Tarantino: A Retrospective

by Tom Shone

Celebrate more than three decades of filmmaking by diving into the brilliant, twisted mind of Quentin Tarantino, and discover the artistic process of an Oscar-winning legend.

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1963, Quentin Tarantino spent many Saturday evenings during his childhood accompanying his mother to the movies, nourishing a love of film that was, over the course of his life, to become all-consuming. The script for his first movie took him four years to complete: My Best Friend’s Birthday (1987), a seventy-minute film in which he both acted and directed. The script for his second film, Reservoir Dogs (1992), took him just under four weeks to complete. When it debuted, he was immediately hailed as one of the most exciting new directors in the industry.

Known for his highly cinematic visual style, out-of-sequence storytelling, and grandiose violence, Tarantino’s films have provoked both praise and criticism over the course of his career. They’ve also won him a host of awards—including Oscars, Golden Globes, and BAFTA awards—usually for his original screenplays. His oeuvre includes the cult classic Pulp Fiction, bloody revenge saga Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, and historical epics Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained, The Hateful Eight, and Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood. 

Featuring an all-new chapter on the director’s latest award-winning film Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, this stunning retrospective catalogs each of Quentin Tarantino’s movies in fascinating detail. The book is a tribute to a unique directing and writing talent, celebrating an uncompromising, passionate director’s enthralling career at the heart of cult filmmaking.

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

272 pages, Hardcover

First published October 3, 2017

About the author

Tom Shone was born in Horsham, England, in 1967. From 1994 to 1999 he was the film critic of the London Sunday Times and has since written for a number of publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, the London Daily Telegraph, and Vogue. He lives in Brooklyn, New York."

Reviews

[Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great insights, beautiful photos. How was this not going to be good?

[Natalia Trybus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Czytałam i za sprawą tych wszystkich smaczków z planów filmowych miałam ochotę wrócić do każdego opisanego filmu.

[Paweł Kwiatkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascynująca historia geniuszu fascynującego geekowskiego artysty, który stworzył jedne z najważniejszych dla mnie filmów w historii 🥰

[Ryan Crisp · Rating 5 out of 5]

An essential book for Tarantino fans. Really enjoyed the exploration and detailed analysis of QT’s filmography. Jam packed with glorious full page stills and artwork, interesting analysis, and the odd nugget I either didn’t know or had forgotten. Mostly celebratory, but doesn’t shy away from some critical strands. Tom Shone delivers a must have coffee table tome for the Tarantino fan in your life.

[mollie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 ⭐️’s* (Very Good).

[Roman Zadorozhnii · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Коли я знімаю фільм, то прагну наново винайти жанр. Я роблю кіно по-своєму. Я знімаю власні версії. Я вважаю себе вічним кіностудентом. Я наче иду до професорського звання і коли помру - тоді й здобуду свій ступінь. Усе життя - це навчання».

«Великі митці крадуть, а не віддають шану, — заявляв він. — Я беру звідусіль потроху, а потім комбіную все це. Не подобається — не дивіться, якось переживу.»

«Я вважаю, що жорстокість - один з кінематографічних прийомів. Казати, що вам не подобається жорстокість, - те саме, що казати, ніби вам не подобається фарс або хореографія».

«День, коли я не буду готовий цілком віддатися фільму, стане днем, коли я покину режисуру. Це не робота
за сумісництвом. Це моє життя».

[Anton Koval · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good! Though definitely should have been 3 times longer.
The writing style gives reading a blazing fast pace (which is splendid) but there is a feeling that you are missing out on so many details. Knowing that Tarantino's movies is a "botomless" pit of references and behind the scenes stories you'll find relatively little anecdotes in a book.
Despite this caprice it was a wonderful read, what can I say - waiting for expanded version :D

[Bernardo Faria · Rating 5 out of 5]

A minha miúda ofereceu-me este livro nos anos. Sou apaixonado pelos dois. ÓBVIO que tinha de ler este chamado "livro de mesa", e de certeza que lhe voltarei a pôr as mãos em cima um dia destes. Para qualquer fanático pelo Tarantino, este livro é um "must", super interessante sobre tanto os filmes que realizou, como os que escreveu, dos quais fez parte, é um caldeirão de informação com uma das melhores sopas do mundo.

[Mima · Rating 4 out of 5]

-1 star for misidentifying Tim Roth

[Kristi Einberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful.
QT is one of my most fave directors of all time. This book made me realize that he truly LOVES movies. Great book to get to know this legend.

[Roman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Красиво оформленная экскурсия по всем фильмам Тарантино, много интересных историй со съемок. Отличный повод пересмотреть фильмографию.

