cache of the anecdotal but not as much as you'd imagine. There's a short list of films I want to see but nothing of an urgent sort. There are exactly three references to John Woo in the index and not a single one for Harvey Weinstein.
There were moments of hesitation as I read this. I kept thinking that the author doesn't want me to appreciate cinema. he has another agenda. Perhaps this was a transference on my part? I know that cinema as such changed in my life. I am much inclined to long form serials now than what could be considered Art House Cinema. Much of my foreign language cinema is absorbed through TCM with Netflix being a second. I miss video stores, the notion of community. I felt Tarantino didn't elaborate on this. He focused on race and childhood vulnerability. I can understand that. I have seen interviews that Elvis Mitchell conducted with Tarantino and I was dazzled by the erudition. That somehow didn't make it into this work.
January 13, 2023
What makes this work as opposed to an entire book of film criticism that can become dull or bogged down in more details than readers deem necessary is that first and foremost Quentin Tarantino is a serious movie fan, you might say a movie geek. CINEMA SPECULATION is written from a fan's perspective and Tarantino's enthusiasm for the subject matter comes through in every chapter.
However, it's more than just a fan homage because Tarantino is also a skilled film director, screen writer and movie reviewer and adds that point of view to his comments, which are never lofty but down-to-earth like a street corner conversation.
Tarantino starts off with a chapter about his movie-going experience as a child, when his parent would bring him along to view mature films. His recall is incredible as well as sharing amusing insights from the mind of a then nine-year-old. A great way to start and get readers engaged in turning the pages.
The focus is on American films from the 1970's, a breakthrough period in cinema and also the formative years of a young Tarantino. He loves action films, crime movies, and sometimes horror and his choices reflect his preferences (which also pretty much mirror my preferences).
However, it's more than just a fan homage because Tarantino is also a skilled film director, screen writer and movie reviewer and adds that point of view to his comments, which are never lofty but down-to-earth like a street corner conversation.
Tarantino starts off with a chapter about his movie-going experience as a child, when his parent would bring him along to view mature films. His recall is incredible as well as sharing amusing insights from the mind of a then nine-year-old. A great way to start and get readers engaged in turning the pages.
The focus is on American films from the 1970's, a breakthrough period in cinema and also the formative years of a young Tarantino. He loves action films, crime movies, and sometimes horror and his choices reflect his preferences (which also pretty much mirror my preferences).
February 20, 2024
I honestly have nothing egregiously against Quentin Tarantino, but I feel like every time I buy into a new venture of his I honestly come away with the reaction that he's a lot shallower and less insightful of a personality than he's famously given credit for. Cinema Speculation, his latest one, and very first non-fiction book, is far less disappointing than Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: The Novel, and at the same time only feels slightly inconsequential instead of completely pointless.
This book is totally fine, easy to read, and its greatest sin is that I just found it to be kind of empty and pedantic. The point of it is, obviously: read Quentin Tarantino, with the complete lack of an editor ramble aimlessly about movies, and if you loved that about it, that is great. A more definitive point than just being a vague collection of aimless musings about movies of the New Hollywood period (and also Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse thrown in, for some reason) would really have made this a more worthwhile, intelligent, and purposeful venture, though.
QT is obviously fun to listen to talk about movies (I subscribe to his freaking podcast, after all) but the more I indulge him as a personality, the more I find his opinions to be pretty shallow and sometimes botheringly self-indulgently biased. His dissertative writings in Cinema Speculation boil down pretty much to three things: completely obvious and already historically overused conclusions (guys, did you know that Bullitt is a movie that works completely on Steve McQueen's cool instead of a coherent plot?), edgelord contrarian opinions (aw, how sweet that you think Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy is "a piece of crap"; your thoughts are very cool and unique, Mr. Tarantino!), and confusing psychoanalysations of famous directors based on what QT wants desperately to believe (the notion that Brian De Palma actually doesn't care about thrillers as a genre or that Martin Scorsese has been lying for decades about his intentions of the climax Taxi Driver is so hilarious that it's almost sad that he really believes either of them).
But like I said (and will probably say about everything of his in the future), if you like him, I'm glad this book was for you. And honestly, maybe I'll be honest and say I was misleading myself when I said at the start that I have nothing egregiously against Quentin Tarantino – maybe I do totally disagree with his assertion that transgression and impact are the greatest points of cinema, instead of craft and intellect. Maybe I've always disliked that he lionizes some of the worse pieces of crap in cinematic history while excruciatingly nitpicking some of its greatest works of art at the exact same time.
