Rausch - My Best Friends Birthday : The Making of a Quentin Tarantino Film

Ive admired Quentin Tarantinos work since I first discovered it on opening night of Pulp Fiction in 1994. (Hes one hundred percent the reason I write crime fiction today. I also credit Elmore Leonard, but the truth is I only discovered Leonard through Tarantino. To call Tarantino an influence would be as big an understatement as saying Jesus was one of the people in the Bible.)

The man is a genius. His critics attempt to discount his work by saying his films are nothing more than pastiches of preexisting works, but there is more than that. These people dont understand art or the process of storytelling. Tarantino famously said, Great artists steal. While this is accurate, its so ridiculously oversimplified that he, in much the same way Stephen King did when he proclaimed himself the literary equivalent of a Big Mac, did himself a tremendous disservice, providing ammunition to naysayers and dramatically understating his own merit.

Great artists lift ideas from other works, but in truth this isnt stealing as much as reworking and re-appropriating familiar themes and scenarios. Great artists dont lift every aspect of their work, but they do borrow elements. All of them. Every single one. Theres an old adage that theres nothing new under the sun, and this is accurate. Need an example? Ill give you plenty. Lets look at a few modern classics: The Shape of Water, No Country for Old Men, Chicago, The Shawshank Redemption, and Avatar. All of these films are original, but all owe a significant debt to previously existing works. Can you deny that The Shape of Water is an aquatic re-imagining of Beauty and the Beast? No Country for Old Men isnt wholly original, either. Stories of cops tracking deadly killers are nothing new. These types of stories have been around forever; Badlands and A Perfect World are examples. In fact, the Tarantino-originated Natural Born Killers treads many of these same paths. It cannot be denied there are significant elements of Silence of the Lambs in No Country, as well. Chicago is exactly like every single 1930s gangster film ever, only with the addition of singing and dancing (if we can call what Richard Gere does singing). The Shawshank Redemption is similar to every prison break movie ever, and additionally, its idea of a prisoner caring for a baby bird is directly lifted from the prison escape movie The Birdman of Alcatraz. ( Shawshank author Stephen King later used this concept again, transforming the bird into a mouse in The Green Mile. ) And AvatarAvatar is Pocahontas with blue people. But these works are still valid, and theyre still exceptional works of art. Yes, they reuse ideas and concepts from preexisting works, but they update them and put unique spins on them. This is what Quentin Tarantino does. And each time he lifts something, he dramatically improves it.

This is nothing new. Star Wars is a science fiction reworking of Akira Kurosawas The Hidden Fortress, just as Enemy Mine is a sci-fi retelling of Hell in the Pacific. Cujo is Jaws on land. Every single slasher movie ever owes a tremendous debt to Psycho. John Carpenters Assault on Precinct 13 is a blatant reworking of Rio Bravo set in a jailhouse.

Every single zombie movie depicting zombies eating human flesh is a reworking of Night of the Living Dead. Nearly every work of fiction (no matter the medium) contains elements of preexisting works. But enough of that. Quentin Tarantino is an artist in every way. Whether or not you believe that does not change its being true. Theres a reason hes been nominated for the Best Screenplay Oscar three times (winning twice) and Best Director twice. Hes received tons of accolades, three of his films have been nominated for Best Picture, and the American Film Institute declared Pulp Fiction one of the 100 greatest American films ever made. At this point, no matter what he does, Quentin Tarantino has secured his legacy as one of the greatest filmmakers in the history of cinema.