[Giedrė Ir Viskas · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best readings in 2022. Not a single miss, all his movies are masterpieces of wit dialogues, re-written history and paying respects to movie history.

[ola_hiperbola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dla fanów Tarantino pozycja obowiązkowa, chociaż trochę żałuję, że nie znalazłam tutaj więcej ciekawostek, ale być może miało to być takie kompendium wiedzy o Tarantino.
Duży plus za dodanie mnóstwa zdjęć.

[Wes · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you're a Tarrantino fan, this book is a MUST! Loved every page of it.

[Vick Sokolove · Rating 2 out of 5]

Informative for people who are not familiar with his work for the past 25 years in American Cinema. Beautiful pictures and illustrations but quite average as a read.

[Simone S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tom Shone is a film critic who, after publishing two retrospectives on Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen respectively, has written a third one about the great Quentin Tarantino (released in the United States in late 2017). The book is a beautiful object of more than 250 pages of giant format of fine quality and it looks extremely good visually with a series of photographs and frames of Tarantino and of his works, as well as an interesting text.
The book begins with fifty pages containing an introduction on Quentin Tarantino and two sections on his early years in the world of cinema and his first screenplays. For example, he wrote both True Romance and a first version of Natural Born Killers, films that were then directed by Tony Scott and Oliver Stone, respectively. For me that I love all eight Tarantino’s films and have seen them several times (and having read a lot about them too), I find this first part of the book to be the most interesting, since I knew his personal story but not in such great detail. Tom Shone recounts all the coincidences and sliding doors of life that led this B-movies nerd to become one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema.

Before his success, in fact, Tarantino worked in a red light cinema (one of the now disappeared chain Pussycat, in California – even though he didn’t really want to: he said that when he finally managed to work in a cinema it was one projecting the only movies he wasn’t interested in!) and distributed questionnaires in a mall for market research purposes. And then when he was 21 years old he ended up in the famous Video Archives rental store in Manhattan Beach. I wrote “famous” because if you are familiar with the life of the director you probably know that it’s in that video store that he began writing screenplays and cultivating the idea of ​​making films.

The following nine chapters are devoted to the eight films directed by Tarantino plus a “bonus” chapter on Four Rooms (he directed its final segment) and From Dusk Till Dawn (of which he wrote the screenplay and in which he played one of the co-protagonists under the direction of his friend Robert Rodriguez). The book ends with a brief chapter on the possible future projects of Tarantino which is a bit ridiculous because it includes a dozen potential projects but not Once Upon a Time in Hollywood on which the director is working right now. On the other hand, the crazy US director is absolutely unpredictable!

Each of the eight specific chapters on the Tarantino’s movies (from Reservoir Dogs to The Hateful Eight) tells the genesis of the film, what happened between the first day of shooting and the end of post-production, and how it was received by critics and by the audience. There are interviews to those who participated in the creation of the movies and also articles and reviews, creating a kind of collage of information that results very interesting. So many anecdotes!

What struck me most is to find out how Tarantino creates his stories taking a lot from his private life as well as from his vast cinematographic knowledge, and how he chooses the actors he wants to work with. Also, I was surprised to see how many of his films have been badly received by critics once they have been released in theaters. I have always thought of Quentin Tarantino as a maestro, but it is enlightening to see how much opinions about him are scattered throughout the entire critical arch, from great director to buffoon, depending on who’s talking.

Also I enjoyed reading Tarantino: A retrospective because it made me think about the filmography of the director as a whole. I usually think of a film as a work done and finished on its own, but in reality it’s not possible to see it isolated from the rest of works of the artist who created it. Just as a Van Gogh painting is suddenly more interesting once you know the life of the artist and when and where he painted it, the path that led Tarantino to make the films he made (and in the order in which he made them) made me consider aspects of his craftsmanship that I hadn’t considered before. To conclude, I recommend reading this book to anyone who’s passionate about cinema (or photography! The images of the book are really beautiful), you won’t regret it! Ciao!

[Tomáš Kratochvíl · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first half of this book is just magnificent. You learn a lot about Tarantino (if you didn't already know), you find nice tidbits about the movies before the new millenium. You also get to know about a lot of funny situations from casting, filming, postproduction, even awards and festivals.

Then after Inglorious Basterds, the book starts to be a bit more "Wikipedia" like. Django is somewhere on the verge. But Hateful Eight and even more so OuaTiH are a bit scarce on stories and the funny tidbits. It's obvious that both happened too short a while ago to have a better retrospective about them. There's not so much nostalgia, yet. Not so many interviews.

But you know what? You still don't mind. Because reading about each of the movies leads to the exact same thing - you want to watch all of it again.