This book is totally fine, easy to read, and its greatest sin is that I just found it to be kind of empty and pedantic. The point of it is, obviously: read Quentin Tarantino, with the complete lack of an editor ramble aimlessly about movies, and if you loved that about it, that is great. A more definitive point than just being a vague collection of aimless musings about movies of the New Hollywood period (and also Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse thrown in, for some reason) would really have made this a more worthwhile, intelligent, and purposeful venture, though.
QT is obviously fun to listen to talk about movies (I subscribe to his freaking podcast, after all) but the more I indulge him as a personality, the more I find his opinions to be pretty shallow and sometimes botheringly self-indulgently biased. His dissertative writings in Cinema Speculation boil down pretty much to three things: completely obvious and already historically overused conclusions (guys, did you know that Bullitt is a movie that works completely on Steve McQueen's cool instead of a coherent plot?), edgelord contrarian opinions (aw, how sweet that you think Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy is "a piece of crap"; your thoughts are very cool and unique, Mr. Tarantino!), and confusing psychoanalysations of famous directors based on what QT wants desperately to believe (the notion that Brian De Palma actually doesn't care about thrillers as a genre or that Martin Scorsese has been lying for decades about his intentions of the climax Taxi Driver is so hilarious that it's almost sad that he really believes either of them).
But like I said (and will probably say about everything of his in the future), if you like him, I'm glad this book was for you. And honestly, maybe I'll be honest and say I was misleading myself when I said at the start that I have nothing egregiously against Quentin Tarantino – maybe I do totally disagree with his assertion that transgression and impact are the greatest points of cinema, instead of craft and intellect. Maybe I've always disliked that he lionizes some of the worse pieces of crap in cinematic history while excruciatingly nitpicking some of its greatest works of art at the exact same time.
May 9, 2023
Incredibly niche where you will likely love it a lot or dnf it after about 30 pages.
April 15, 2023
That Quentin Tarantino is now writing books is one of the most welcome developments at the juncture of film and literature in the last several years. Much of what applies to ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD — pretty much a book of film criticism disguised as a novel — applies here: Never had I read a serious book filled with such an energizing sense of enthusiastic, uncontainable FUN.
Tarantino loves movies with his entire being, down to the clippings of his toenails, and wants you to love them as much as he does, and what emerges here reads like the world's wildest, wackiest, weirdest six-hour dorm-room or bar-booth conversation in the history of cinema, with bits of personal memoir sprinkled into a heady stew of everything Tarantino has observed and absorbed about movies, going back to his earliest childhood as the single child of a single mom who loved to see movies, and loved to take little "Q" or "Quint" along on movie dates with her boyfriends, most of whom were Black and loved the Black cinema scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Part of what makes CINEMA SPECULATION so much fun beyond Tarantino's boundless enthusiasm and knowledge is that he's writing (mostly) as the guy in the torn vinyl seats even as he occupies a seat of royalty in Hollywood — one he built pretty much with his own two hands. He's beyond caring what anybody thinks of him, so he feels entirely free to splatter his brash but apocalyptically informed opinions without fear of career damage. And some of those opinions are thrown with elbows as sharp as spike heels. This is something we almost never see because most critics are either a) up their own asses with formalism and film theory; b) have something to prove and everyone to prove it to, so they write to get attention with snark or stark pronouncements and hope that gains them a big enough audience to be a feared and respected player in the film business; or c) soften everything they write for fear of offending someone (you know these writers because their copy looks suspiciously like prefabricated film-marketing blurbs).
Only Tarantino would dare criticize as he does here, the likes of Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, Lee Marvin, Don Siegel, Steve McQueen, and many more. And he does it not only because he knows he will suffer no penalty for it (though I suspects he doesn't care) but because he has bone-deep faith in the truth of the well-informed veracity of his opinions, because they come from a place of lifelong love of movies both good and bad. Reading Tarantino on how the 1972 version of THE GETAWAY got watered down; or how Scorsese's and Schrader's colliding visions for TAXI DRIVER resulted in some unacceptable compromises (like the casting of a white man as a pimp), or how the contradictory visions of Schrader, John Flynn and William Devane, and a number of studio producers,, made ROLLING THUNDER into something of a sub-classic, are fascinating.
