Cinema Speculation (4*) by Quentin Tarantino

The director of three of my favorite movies--Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained and Once Upon A Time . . . . in Hollywood--deconstructing the films of the 70s?  I'm in!  Who doesn't want to know what Taxi Driver would have been like if Brian de Palma had directed it?

But Cinema Speculation turns out to be more than a master class, it's a circuitous look back at a film geek's formative years, when Quentin Tarantino still needed an older adult to accompany him to the theater.  The book brims with kindness and respect for his mother, stepfather and an African-American man whose influence he regrets not acknowledging when he won his second Oscar for screenwriting.  

Tarantino, a fan of Pauline Kael, also seems to have been as obsessed with reading movie reviews as seeing films--every film--as many time as possible, often in theaters where he was the sole Caucasian.  He devotes an entire chapter to Kevin Thomas, a second-string critic for the Los Angeles Times, whom he credits with giving many directors--including Jonathan Demme--their start by praising their early low budget productions.  

In short, Tarantino's generosity--already evident from his penchant for reviving forgotten actors' careers-- comes through again as well as the sense that he learned how to write and shoot movies almost through osmosis, which included exposure to audiences and critics in equal measure.  He shamelessly wants to please both people who talk back at the silver screen and those who analyze and study what's being projected. 

His trademark quirkiness (and access to a number of Hollywood greats, including Martin Scorcese and Paul Schrader) is evident as well.  I mined two nuggets with particular resonance.

I eagerly read his chapter on The Getaway with Steve McQueen (about whose stardom he's particularly perceptive) because I remember how upset I had been to miss its scandalous filming in El Paso (the "king of cool" was reportedly hooking up with his co-star, Ali McGraw) my first year away from home.  Talk about bad timing!  But he never mentions the Sun City in his gossipy account of the movie's casting and shooting.  Instead, he mentions it in an entirely different but hilarious context several chapters later:

[Producer] Ray Stark was also one of the town’s biggest bullies, and he was responsible for mangling more films than an El Paso drive-in movie projector. 

WTF?  That's almost as bad as my mother calling El Paso "the cultural crotch of the nation"!

And then there's his surprising familiarity with the demimonde of my youth and gay male porn:

Even though Schrader uses many real (now defunct) sex districts, store fronts, and massage parlors, his depiction of the adult entertainment industry of the 70s [in Hardcore] never strikes the viewer as completely authentic .  .  .  Schrader's tour of the porno world can’t hold a flickering birthday candle next to [William] Friedkin’s tour of the New York all-male S&M leather bars in that same year’s “Cruising” .  .  . Friedkin’s film, not only strikes the viewer as authentic, it’s also a sexy/scary phantasmagorical sensory experience like no other in cinema (not even 70s all male porn). 

Not that there's anything suspect about Tarantino's obvious heterosexuality.  His multiple, non-judgmental references to gay topics are yet another indicator of his voracious appetite for all things film.

Al Pacino in "Cruising" (1980)

And just FYI:  Getting to watch Friedkin shoot scenes from Cruising in Central Park's Ramble more than compensated for missing The Getaway in El Paso almost a decade earlier.  It also taught me how boring film sets can be when you're not part of the action, just like sports and porn.