Parasocial Relationships

As weird, creepy, and stalker-esque as I think this concept is, ironically I too have my own parasocial relationship. Quentin Tarantino. The man was born into film. His mother and father were both actors, though bit-rate and not A-list. His father bailed shortly after QT was born leaving his mother to tote him through film sets around the country. Dropped out of high school at 16 besides having a genius level IQ, the man is part of Mensa! Anyway, he took to writing quickly and throughout the 80s wrote several of his initial films. The first was My Best Friend’s Birthday (1987), most of this film was destroyed in a fire, classic example as to why you shouldn’t smoke in the editing room…good thing everything is digital nowadays. What survives is a foundation to his screenplay True Romance (1993), directed by Tony Scott and my personal favorite film. Reservoir Dogs (1992) was QT’s first feature and breakthrough film. His career skyrocketed into pure creative freedom and has since not declined. The main reason why I love this man as much as I do is his adherence to film history, specifically Italian Neorealism, French New Wave, and Japanese Samurai cinemas. All three are very abundant in nearly all of his films. He takes classic cinema and transcends it into contemporary, original stories comprised of mixed genres. Reservoir Dogs comes from a mix of 60s neonoir crime drama and spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone and Sergio Corbucci (True Romance, Pulp Fiction, From Dusk Till Dawn, Inglorious Basterds, and Django Unchained) all share this combination as well. Jackie Brown is a homage to the blaxploitation 70s Foxy Brown, while Death Proof epitomizes 1970s horror. “So, enough about the king, how about you?”