It's like listening to Bruce Springsteen on five Cokes tell you what he (perhaps) really thinks about Bob Dylan and The Beatles and Paul Simon and America and Lou Reed. You may not agree with some of those opinions, but the audacity of a king being plainspoken in public about other kings, with wisdom accrued equally from being an outsider and an insider, is too irresistible to not read.
Not only do I love CINEMA SPECULATION because I shared Tarantino's late 1960s and early 1970s preoccupations (he's a little more than two years older than I am), but I love it it because it comes from a place of love that cannot be contained. And that results in a tone of nonstop infectious enthusiasm, and that results in an insanely quotable quality, and in my experience the best books are almost always the most quotable. And as a result of that, I could quote from this book for days, but I've simply share this one quote that serves as something of a thesis statement for CINEMA SPECULATION:
"I’ve spent my entire life attending movies and making them, trying to re-create the experience of watching a brand-new Jim Brown film, on a Saturday night, in a black cinema in 1972."
If you can tap into that feeling, either vicariously or because it reflects something of your personal experience, then CINEMA SPECULATION is a book for you. It sure is for me; I could read a book like this every month; and I'll bet Quentin Tarantino could write that fast and that infectiously.
Tarantino loves movies with his entire being, down to the clippings of his toenails, and wants you to love them as much as he does, and what emerges here reads like the world's wildest, wackiest, weirdest six-hour dorm-room or bar-booth conversation in the history of cinema, with bits of personal memoir sprinkled into a heady stew of everything Tarantino has observed and absorbed about movies, going back to his earliest childhood as the single child of a single mom who loved to see movies, and loved to take little "Q" or "Quint" along on movie dates with her boyfriends, most of whom were Black and loved the Black cinema scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Part of what makes CINEMA SPECULATION so much fun beyond Tarantino's boundless enthusiasm and knowledge is that he's writing (mostly) as the guy in the torn vinyl seats even as he occupies a seat of royalty in Hollywood — one he built pretty much with his own two hands. He's beyond caring what anybody thinks of him, so he feels entirely free to splatter his brash but apocalyptically informed opinions without fear of career damage. And some of those opinions are thrown with elbows as sharp as spike heels. This is something we almost never see because most critics are either a) up their own asses with formalism and film theory; b) have something to prove and everyone to prove it to, so they write to get attention with snark or stark pronouncements and hope that gains them a big enough audience to be a feared and respected player in the film business; or c) soften everything they write for fear of offending someone (you know these writers because their copy looks suspiciously like prefabricated film-marketing blurbs).
Only Tarantino would dare criticize as he does here, the likes of Paul Schrader, Martin Scorsese, Lee Marvin, Don Siegel, Steve McQueen, and many more. And he does it not only because he knows he will suffer no penalty for it (though I suspects he doesn't care) but because he has bone-deep faith in the truth of the well-informed veracity of his opinions, because they come from a place of lifelong love of movies both good and bad. Reading Tarantino on how the 1972 version of THE GETAWAY got watered down; or how Scorsese's and Schrader's colliding visions for TAXI DRIVER resulted in some unacceptable compromises (like the casting of a white man as a pimp), or how the contradictory visions of Schrader, John Flynn and William Devane, and a number of studio producers,, made ROLLING THUNDER into something of a sub-classic, are fascinating.
It's like listening to Bruce Springsteen on five Cokes tell you what he (perhaps) really thinks about Bob Dylan and The Beatles and Paul Simon and America and Lou Reed. You may not agree with some of those opinions, but the audacity of a king being plainspoken in public about other kings, with wisdom accrued equally from being an outsider and an insider, is too irresistible to not read.
Not only do I love CINEMA SPECULATION because I shared Tarantino's late 1960s and early 1970s preoccupations (he's a little more than two years older than I am), but I love it it because it comes from a place of love that cannot be contained. And that results in a tone of nonstop infectious enthusiasm, and that results in an insanely quotable quality, and in my experience the best books are almost always the most quotable. And as a result of that, I could quote from this book for days, but I've simply share this one quote that serves as something of a thesis statement for CINEMA SPECULATION:
"I’ve spent my entire life attending movies and making them, trying to re-create the experience of watching a brand-new Jim Brown film, on a Saturday night, in a black cinema in 1972."
