Quentin Tarantino: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work

by Ian Nathan

Through in-depth and informative text written by renowned film journalist Ian Nathan, this book examines the entirety of Tarantino's work, including his early writing on screenplays such as True Romance and Natural Born Killers, his break-out directorial debut Reservoir Dogs and the career-defining Pulp Fiction, as well as his later iconic films, such as Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. You'll also go behind the scenes of Tarantino's latest epic, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. As you make your way through Tarantino's incredible career, discover what inspired him, his working methods and the breadth of his talent.

Packed with stunning pictures from the Kobal archives, this biography explores the genesis of Tarantino's unique directorial style and provides insight into his inspirations and his frequent collaborations with favoured actors.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Biography, Pop Culture, Art

176 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2019

About the author

Ian Nathan is the popular, London-based author of Anything You Can Imagine: Peter Jackson and the Making of Middle-earth, The Coen Brothers: The Filmmakers and their Films, Alien Vault, Terminator Vault, and many other books, many of which have really long titles.

He is the former editor of Empire Magazine.

If you live in the UK, you may also know from from the Discovering Film series on Sky Arts television extolling the virtues of classic film stars and directors, and he can also be heard on Talk Radio every Friday afternoon, mostly berating the state of current movies. He is just about younger than this makes him sound.

Reviews

[Nadia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Hateful Eight... everyone has seen these movies (or at least some of them I hope).

Filled with photographs capturing some of the iconic movie scenes and also some shots from behind the scenes, this book is a great addition to Tarantino's fans' bookshelves. It provides an intimate insight into Tarantino's background, his beginnings and inspiration for each of his movies including his latest - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (not my favourite of his movies but still worth seeing).

Many thanks to Quarto Publishing for an e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Meike · Rating 2 out of 5]

Listen, I'm also a Tarantino fangirl, I think the man's a genius and needs to be applauded and celebrated and all that, but the first half of this book is just way, way too much (and would probably make the master himself cringe): Nathan bombards the reader with cascades of celebatory adjectives, maximum praise and superlatives - and then some more superlatives. All of this stands as fluffy word material between an admittedly fun collection of photographs, film stills and movie posters, and while the text contains some interesting anecdotes and quotes, the content remains superficial.

At some point, the tone slightly changes and becomes a little more held back, which does the book good. Nathan tackles all of Tarantino's movies and screenplays, which could make for a fascinating panorama, but as this is a short book, there is not much depth (or structure) to the analysis. I also became suspicious of the quality of the information given - e.g., Nathan maintains that the storyline and name of Django's wife Broomhilda are a nod to the Brothers Grimm, when it is of course a reference to The Nibelungenlied, a fact Dr. King Schultz, the dentist-turned-bounty-hunter from Düsseldorf am Rhein, even explains in the movie.

Maybe I went into this with wrong expectations though: This is more of a coffee table book, and it's fun to look at, but does not offer substantial insights.

[Literary Redhead · Rating 5 out of 5]

I once burned up dinner while cooking, loath to miss the last 10 minutes on my iPad of Inglourious Basterds, a marvel of a Tarantino movie. So I HAD to read this glorious bio of the cult director by esteemed film journalist Ian Nathan.

Tarantino’s weirdness isn’t for everyone, but if you’re into him, this bio is for you. It covers his entire oeuvre including screenplays and films, directorial style and inspirations, fave actors and collaborations — filled with amazing photos in a design that is sheer Tarantino. Even features the behind the scenes of his latest, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, that just took Cannes by storm. Highly recommended!

Pub Date 01 Oct 2019.

Thanks to Ian Nathan, Quarto Publishing Group - White Lion Publishing, and NetGalley for the review copy. Opinions are mine.

#QuentinTarantino #NetGalley

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

You don’t have to like Quentin Tarantino or love any of his movies to enjoy this book. If you love movies and how they come to be made you’ll appreciate this insight into the career of this talented film maker.
A book full of pictures with a clear and concise commentary on the beginnings of Tarantino’s inspiration and early work. Then each film is detailed in terms of motivation, ideas and cast issues. It is clear he never sold his soul to Hollywood, neither did he conform to their model or financial considerations.
A rare talent who regardless of whether embraced or embarrassing, congratulated or criticised and dismissed Tarantino is a force and a real fan of cinema. Worth reading, purely for its use of photographs but also in my opinion the text is informative, balanced and entertaining. Furthermore, as it speaks about each film individually in its concepts, cast and collaborations it gives some sense into how movies are made, from script to screen, studio pressures and casting values.
I was thoroughly entertained by this book and for those films I had previously watched gained deeper clarity and appreciation. I was also pleased to read of the tension in his work, criticism not just film critics paid for opinions. I liked the fact others defended him and I hope this openness while allow others to come to the work with fresh eyes.
This is a must for those who love their cinema and appreciate small details that enrich the viewing experience better. Whether it is the choice of voices, care in location or trouble to bring coldness to a scene.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to thank NetGalley for a free eBook for my true and honest opinion.

