For many moviegoers, there is pre- and post-Tarantino cinema. Before “Reservoir Dogs,” movies couldn’t be so brazenly self-referential up to the point that characters discussed pop culture like they were all the savviest kid in your friend circle. For those of us who wolfed down movies, music, books and the rest of it like a large deluxe pizza, early Tarantino validated our fixation; his successes made it seem possible for us to tell stories via our own referential patois. It sounds absurd now, but no one outside of scenarists like Daniel Waters and Shane Black dared to write like this.
Somewhere in between “Kill Bill” chapters, Hollywood types began wondering if Tarantino’s style of filmmaking had pigeonholed him to the point of self-parody. Factor in the countless Tarantino wannabes that began sprouting up in the mid-1990s, and it felt like the most daring thing the filmmaker could do would be to make a straightforward prestige drama. But just because other filmmakers were diluting his brand didn’t mean Tarantino had to abandon it altogether. If anything, pale imitations like “Love and a .45” and “Lucky Number Slevin” drove home the singular quality of his voice.
Who really wanted Tarantino to make movies that looked and sounded like every other cookie-cutter genre flick? Why, the folks whose job it was to make cookie-cutter genre flicks: Hollywood studios. And before Tarantino made it clear he was not for hire, the dream factory tried to lull him into nightmare of sameness.