If you can tap into that feeling, either vicariously or because it reflects something of your personal experience, then CINEMA SPECULATION is a book for you. It sure is for me; I could read a book like this every month; and I'll bet Quentin Tarantino could write that fast and that infectiously.
Read
April 14, 2023I don't know how to rate this book because my experience of this book and enjoyment of it does not reflect on the quality of the book itself. I listened to this for a specific reason and otherwise would have probably given up after a few chapters because it wasn't what I expected. That being said, if you love 1970s cinema as much as Tarantino, and you care to read essays about some of his favorite films from that time period, then you might enjoy this a lot. He's clearly passionate about the subject, but for me it was like listening to an expert talk about something you really have no concern for or no understanding of, and so most of it was met with my reaction of "...and?" That's why I don't want to be critical of the book because it definitely does a good job at what it sets out to do. I just was not the intended audience. I would not pick this book up just because you like the author. If you do want to read it, take a look at the table of contents and see if you have seen any of the films it mentions. I, unfortunately, don't think I'd seen a single film he talked about so a lot of it was just lost on me. Also the audiobook says its narrated by the author and one other person, which is true, but he just narrates the first and last chapters, and the other narrator reads 90% of the book which was a bit disappointing.
November 8, 2022
I'll put a proper review on my blog shortly.
And here it is:
https://somecamerunning.typepad.com/s...
And here it is:
https://somecamerunning.typepad.com/s...
December 12, 2022
The “*Floyd Footnote” final chapter packs a wallop.
Would love more “Cinema Speculation” volumes in the future. 🤞
Would love more “Cinema Speculation” volumes in the future. 🤞
May 20, 2023
Knows his stuff for sure but go figure Tarantino doesn't know the difference between rambling and writing. It's not just transcribing you bull sesh
July 15, 2023
Never get in an argument over 70s cinema with Quentin Tarantino.
Even if you’re right, he knows far too much and could simply exhaust and impress you with his scholarship.
Reading this, you see why he’s succeeded at movies. He loves them. It’s in his bones.
What’s more he understands the unmentioned vulnerability of Hollywood: Tarantino knows good stories and he knows them at a level of craftsmanship.
Finally, I’d have liked more of his growing up. What he writes is strong, unvarnished, but more would’ve been better.
At some point, someone will write a book about QT’s lack of a father and his sublimation of that absence not just into cinema, but more interestingly into black culture and manhood.
I’m not that guy, but it’s interesting and obvious.
I mean there’s a reason he breaks from movie examinations and writes the whole last chapter about a black man that lived in his house and shared his love of movies.
Even if you’re right, he knows far too much and could simply exhaust and impress you with his scholarship.
Reading this, you see why he’s succeeded at movies. He loves them. It’s in his bones.
What’s more he understands the unmentioned vulnerability of Hollywood: Tarantino knows good stories and he knows them at a level of craftsmanship.
Finally, I’d have liked more of his growing up. What he writes is strong, unvarnished, but more would’ve been better.
At some point, someone will write a book about QT’s lack of a father and his sublimation of that absence not just into cinema, but more interestingly into black culture and manhood.
I’m not that guy, but it’s interesting and obvious.
I mean there’s a reason he breaks from movie examinations and writes the whole last chapter about a black man that lived in his house and shared his love of movies.
June 8, 2023
Some of the essays are interesting when he gives a strong opinion of a specific actor or director. Sometimes surprisingly, so. But also dull at times. The best part of the book is the last chapter about his friend Floyd. He was the only grown-up guy he could nerd out with on films. Not the most remarkable book by a director on movies - I think Paul Schrader, Robert Bresson, and Cocteau did better books in their field. But still, worth the time and read.
August 19, 2024
Tarantino ma niezwykły talent do snucia opowieści, pasja jaka płynie z jego słów i niewyobrażalnie rozległa wiedza o kinie i produkcji filmowej sprawiły, że niesamowicie wkręciłem się w historie o filmach, których nie tylko nie oglądałem ale nawet nie słyszałem (tyle tu smaczków, kontekstów i anegdot, że głowa puchnie). Końcowy rozdział o Floydzie to czyste złoto.
March 17, 2023
A love-letter to a bygone age of cinema-going. It helps that a few of the films Tarantino focusses on are ones I have seen, but even when writing about the more obscure references, his passion and sheer joy and enthusiasm for films shines through. It helps that he is also very funny and gives some great one line reviews in passing. A must for film students and fans - and also a reminder of what has been lost in the modern age of home streaming and a never-ending flooded market of bland commercial product. Who knows, maybe some sort of revolution in film-making will come round again. If it does, it will be people like Tarantino that bring it about.
