No one dares to question the artistic merits of Quentin Tarantino as the legendary director embarks on his tenth and final film. The filmmaker has given cinematic masterpieces such as Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds, Kill Bill, Django Unchained, and more. The legendary director has been an influence to countless filmmakers around the globe for his style.
However, everyone starts somewhere, and the struggling Tarantino who was a video store clerk in Hollywood found it harder by the day to secure funding for his debut feature film Reservoir Dogs. While he decided to sell his script True Romance to fund his own film, one of the studio heads reportedly insulted his legendary script to shreds after reading it.
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Quentin Tarantino’s Career Before He Became A Legendary Director
Quentin Tarantino began his directorial career with the landmark independent film Reservoir Dogs. The heist film that does not show the actual heist was the beginning of the ‘Quentin Tarantino style of directing’. Non-linear storylines, pop culture references, and smart dialogue writing are some of the trademarks of the filmmaker that persist.
Tarantino did many jobs before he had his breakthrough with Reservoir Dogs. He was an usher at an adult movie theater and was also a recruiter. One of his most legendary jobs was his stint as a video store clerk for five years at Video Archives. He was known by the locals for his extensive film knowledge and recommendations.
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The filmmaker tried his hand at filmmaking once with an unfinished film named My Best Friend’s Birthday. He also attended acting classes which became the hub where he met many of his collaborators over the years. He also featured in an episode of the popular show The Golden Girls, in which he played an Elvis Presley impersonator.
To make his debut feature film, Quentin Tarantino wrote the screenplay for two soon-to-be classic films. One was the Tony Scott-directed cult classic True Romance and the other was Oliver Stone’s crime film Natural Born Killers. He sold the former to get funding for Reservoir Dogs, although it was released after the release of his debut feature.
A Producer Insulted Quentin Tarantino’s True Romance Script
For every cult classic film that has graced the screen, there have been a thousand naysayers who have passed on the project for several reasons. When Quentin Tarantino was shopping around the script for True Romance he was still a budding filmmaker with just an unfinished film. Hence, many producers in the valley did not believe in him yet.
While some rejected the script, one producer reportedly sent it back with a furious anger that Tarantino remembers to this day. In an interview with Vanity Fair, the filmmaker mentioned the scathing rejection he received from a studio, that sent back the script to his manager,
“How dare you send me this f*cking piece of s*it? You must be out of your f*cking mind. You want to know how I feel about it? Here’s your f*cking piece of s*it back. Fu*k you.”
However, the producer turned out to be the one out of his mind at the end because True Romance was picked up by director Tony Scott and the eventual film has been regarded as a cult classic in the crime genre of the 90s. It starred legends such as Patricia Arquette, Brad Pitt, Gary Oldman, James Gandolfini, and Dennis Hopper, among others. Though the film was a box office failure, it is still considered to be one of the finest films of the decade.