[LaShana Claude]

In 1992, first-time director Quentin Tarantino brought his movie Reservoir Dogs to the Sundance Film Festival. An instant cult classic, the film launched Tarantino on a career that would make him one of the most influential, distinctive, and controversial filmmakers in the business. In this book, film critic Tom Shone takes an in-depth look at each of Tarantino's nine movies, from Reservoir Dogs to The Hateful eight. Filled with insightful commentary and illustrated with more than two hundred film stills and behind-the-scenes images, Tarantino: A Retrospective is a tribute to the stunning artistic vision of a uniquely talented filmmaker.


- Martin Scorsese
Woody Allen

New York University

"The way I define success when I find it in my career is that I'm considered one of the greatest filmmakers that ever lived. A great artist, not just filmmaker."

[Archie Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

As the first biographical and non-fiction book I’ve read, I loved this book. I am a big fan of all of Tarantino’s films and getting an insight into his life, ideas, the actors and complications of filming etc. I found super interesting. The collection of images were very cool and learning about his inspiration of other films from the past was fascinating. I also want to give praise to Tom shone who’s writing style made this very enjoyable to read and his knowledge of the film and media, and literature and arts industries added that three-dimensional aspect to a recount of Tarantino’s career, which would have otherwise been merely a factual retelling of his life without the context and interesting background information.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even as a massive fan of Tarantino's cinematography, this book still had a couple of surprises for me when it came to his early work and how he started out his career.

You can tell from Shone's tone that there is admiration on the achievements and the movies he is talking about, and this book generated in me a lot of interest in finally getting around to watching movies like Death Proof and From Dusk Till Dawn.

The photographs both from the filming and the behind the scenes are also excellent.

[Rob Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good overview of Tarantino's career up to Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. Tom Shone is a bit of a hostage to much better work he has done elsewhere with this one though. His books on Scorsese and Christopher Nolan are excellent, making you wish this one was a little meatier.

As to be expected, the book is wonderfully illustrated, but you wish for more images of Tarantino's idiosyncratic handwritten scripts.

[Frederik Bukowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful book, but only 5 years later it's already obsolete.

In the 5 years since the publishing we got the Harvey Weinstein scandal (described like a really good guy in this book), we got a brand new movie that's not in this book (Once upon a time in Hollywood) and a few tidbits that came out after the publishing, like the Uma Thurman car crash and injury while filming Kill Bill.

Like a said, a good book, but in a dire need of a revised version.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great little insider info on all his movies, plus it’s a nice excuse to revisit all of his films as you read each chapter.

I really liked Tom Shone’s writing style, critical yet casual and fun. I picked up a couple other of his books as I was reading this one, excited to tackle Scorsese and his filmography next.

[Michael Wheeler · Rating 3 out of 5]

what you'd expect. the most interesting section was the introduction as this detailed his earlier years and made me respect him a bit more as a person as he wasn't a product of nepotism. the chapters detailing his film's give a general view of the production and are in fact sadly a bit celebratory

[Dalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gave it a 4-star rating out of pure nostalghia, since I was a big Tarantino fan when I was a bit younger and I read here some facts I hadn't known about mr Tarantino. The trivia is really interesting, although a retrospective should, in my opinion, give a more extensive analysis of the director's works and influences.

[Chance Hurstfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the most insightful reads about one of the greatest filmmakers to ever live, delving into his filmmaking process, fun facts about his filmography, and his general attitude towards life.

if i had to narrow down the single most influential filmmaker for me at 18, it would be qt. the day he stops making movies is the day a piece of me dies. hopefully i’ll be the one to carry the torch.

[Kaarel Aadli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lõbus pildiraamat täiskasvanutele! Ostke nüüd, ärge mõelge üldse! Aga tegelikult oli õiges koguses asjalikku juttu ka. Lausa hämmastavalt palju. Shone on lisanud ka kõiksugu backstorysid ja minevikuminuteid ja puha. Äärmiselt nauditav ja kaasahaarav. Nagu härra enda linalood.

[Amparo López · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una revisión de la filmografía de Tarantino a través de sus obras, llena de curiosidades y anécdotas.
En mi caso, la he disfrutado especialmente ya que he ido leyendo sobre cada una de las películas a la vez que la veía para prestar especial atención a cada detalle.

[Edyta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bardzo przyjemna lektura, zawierająca dużo ciekawostek odnośnie wyreżyserowanych przez Tarantina filmów. Ogrom zdjęć z planów filmowych dodaje smaczku książce. Jedyne czego mi zabrakło to trochę więcej miejsca poświęconego samemu Quentinowi.

[Brett McDowall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genius, provocateur, complicated, independent
Excellent detail and graphics