Read
January 26, 2023є такий жанр: Дорогий Квентіне ™ захоплено душнить розповідає про важливе для нього кіно. охоплює чимало медіумів: першочергово це подкасти та інтерв'ю профільним виданням, але інколи трапляються навіть окремі сцени в художніх фільмах. не вистачало найочевиднішого — книги, але нарешті це питання теж вирішене.
взагалі, є відчуття, що для пана Тарантіно важливе ВСЕ кіно ВСІХ існуючих кінематографічних шкіл, але Cinema Speculation присвячується виключно Новому Голівуду. чому саме йому? бо так сталось, що Квентін ріс в 70-х, а як відомо фундамент наших смаків закладається в підлітковому віці. кн��жка могла би стати банальною збіркою есеїв, але постать автора, його благоговійний трепет перед магією кіно (боже, вибачте за єлейний пафос і невиправдану кількість їсусячих метафор на речення, але це справді так), режисерський досвід та безліч особистих відвертостей перетворюють текст на дещо більше. це водночас і влучна кінокритика, і репортаж з місця подій, і навіть публічна психотерапія. наприклад, в одному із розділів Тарантіно розповідає яким саме чином на сценарій Django Unchained вплинув знайомий його матері, що інколи водив малого Квентіна в пошарпані кінотеатри на blaxploitation та інші жанрові стрічки.
на жаль, з талановитих письменників виходять посередні режисери: це нам довели Стівен Кінг, Френк Міллер, та в якомусь сенсі навіть Джоан Роулінг (я знаю, що режисерував фільми трилогії про Фантастичних звірів Девід Єйтс, але саме Джо тут повністю відповідальна за сценарії та купу всього іншого і ви бачите до чого це призвело (на відміну від саги про хлопчика зі шрамом в формі блискавки та серіала про Корморана Страйка). а от навпаки, зазвичай, працює: доведено перфекціоністичним Майклом Манном (суб'єктивно Heat 2 це страшне лайно, але купі народу начебто подобається, тож хто я такий, аби з цим сперечатись), девіантним Девідом Кроненбергом (книжка така самісінька як його фільми і це чудово), нішевим жанровим режисером дуже смачних "бех" Крейгом Залером (хоча, книжок в нього вже більше, ніж фільмів), Кауфманом, Гарландом, Ходоровським (так, я нарешті знудився пхати всюди лінки). здається, скаженому псу Квентіну (вибачте, не втримався) теж все вдалося. дуже класний контент, тисну лайк.
взагалі, є відчуття, що для пана Тарантіно важливе ВСЕ кіно ВСІХ існуючих кінематографічних шкіл, але Cinema Speculation присвячується виключно Новому Голівуду. чому саме йому? бо так сталось, що Квентін ріс в 70-х, а як відомо фундамент наших смаків закладається в підлітковому віці. кн��жка могла би стати банальною збіркою есеїв, але постать автора, його благоговійний трепет перед магією кіно (боже, вибачте за єлейний пафос і невиправдану кількість їсусячих метафор на речення, але це справді так), режисерський досвід та безліч особистих відвертостей перетворюють текст на дещо більше. це водночас і влучна кінокритика, і репортаж з місця подій, і навіть публічна психотерапія. наприклад, в одному із розділів Тарантіно розповідає яким саме чином на сценарій Django Unchained вплинув знайомий його матері, що інколи водив малого Квентіна в пошарпані кінотеатри на blaxploitation та інші жанрові стрічки.
на жаль, з талановитих письменників виходять посередні режисери: це нам довели Стівен Кінг, Френк Міллер, та в якомусь сенсі навіть Джоан Роулінг (я знаю, що режисерував фільми трилогії про Фантастичних звірів Девід Єйтс, але саме Джо тут повністю відповідальна за сценарії та купу всього іншого і ви бачите до чого це призвело (на відміну від саги про хлопчика зі шрамом в формі блискавки та серіала про Корморана Страйка). а от навпаки, зазвичай, працює: доведено перфекціоністичним Майклом Манном (суб'єктивно Heat 2 це страшне лайно, але купі народу начебто подобається, тож хто я такий, аби з цим сперечатись), девіантним Девідом Кроненбергом (книжка така самісінька як його фільми і це чудово), нішевим жанровим режисером дуже смачних "бех" Крейгом Залером (хоча, книжок в нього вже більше, ніж фільмів), Кауфманом, Гарландом, Ходоровським (так, я нарешті знудився пхати всюди лінки). здається, скаженому псу Квентіну (вибачте, не втримався) теж все вдалося. дуже класний контент, тисну лайк.