This is perfect for Quentin Tarantino fans! I feel that only those who truly love his work would appreciate this book and enjoy it.

Through in-depth and informative text written by renowned film journalist Ian Nathan, this book examines the entirety of Tarantino's work, including his early writing on screenplays such as True Romance and Natural Born Killers, his break-out directorial debut Reservoir Dogs and the career-defining Pulp Fiction, as well as his later iconic films, such as Kill Bill Volumes 1 and 2, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. You also get behind the scene access to his new film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Quentin Tarantino is a brilliant film maker. He truly understands films and he loves it, which shows in his work. I love the Easter Eggs to homages to classic or contemporary cinema to self-referential nods to his own films.

Definitely recommend.

Overall 4 stars

[E. C. Koch · Rating 2 out of 5]

The walls of my office are papered with Tarantino movie posters. I have a Reservoir Dogs tattoo. My daughter’s name is Quentin. I am a Tarantino fan. And because I’m such a fan, this is exactly the right and wrong book for me. The design of the book is pretty simple: cover Tarantino’s oeuvre film by film on the way to a predetermined conclusion about the director’s obvious, generation-defining brilliance. And, with this happy design at hand, Nathan delivers an updated hagiography of Hollywood’s most exposed auteur. Sticking to writing-, casting-, and production history, Nathan avoids anything like critical analyses of the films he writes about, leaving the reader with whatever the prose version of an infomercial is. This is a particular sticking point with me, for Nathan never actually interviewed Tarantino himself for background on what he was writing. So the quotes he attributes to QT (and Bender, and Avery, and Jackson) are gleaned from interviews and articles from popular outlets, meaning that this is twice removed from its purported subject (and then also made of the most flattering parts of those removed sources). Add to this the jealousy roiling inside me (“No, he’s my favorite!”) and the surfeit of typos (everyone at White Lion needs to sit on the naughty stool until they apologize) and I found myself rooting against Nathan by the time I finished. This book delivers exactly what it sets out to deliver; hard-core fans are advised to pass.

[Pierre-Yves Bonin · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really interesting read. As a massive fan of Tarantino’s work, I was very pleased with the amount of details included in this book, and I learned a lot of new things about his movies. However, I deliberately chose to give it a three-star review because of the amount of grammatical errors found in this piece. It’s really frustrating when you realize some people are paid to edit texts, but are unable to do their job properly.

[Beyondiego · Rating 4 out of 5]

Coole Hintergrund Informationen, welche man als Fan größtenteils aber schon kennt. Das Beste daran, nach jedem Kapitel wieder Lust auf den jeweiligen Film geweckt. So gesehen sehr interaktiv.

[Lincoln · Rating 3 out of 5]

don’t really enjoy some of the writing style that this book has, but has tons of fun facts and interesting tidbits for a Tarantino fan. i also think it’s hilarious that Tarantino decided on casting for Daisy Domergue by putting on personal marathons of his potential actresses’s movies.

[J Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quentin Tarantino: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work from Ian Nathan is a very good overview of QT's career up to and including Once Upon A Time....

For the Tarantino fan the biggest selling point for this book is the layout and the number of both iconic and less common pictures. Tarantino is such a visual director that even more in-depth or academic books need plenty of photographs. A book like this, aimed at popular readership, demands large full color pictures and a dynamic look. Nathan delivers on this quite well.

The text is also a positive for a book of this sort. It is not just gossip and innuendo, in fact, what gossip that is brought up generally is to help illustrate a phase in Tarantino's development as a filmmaker rather than just to share gossip. Like Tarantino himself, getting the story of his life and career can be like putting a puzzle together. What he or an associate might say at one time will often be contradicted or modified at another time. What Nathan does for the casual fan of Tarantino's is to take all these pieces and form them into a relatively coherent narrative. So while there is little new information here, if any, there is a very welcome uncluttering of that information. Plus his is simply an interesting story to read, even if it isn't all new and different.

Definitely recommended for both casual and serious fans of Tarantino, as well as those who might have shied away from his work because they think they might be offended (this at least shows that an intent to offend isn't really there to speak of, though it isn't exactly avoided either). I think that Nathan's writing is informative enough that it will also be a welcome addition for students of film as long as they remember that any analysis here is secondary to the book's purpose. I admit, I probably would not have carried this into one of my film classes when I was in school, but I would probably have mentioned it if something in it fit into a class discussion. I will say that my rating is based on it doing what it set out to do very well as compared to rating it based on some book it never pretends to be.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.

