“Film Speculation”: Quentin Tarantino Explains Cinema

Anyone who has read the novel “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” (2021), Quentin Tarantino’s first book, which is based on the script of his 2019 film of the same name, will remember the lengthy discussions about the cinema of Cliff Booth (played by Brad Pitt). To create a living, full-blooded image of a hero for the reader, the authors of 19th-century novels spent dozens of pages on childhood and family history. The aspiring writer Tarantino found an effective replacement for representing the hero of the 20th century – through a description of the cinematic experience. At least in post-war America, when people spent half their lives in movie theaters, the history of cinematic likes and dislikes perfectly characterizes a person. Former soldier Booth, for example, hated posturing and falsehood – especially in war films. It is logical that he liked “The Ballad of a Soldier” by Grigory Chukhrai. And it’s clear why he disliked Bruce Lee – he, at least in Tarantino’s version, was a lover of showing off.

Film Speculation, Tarantino’s second book (published by Individuum), pretends to be a biased history of the New Hollywood. This name was assigned to the period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s, when American directors – Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma and other “young punks”, and now 80-year-old film classics – briefly seized power in Hollywood industry and began making auteur films that were European in spirit, which also did well at the box office. In addition to them, the stars of the era were real Europeans, emigrants who conquered Hollywood – the Czech Milos Forman (“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) and the Pole Roman Polanski (“Rosemary’s Baby”). Actually, both the film and the book “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” were dedicated to the birth of the New Hollywood. “Film Speculations” pick up and complete the plot – they talk about the heyday and decline of this era. But that is the outer outline. Having tested the technique on Brad Pitt’s character, Tarantino wrote his autobiography in the same manner. Moreover, he openly revealed his formula for success.