December 17, 2023
Only Tarantino can write a book about cinema like this. His love for movies is so unique even after 55+ years of cinema experience.
As kid, he attended double or triple projections every other night, where he could feel audience reactions that probably helped him later to become a good screenwriter and director. His parent were open-minded about inappropriate movies for him, so he could see everything that was forbidden for other kids.
Over time, he manages to get closer to Hollywood and to become well known director with his recognisable style. But, his success didn't change him. His still care for industry, he still love the movies. Movie gods once distant for him are now his colleagues. Many legends are still there and Tarantino can found out about their past.
His other book / movie "Once upon a time in the Hollywood" is mix of facts and fiction, but this one is pure facts, full of interesting trivia and analysis of Hollywood's most interesting phase. Highly recommended!
As kid, he attended double or triple projections every other night, where he could feel audience reactions that probably helped him later to become a good screenwriter and director. His parent were open-minded about inappropriate movies for him, so he could see everything that was forbidden for other kids.
Over time, he manages to get closer to Hollywood and to become well known director with his recognisable style. But, his success didn't change him. His still care for industry, he still love the movies. Movie gods once distant for him are now his colleagues. Many legends are still there and Tarantino can found out about their past.
His other book / movie "Once upon a time in the Hollywood" is mix of facts and fiction, but this one is pure facts, full of interesting trivia and analysis of Hollywood's most interesting phase. Highly recommended!
January 26, 2023
Cinema Speculation is a brilliant book, and it’s fun to read to boot. Readers are treated to Tarantino’s unique takes on lots and lots of movies, focusing primarily on a dozen or so movies from the 1970s that he thinks are especially significant, but also using those movies as a springboard for a deep and wide examination of movie history.
As a guy who started seeing “grown-up” movies in the theater with his parents when he was a young child, Tarantino’s movie knowledge is encyclopedic. Although I love movies, I was unfamiliar with many of the titles (as well as some of the actors and directors) that Tarantino talks about in the book. But then again, I had a much different upbringing than Tarantino did (mine was similar to Paul Schrader’s, who makes quite a few appearances in the book). Moreover, Tarantino’s taste in movies often doesn’t align with mine. For one thing, he’s (unsurprisingly) a big fan of ultra-violent “exploitation” movies, which I’ve never liked. At one point, he says he “equates transgression with art.” That’s clearly visible in his own movies, which I do like. But even when we don’t see eye to eye, I appreciate his critiques, and I learned a lot from them.
Tarantino pulls no punches. For example, although he admires Schrader, he trashes the second half of Schrader’s Hardcore (1979). He says he warned Schrader he would do this, and Schrader replied that Tarantino couldn’t be harsher on the second half of the movie than he was himself. And for another example, he really doesn’t like critic and occasional actor James Bacon, whom he repeatedly refers to as a “fat hack.”
Tarantino’s writing style is what you would expect if you’ve seen his movies. Maybe more gratuitous F-words than I needed to read, but there’s no doubt he’s authentic, and his enthusiasm is infectious. His imagery is often entertainingly colorful. Describing Leo Gorcey of the East Side Kids, he says Gorcey “looked a bit like John Garfield if somebody dropped an anvil on Garfield’s head from the top of the Empire State Building.”
This is close to an indispensable book for movie fans. Tarantino shares so much knowledge and so many opinions that are informed by that knowledge. And now that I’ve added dozens of movies to my watchlist, I have a lot of streaming to do.
As a guy who started seeing “grown-up” movies in the theater with his parents when he was a young child, Tarantino’s movie knowledge is encyclopedic. Although I love movies, I was unfamiliar with many of the titles (as well as some of the actors and directors) that Tarantino talks about in the book. But then again, I had a much different upbringing than Tarantino did (mine was similar to Paul Schrader’s, who makes quite a few appearances in the book). Moreover, Tarantino’s taste in movies often doesn’t align with mine. For one thing, he’s (unsurprisingly) a big fan of ultra-violent “exploitation” movies, which I’ve never liked. At one point, he says he “equates transgression with art.” That’s clearly visible in his own movies, which I do like. But even when we don’t see eye to eye, I appreciate his critiques, and I learned a lot from them.
