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Quentin Tarantino was practically raised in movie theaters. In his book, Cinema Speculation, he describes being a kid in the ’60s and ’70s, indulging in films intended for adults, and not even understanding them. It wasn’t a typical childhood by any means. While most kids were busy with cartoons, he watched brutal dramas and strange comedies with his mom and stepdad.
At age seven, the then-young Pulp Fiction creator sat through a double feature that included a man beating a junkie and his own daughter. He was way too young at that time, but little did he care. He liked being in on something grown-ups were watching and even laughed at jokes he didn’t get, just because the crowd did.
“When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them: no, I went to films” – Quentin Tarantino #bornonthisday pic.twitter.com/NeYJv8Sxc0
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— BFI (@BFI) March 27, 2014
For the legendary director, this early exposure wasn’t random. His mother had a rule that probably derived from George Gerbner’s Cultivation Theory. She considered movies to be fine, even if they were violent or s*xual ones, but the news was off-limits. In her view, fiction was fiction, but what happened in real life was what a child should be protected from.
She trusted Quentin Tarantino to tell the difference. That mindset opened a door most kids never got close to. He began to realize his world looked very different from his classmates’, and he saw things most of them never would.
Tarantino’s experiences, gathered from watching movies, carved a path that later would define his career. When you grow up watching intense films through a child’s eyes, it shapes how you see stories. His own movies would later carry the same DNA, which were violent and unpredictable, but always self-aware. In his films, characters bleed, but never like in the real world. It’s all heightened, theatrical, and just for the sake of movie violence.
Quentin Tarantino and John Travolta on the set of Pulp Fiction (1994) pic.twitter.com/n2dqJmbXeB
— cinesthetic. (@TheCinesthetic) July 10, 2024
It happened during a film Tarantino’s mom took him to called Isadora. It wasn’t gory or loud, and it was about a dancer. He found the film dull until the very end. The character, played by Vanessa Redgrave, sits in a car with a long scarf fluttering behind her. Suddenly, the scarf gets caught in the wheel, and she dies. That moment stunned young Tarantino. He hadn’t seen it coming, and it stuck with him. On the ride home, he kept pressing his mom about it.
According to Far Out Magazine, the Kill Bill director laughed and revealed that his mom simply turned around and said, “Quentin, you have nothing to worry about. I would never, ever, under any circumstances, let you wear a long, flowing scarf in a convertible roadster.” And that was that. Now, all these years later, so much about Tarantino’s style starts to make sense when you picture that kid, wide-eyed in a dark theater, watching things no kid should but somehow understanding more than most.
For more such stories, check out Hollywood News
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