Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino is a screenwriter, director, and film historian known for audacious genre films like “Pulp Fiction,” “Kill Bill,” and “Django Unchained.” Tarantino began his career as an actor, with minor jobs like a role as an Elvis impersonator on “The Golden Girls.” Working at the Video Archives video store in Manhattan Beach, California, he acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of film and befriended Roger Avary, with whom he would later collaborate. After a series of odd jobs that included working as a production assistant on a Dolph Lundgren exercise video, Tarantino wrote the screenplays for “True Romance” and “Natural Born Killers” for himself to direct but couldn’t raise backing; they would ultimately be made by Tony Scott and Oliver Stone. Tarantino made his directing debut with “Reservoir Dogs,” an electrifying heist film that led to financing for the movie that would make the director’s career, “Pulp Fiction.” That movie won the Palme d’Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival, scored a screenwriting Oscar for Tarantino and Avary, and became a worldwide hit, placing Tarantino in a position to spend his career making well-resourced auteur films like “Jackie Brown,” “Inglourious Basterds,” The Hateful Eight,” and “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” A devoted movie buff, in addition to his filmmaking endeavors, Tarantino owns and programs the New Beverly Cinema and Vista Theatre in Los Angeles, hosts the “Video Archives” podcast with Avary, and is the author of “Cinema Speculation,” a critical history of the New Hollywood of the 1970s.