Tarantino pulls no punches. For example, although he admires Schrader, he trashes the second half of Schrader’s Hardcore (1979). He says he warned Schrader he would do this, and Schrader replied that Tarantino couldn’t be harsher on the second half of the movie than he was himself. And for another example, he really doesn’t like critic and occasional actor James Bacon, whom he repeatedly refers to as a “fat hack.”
Tarantino’s writing style is what you would expect if you’ve seen his movies. Maybe more gratuitous F-words than I needed to read, but there’s no doubt he’s authentic, and his enthusiasm is infectious. His imagery is often entertainingly colorful. Describing Leo Gorcey of the East Side Kids, he says Gorcey “looked a bit like John Garfield if somebody dropped an anvil on Garfield’s head from the top of the Empire State Building.”
This is close to an indispensable book for movie fans. Tarantino shares so much knowledge and so many opinions that are informed by that knowledge. And now that I’ve added dozens of movies to my watchlist, I have a lot of streaming to do.
March 15, 2023
Després de la novel·lització d'Hi havia una vegada a Hollywood, ja es veia que en QT s'havia quedat amb les ganes de continuar parlant de cinema.
Aquí ho fa sense embuts i pràcticament sense cap mena d'excusa: agafa un seguit de pel·lícules i les esbudella minuciosament. O tria un director o un crític de cinema i el despulla. Amb quin criteri? Doncs això només ho sap en QT, que deixa la sensació que podria escriure vuit o nou volums més amb una altra selecció de pel·lícules.
En aquest, dominen els films de revenja i d'acció dels anys 70 (tot i que n'esmenta moltíssims més), segurament perquè són els que més el van influir a causa de'n Floyd (qui és en Floyd? Doncs haureu de llegir el llibre), una de les poques vivències autènticament personals que el director mostra en aquestes pàgines.
A destacar algunes coses com:
- La reivindicació d'Almodóvar com una peça clau per a Tarantino.
- Tot el capítol sobre Taxi Driver (i què hauria passat si Brian De Palma l'hagués dirigit).
- La fascinació que li causa "El ex-Preso de Corea", que fa la sensació que sigui la seva pel·lícula preferida.
L'estil, com ja va passar a Hi havia una vegada... és d'una naturalitat espeterrant, i fa que sentis que tens en Tarantino assegut al costat parlant-te de cinema, cinema i més cinema. I aquí està la cosa: si només busques curiositats sobre les seves pel·lícules, en sortiràs decebut. Però si gaudeixis amb el cinema com amb poques coses més, si realment t'apassiona saber més i més detalls d'allò que anomenen el setè art, aquest és el teu llibre.
I se't farà curt.
Aquí ho fa sense embuts i pràcticament sense cap mena d'excusa: agafa un seguit de pel·lícules i les esbudella minuciosament. O tria un director o un crític de cinema i el despulla. Amb quin criteri? Doncs això només ho sap en QT, que deixa la sensació que podria escriure vuit o nou volums més amb una altra selecció de pel·lícules.
En aquest, dominen els films de revenja i d'acció dels anys 70 (tot i que n'esmenta moltíssims més), segurament perquè són els que més el van influir a causa de'n Floyd (qui és en Floyd? Doncs haureu de llegir el llibre), una de les poques vivències autènticament personals que el director mostra en aquestes pàgines.
A destacar algunes coses com:
- La reivindicació d'Almodóvar com una peça clau per a Tarantino.
- Tot el capítol sobre Taxi Driver (i què hauria passat si Brian De Palma l'hagués dirigit).
- La fascinació que li causa "El ex-Preso de Corea", que fa la sensació que sigui la seva pel·lícula preferida.
L'estil, com ja va passar a Hi havia una vegada... és d'una naturalitat espeterrant, i fa que sentis que tens en Tarantino assegut al costat parlant-te de cinema, cinema i més cinema. I aquí està la cosa: si només busques curiositats sobre les seves pel·lícules, en sortiràs decebut. Però si gaudeixis amb el cinema com amb poques coses més, si realment t'apassiona saber més i més detalls d'allò que anomenen el setè art, aquest és el teu llibre.
I se't farà curt.
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