1994 Was The First Year of Tarantino

Monday is about movies. And sometimes TV. Today, thinking back to 30 years ago when Quentin Tarantino truly burst onto (and through) so many screens in so many ways

In 1993, I saw Reservoir Dogs, which was Quentin Tarantino’s first feature. It had been filmed and released the year before, but by the time it made it down to New Zealand, and we’re talking VHS…

I watched it with my family, my brother had seen it already — in Auckland. He was a student up there. He would return home to little old Havelock North in the early/mid 90s with John Coltrane CDs and Lou Reed cassette tapes and films on laser disc and VHS like he was Dr. Henry Walton "Indiana" Jones, Jr. These strange, and significant artefacts. How lucky we were.

Anyway, Reservoir Dogs was a gem. It flipped my head. It got me ready for whatever was next. Tarantino was going to be a name. We were all sure of that.

And I’ve already written about Pulp Fiction. And shared some of these memories, some time last year:

It was a movie of tremendous impact. I saw it six times at the cinema, including three days in a row. It was a world I liked living in I guess.

But I have been thinking a lot lately about the other films associated with QT from around that time.

In particular Natural Born Killers, which is about to turn 30 (August this year). And which I haven’t seen in at least 20 years. A film I keep thinking I’d like to watch again. I always really liked it — I remember seeing it in a cinema in 1994. And requesting a copy on VHS for my birthday. I remember watching it a bunch of times, and immediately falling in love with its soundtrack. To this day, it’s one of the best soundtrack albums ever; a story is being told through that music. I don’t really know what the story even is — but I like it!

Tarantino had scripted the film, sold the script to pay his rent — allegedly — and depending on who you are, and/or who you talk to, Oliver Stone either fixed it or fucked it. Tarantino’s film was going to be more Bonnie & Clyde, but Stone brought in the moralising, the discussion around the media manipulation, the fixation with If It Bleeds It Leads and the media making superstars out of killers. I personally loved that aspect to the film. But I have no idea how it plays now. I really must watch it again.

Ahead of seeing Natural Born, the other Tarantino script that he sold for cash was True Romance. It was actually made in 1993, but I remember seeing it in 1994 in the cinema over in Napier. A Friday night trip over to see it. A treat. I loved the film straight away. Its amazing cast. From cameos (Gary Oldman, Val Kilmer) to star-making turns (Patricia Arquette), and it contains one of my all-time favourite movie scenes. You know the one.

True Romance was directed by Tony Scott. Depending on who you are, and/or who you talk to, he either fixed it or fucked it. I would like to have seen the Tarantino take, which was clearly derived from Badlands — even lifting a lilt of the music in tribute. But I still like what Tony Scott did with the script, where he took it, and who he and the casting director selected to help them shape the film in the way they did.

The films Sleep With Me and Somebody To Love were okay. They were never great. But I know we only ever watched them because Quentin Tarantino had acting cameos in them. He wasn’t any good, he has never been very good in that area, but he was a new name and we were across any and every bit of gossip connected to the man.

Someone told me that Quentin Tarantino and Douglas Coupland met at a party and spent hours talking about 1970s movies. By the time I was through with that bit of gos I’d added actual titles, I’d lifted it to an exact ‘four hours’ of time spent. I was almost certain I had actually been the fly on the wall.

Later that same year I saw another 1993 film with a Tarantino connection: Killing Zoe. This one the work of his co-writer and friend, Roger Avary. Apparently, Avary was responsible for the “Gold Watch” sequence in Pulp Fiction, so we had to see his movie Killing Zoe. It’s another from that time that I absolutely loved, but need to see again. Well, I feel the need to see it again, I still remember the film’s plot, and that it wasn’t as strong as I believed. It has some moments, it’s not at all terrible, but I wouldn’t have necessarily even seen it were it not for the Tarantino connection.

But this was it. And this is the point.

What a way for a talent in film to emerge. This whole world building up. All of this material.

After Pulp Fiction, it was all about introducing new fans to Natural Born Killers and Killing Zoe and True Romance — and maybe even Reservoir Dogs. We wouldn’t have to wait too long at all because Four Rooms and Desperado (1995) were just around the corner, and then From Dusk Til Dawn (1996). The screenplays for every film I’ve mentioned were available to buy. More than that, they were seemingly stocked in almost every bookshop. I certainly owned a copy of all of them. And read them. More than once.

It was ultimate film fandom. Just complete absorption. Buy the soundtrack albums. Buy the film on VHS tape. Go to it at the cinema, then return with a friend who hadn’t seen it. You were like the chaperone for a cultural experience.

My friend with his Bad Mother Fucker wallet and his zippo lighter. Me with my Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction posters.

It all coincided with moving out of home. Which was its own huge — and arguably still ongoing — movie storyline. The road trip down with a car full of cultural capital, to live in The Cultural Capital.

I come and go with Tarantino films these days. I’ve re-watched all the main ones (the ones he actually directed) twice in the last year or two. I fell in love with The Hateful 8 all over again and defended it hard. Then I fell completely out of love with it too. I almost finally liked Inglourious Basterds — its daft misspelling almost bugging me the most about it — but in the end I still think its messy, indulgent twaddle. I did finally find some actual appreciation for Django Unchained, but at the same time I’d be just as happy if it wasn’t ever made.

But none of the in and out of love, none of the reappraisals, none of the feelings…would have mattered, or even happened, would ever have been felt were it not for 1994: The Year Tarantino Broke Big Time. My world shattered in the absolutely best possible way. I was finishing high school. And True Romance and Natural Born Killers and Pulp Fiction were more important to me than the school ball, or the fact we won the hockey championship for the first time in the history of my school’s existence at that point (I could even tell you I played a huge part in that, it’s been long ago enough and the chips are so small that it’s no real brag at all).

I got my bursary — which bought me a ticket into a university which would do just fine and be good enough, even though I didn’t do just fine and wasn’t close to good enough that first time around.

As important as securing that ticket, maybe weirdly more so, were the scripts to the films, the songs from the soundtracks, the lines of dialogue, and the references to Scorsese and Terence Malick, and the world of Blaxploitation flicks, and the Shaw Brothers kung-fu films. And kitschy, and classic horrors. And all of the things that spiralled out from that world. All of it. All of it going in. All of it being stored. And all because the right films hit at the right time.

That’s probably why I’m still thinking now that I need to catch up with True Romance and Natural Born Killers. They’re the friends I haven’t called in a while. I just want to know how they’re doing.