[Antoni Savander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Olipas hyvä extempore-löytö kirjaston tiskiltä! Paljon uutta tietoa, jota ei ollut aiemmista Tarantinon artikkeleista ja haastatteluista jäänyt mieleen tai edes sanottu silloin. Jokaisen elokuvan kohdalla alkoi tehdä mieli katsoa leffa uudelleen, mutta lopulta aika ei antanut myöten eikä lopulta sitten jaksanutkaan alkaa katsoa niitä. Alkuaikojen leffat on katsonut niin moneen kertaan, että enää ei jaksa ja uudemmat eivät kuitenkaan säväyttäneet niin paljoa, että niihin jaksaisi palata saati vähäistä aikaa tuhlata. Kirjan kirjoittaja oli tehnyt hyvää työtä ja tekstiä oli hauska lukea. Kuvat olivat erinomainen lisä! Tarantino on ehdottomasti tärkeimpiä 1990-luvun elokuvaohjaajia, ja myös 2000-luvun alussa miehen tärkeys korostui. Sitten on ollut reilun 10 vuoden ajan hiljaisempaa ja vähemmän tärkeää. Silti kaikki Tarantinon tuotokset kuuluvat elokuvahistoriaan. Reservoir Dogsin taisin nähdä vuonna 1993 VHS-kasetilta, Pulp Fiction oli jo isompi tapaus, sen saatoin käydä jopa leffateatterissa katsomassa vuonna 1995. Tai sitten vuokrattiin video. Aika paljon näitä katsottiin silloin videonauhurin v��lityksellä. Kill Bill 1 & 2 tuli katsottua ihan isolta kankaalta. Sen jälkeen DVD tai Blu-Ray on ollut tallennemuoto. Äijän viimeinen elokuva, mikä se sitten lieneekään (ainakaan ennakkohuhut jostain leffakriitikosta kertovasta pätkästä eivät hirveämmin innosta!), tullee katsottua sitten suoratoistona. Aika hauska elämänkaari Tarantinonkin kohdalla: filmihullu, joka työskentelee videovuokraamossa, alkaa tehdä todella menestyksekkäitä elokuvia, niitä katsotaan ensin videokasetilta, sitten levyltä ja lopulta ilman fyysistä tuotetta nykypäivän "silmälappuvideoilta" eli kännykästä. Mutta joktap, kirja on hyvä, siinä on juuri sopiva määrä tekstimuotoista tietoa Tarantinon elämästä ja elokuvista ja kuvia myös.

[Cheryl Gannon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been a fan of Quentin Tarantino for over 20 years (Kill Bill: Vol 1 is my favourite film as an adult), and I learned a great deal from this book. I was too young to see his first films at release and missed out on most of the controversy surrounding his work, but was pleased to revisit just how revolutionary QT has been for the film industry.

I do feel this a book for real fans and not just those with a passing interest, as there felt like a number of references to events and people I just didn’t get, making some of the early story quite hard to keep up with, but I loved the behind the scenes photos and insights into the films.

There could have been more discussion about his controversy; Uma’s near death experience during Vol 2 being blamed solely on QT, Margot Robbie’s lack of dialogue in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for example, which I felt was skimmed over quickly (Harvey Weinstein got more of a critique), but overall, a wonderful retrospective of some remarkable films

I was given access to this book pre-release via Net Galley in exchange for my honest feedback

[Vivienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

My thanks to Quarto Publishing Group - White Lion Publishing for an temporary digital edition of ‘Quentin Tarantino: The iconic filmmaker and his work’ by Ian Nathan in exchange for an honest review.

This is a brilliant photographic biography of Tarantino written by Ian Nathan, a noted British film journalist and author. It is full of fascinating and insightful information about Tarantino and his films, including the many influences that have informed his work.

It is told in chronological order film by film, including his screenplays, and is packed with photographs from behind the scenes, film stills and posters, etc.

In order to review I read it in a couple of sittings though I would think it a perfect book to dip into or to keep close by while (re)watching QT’s films. After reading I wanted to revisit them despite multiple past viewings.

A must have for Tarantino fans and for film lovers in general. I have popped the physical edition on my wish list.

It would make a perfect gift for film buffs.

[Peter Waters · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quentin Tarantino was *the* director for me growing up that opened up the cinematic rabbit hole I'm still falling down. His films just define "cool" and his enthusiasm for less-respected genre films is fun and refreshing.

This unofficial coffee table book essentially goes through his career and first 9 (out of a conceivable 10) films, mining anecdotes from various interviews over the years and presenting large production stills throughout. If you're a nerd like me, a lot of it will be "repeat" information, but it's still enjoyable to go back and remember the Quentin story, especially his transition from a struggling video store clerk to one of Hollywood's most revered directors.

