Quentin Tarantino American Riviera Award

Reviewed by Sandra Doyle. Viewed at the Arlington Theatre. An evening with Quentin Tarantino is a once in a lifetime opportunity to see the world through the eyes of one of the most talented visionaries Hollywood has ever seen. Quirky, talkative, and thrilled to be at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival Tarantino gave audiences a riot. Much like his work Tarantino made for a fast paced and action packed evening and his brilliance was astounding. He focused mostly on his writing process in depth and it was fascinating to hear how he develops his scripts scene by scene and really lets his characters take over the plot without knowing how it will end. Quentin explains, “Maybe the script says they turn left, but what if they turn right?” Being capable of this takes a very well developed and talented writer who can write entirely from a characters perspective. While always keeping in mind his characters perspectives he also keeps in mind his own as a filmmaker. When it comes to the plot Tarantino doesn’t tend to limit his story with practicality. He likes to have elements that he isn’t sure exactly how they will be able to physically accomplish them during production because figuring that out it is part of the fun. He claims that it is necessary for him to write within a genre because of the limitation it provides or else his movies would be five hours long. Although he does tend to transcend genres toward the middle of his films he returns to the one he is focusing on by the end because he wants his genre, whatever it may be, to deliver. Yet he complains that too often a mistake writers make is that they are result oriented, but true writers shouldn’t be. It’s all about the journey of the process, he explains, and that you can only have a worthwhile destination if there is a worthwhile journey. I found Quentin Tarantino particularly interesting because after watching clips from his various work his reaction was unlike any other one of the nominees at their tributes. Most nominees jokingly bantered with the interviewer and responded to their work with self-deprecation. But not Quentin, he was absolutely enthralled with his films and was loving getting to watch every second that the evening had to offer of them. The fact that he was beyond passionate about his work intrigued me because his reaction was so unique. He then claimed that whenever his movie is on TV for example and he happens to come across it, he cannot turn it off. He will either watch his film all the way through till the end or he’ll turn up the volume and continue on with whatever work he had at hand. But he can’t turn it off, he has to let it finish itself and “die a natural death.” It was interesting for him to look at a compilation of scenes from his best work over the years and said that his work is a result of who he was at the time and even loves the mistakes he can see in them now. Let’s just say no director could be more in love with their work than the one and only, ever so talented Quentin Tarantino.