Quentin Tarantino: The Cinema of Cool

by Jeff Dawson

At the beginning of 1992, no one had heard of Quentin Tarantino. By mid-1995, Quentinmania was in high gear, and he was being hailed as the hip new Oscar-toting messiah of film making. In this irreverant personal biography and in-depth study, Jeff Dawson interrogates Tarantino about his early influences, his use of violence, and accusations of plagiarism. Dawson takes the reader behind the scenes of Pulp Fiction , Reservoir Dogs and Destiny Turns on the Radio , to get a glimpse of Quentin through the eyes of Harvey Keitel, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Tim Roth and other Tarantino gang members interviewed for this book. Includes dialogue that didn't make it into the final cut, as well as the original plot twists for True Romance and Natural Born Killers that got axed by the censors. Includes great color and black & white photos throughout.

Genres: Nonfiction, Film, Biography, Media Tie In

214 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Jeff Dawson is a journalist, author and scriptwriter. Amongst other things, he pens Real Dictators, the award-winning historical podcast (200m downloads) that goes out on Spotify, Apple, BBC Sounds and elsewhere.

He was, for many years, a feature writer for The Sunday Times' Culture section (interviewees including Robert De Niro, George Clooney, Dustin Hoffman, Hugh Grant, Angelina Jolie, Jerry Seinfeld and Nicole Kidman). Before that he was the US Editor of Empire magazine.
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Jeff is the author of three non-fiction books — Tarantino/Quentin Tarantino: The Cinema of Cool (Cassell/Applause, 1995), Back Home: England And The 1970 World Cup (Orion, 2001), which The Times rated "Truly outstanding", and Dead Reckoning: The Dunedin Star Disaster (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005), the latter nominated for the Mountbatten Maritime Prize.

Historical thriller No Ordinary Killing (2017), an Amazon/Kindle bestseller, was his debut novel. The follow-ups, The Cold North Sea (2018) and Hell Gate (2020), continue the adventures of Captain Ingo Finch.

Reviews

[Dustin Wilson V · Rating 1 out of 5]

Written with too little distance from the height of Tarantino-mania, and too little willingness to actually delve into the more controversial aspects of his filmography. It plays less like an exploration of a filmmaker’s stylings and more like a crappy 200 page Tarantino advertisement composed of other people’s (much more insightful) comments.

[TrumanCoyote · Rating 4 out of 5]

A definite sense of immediacy--along with the whole rollercoaster-ride effect. Occasionally settles into the "wow now happenin'" Rolling Stone routine, and the inevitable tinge/taint of -isms surfaces now and then (used to be that meant politics; now it's trendy sensitivity training). Pictures of him as a kid were funny. Also the deleted scene where Marvin is only wounded is hilarious ("Marvin, I just want to apologize. I got nothin' to do with this shit. And I want you to know I think it's fucked up."). Fortunately though (re sensitivity) Dawson only discusses it, he doesn't advocate. And the whole Tarantino/Stone fracas is handled fairly.

[Arax Miltiadous · Rating 2 out of 5]

πρωτοπόρος, προκλητικός, ταλαντούχος, ιδιόρρυθμος..
Εικονοκλάστης στον χώρο της σκηνοθεσίας,μας βρίσκει όλους σύμφωνους πως το φαινόμενο Τραντίνο άλλαξε ολοκληρωτικά τον κινηματογράφο..
έχει το χάρισμα θεωρώ, να δημιουργεί φανατικούς υποστηρικτές ή φανατικούς.. πολέμιους.
προσωπικά, μπορεί να μην ενθουσιάζομαι με όλες τις ταινίες του ενθουσιάζομαι όμως με τον ίδιο!

[Brian Merritt]

Exellent. Very interestng to read about the specifics surrounding Tarantino's start.

[Eric Althoff · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received this book for Christmas 1995--yes, 1995!!!--and got around to it only this year, partly as research for my own eventual study of masculinity in modern cinema, which I was hoping to commence in grad school this fall, but such did not work out. While I did find some decent research fodder for my treatise, the reality is that it's obvious that this book was rushed into production to capitalize on the mid-90s Pulp fever. The text is absolutely rife with copy mistakes and head-scratching turns of phrase (to be fair, the author is British).

While Tarantino at that time was on the crest of the most extraordinary modern writer-director career and more or less single-handedly redefined the postmodern film aesthetic, the fact remains that at press time, he was still very much *at the beginning.* As much as I love "Pulp Fiction" and "Reservoir Dogs," the past 17 years have been exciting to see Tarantino develop as a filmmaker, through both pitfalls ("Jackie Brown," "Death Proof") and recent triumphs ("Inglorious Basterds," "Django Unchained"). (Ironically enough, what's *missing* here is a really in-depth look inside "Pulp Fiction"; much of the book is devoted to "Dogs.")

In short, it was simply too early for a Tarantino career "retrospective," and it shows in the lightness of the writing here. While there are some interesting anecdotes--including about Tarantino's sales of the scripts for both "Natural Born Killers" and "True Romance" and their subsequent development by more seasoned, and far differently minded, filmmakers--the bulk of the text is what my colleagues and I colorfully refer to as "Tarantino dick-sucking." The book is almost entirely softballs and challenges its subject in interviews not really at all. What's here we mostly already know: He was a bright, aimless kid who lived and breathed movies and pop culture and grew up to repackage the elements of all he had ingested into his own films.

No big revelation as a thesis, and not particularly well deconstructed here in any amount of serious detail. The end result left me yawning and somewhat bored. Yet more time needs to pass before any decisive bio of the Postmodern Master should be scribed.

[ChetBABY! · Rating 1 out of 5]

didn't finish it. hardly started it. dawson's writing style really turned me off. it was if he was trying to write it in the form of screenplay scene directions, overloading on adjectives and description without saying much. there may be some good information in this book. i'm not denying that. I barely read ten pages, but I have no desire to read anything this author has written.