That being said, the "unofficial-ness" of this publication comes across significantly, especially with its grammatical and spelling errors throughout (ironically, this was written by an editor for Empire Magazine). It only skims the surface and pretty much exists as a cool little gift for that film nerd in your life, which is how it was presented to me over Christmas.

[Anthony Herzog · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5
Definitely helps to put Quentin Tarantino much farther up on my favorite directors list. Learning all those little motivations and purposeful directings makes me respect Tarantino much more. However, for an autobiography about a director who's been in the film game for over a decade, I felt that there would be a little more information on his films, their aftermaths, what Tarantino did in between films, and more dialogue from Tarantino himself in interviews. But definitely still an amazing autobiography despite this.

[Sarah Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nathan has put together a comprehensive review of Tarantino's life so far, career and artistic endeavours. This wonderfully presented coffee table book is full of brilliant images, interesting facts and many (perhaps a little excessive) observations about the writing and filming processes of pieces such as Reservoir Dogs, True, Jackie Brown, Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Bastards et al. Worth a look for both fans of Tarantino and the Hollywood movie scene in general.

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was full of great photos from Tarantino's popular movies as well as movies you might not have known he was involved with. The photos make it a great coffee table book that you will look back at after you have read it.

If you are interested in the details behind movies you will enjoy this book. All of Tarantino's films are discussed giving details on how the ideas came about, cast issues and great photos.

I received this galley from NetGalley.

[Rebeca Núñez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for provide me with a digital copy in exchange for my honest review.
Recomendado si disfrutan de las biografías o son amantes del arte en general o el cine en particular. Muy informativo. Mas alla de los puntos controversiales, soy admiradora de la obra de Tarantino, no solo como director, sino como guionista, por lo que disfrute mucho la lectura de este libro.

[Mathilde Fomsgaard · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was everything I expected it to be. An in-depth into Tarantino - the man himself as well as his films.
Even though I knew a little before hand, having read Peter Biskind’s “Down and Dirty Pictures” - regarding his beginning and introduction into the world of Hollywood - it’s still very interesting and engaging.
It’s especially interesting to read about different casting choices, that then didn’t pan out, but still fun to imagine what could have been if...

[Al (Barlow & Strakers - Fine Films and Books) Frame · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5 stars

It’s hard to rate a biography book the same as fictional novels, but whatever, I loved this!

Quentin Tarantino is one of my favourite film makers and this was so interesting! I love the guy so much (for the most part) and I found it absolutely fascinating having a deep dive into some of his different works.

It inspired me to actually watch True Romance, and fuck, what a great film!

This is just such a great read for Tarantino fans.

[Tommie Whitener · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really enjoyed reading about the films in spite of the fact that Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was given short shrift. It was like he got done writing the book even before Once Upon a Time was released (which because of Covid, probably happened.)
Now, the wait for Tarantino's #10 film, which he said, will probably be his last.

[Billy Shancey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is for sure a coffee table book. The writing isn’t great, kind of grating at times, but the subject matter is really interesting and the pictures are good, which is honestly what you get a book like this for.

[J.D. DeHart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ian Nathan offers an insightful look into one of the notable (and controversial) directors in the past two decades. This was a well-written and organized text.

[Talha Farooqui · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book on the maestro of American Cinema. The visuals are lovely, and I particularly like the packaging of the book. If you’re a Quentin Tarantino fan, this book is definitely for you.

[Jay Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great primer for those with only a surface level knowledge of Quentin Tarantino. But it’s not as deep as other texts on the subject, so big QT fans may not gain as much.

[Thiccmanscoop · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great companion read to Cinema Speculation.

[Ashlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

The passion the author has for film is palpable, his writing carries a sense of enthusiasm through every chapter.

This book is great for people who are interested in how Tarantino built a career. The novel is focused on the people Tarantino met with and the strategies he used to fund and create his films. It is a retrospective on what to do and what not to do as a director.

All of Tarantino’s films are explored throughout the book from a logistical point of view. If you are looking for film analysis, this is not the book for you. But if you are an aspiring filmmaker, then this will surely be a hit!

[Kyle A Massa · Rating 4 out of 5]

An illuminating look at a talented weirdo.

[Juan García · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bune librito lleno de anecdotas y datos sobre uno de los cineastas autores mas importantes de nuestra epoca.

[Rather.be.reading1 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book! I will certainly be buying it when it is published for my husband who loves his movies. The pictures and movie posters were great! Really liked how it was split up by each of his movies and the "inside"/ behind the scenes information.