SOME kids love Disneyland, but for little Quentin Tarantino, the happiest place on Earth was always a scabby L.A. movie theater. That's where he could sit in the dark with bloodied samurais, dangerous pimps and zombie brides. His search for the next matinee took him to every freeway and to distant neighborhoods, which is why Tarantino now knows the city like the back of an amputated hand.
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Flix and the city
If you want to know what made Quentin Tarantino the man he is today, look at the L.A. grindhouse life he's loved.
COVER STORY
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Monday March 05, 2007 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 2 inches; 71 words Type of Material: Correction
Quentin Tarantino: An article about Quentin Tarantino in Thursday's Calendar Weekend quoted a song identified as "Bop Till You Drop." The lyrics cited were actually from the song "Down in Hollywood" on the Ry Cooder album titled "Bop Till You Drop." In addition, in some copies, the article recalled a scene from a Tarantino movie in which the characters describe Ladera Heights. The scene was from "Reservoir Dogs," not "Pulp Fiction."
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Sometimes, it's even hard for the filmmaker to say where the movie screen stops and the real Los Angeles begins.
"I was watching this blaxploitation movie called 'Death Force' at the World Theater, which used to be on Hollywood Boulevard just up from Gower. I'm there watching this movie about these two gangs fighting to take over L.A. They're pulling a 'Scarface,' just killing everyone. Well, two gang members are walking down Hollywood Boulevard and a car pulls up and guns them down \o7right in front \f7of the theater that I'm \o7sitting in! \f7I was like 16, and it remains to this day one of the great moments for me."
No one mixes art house and butcher shop quite the way the 43-year-old Tarantino does. And now he is sending a valentine back to the vintage exploitation films that have been his lurid muse: This Sunday marks the start of his Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival 2007, a tenderly titled, eight-week retrospective of five dozen deliriously bad films, among them "Autopsy," "Jailbait Babysitter," "Chinese Hercules" and "The Legend of the Wolf Woman." For the uninitiated, "grindhouse" is a nickname for the creaky theaters that would "grind" away their projectors for triple features filled with second-run films, exploitation flicks and foreign-film curiosities.
The films at the New Beverly Cinema are all from prints in Tarantino's personal film library and, more important, from the reels that grind on in his head and heart. Last week, the director took a break from his labors on his own upcoming film project (that would be "Death Proof," but more on that later) to talk about the festival and also give a quick tour of his Los Angeles -- the one he lives in and the one that lives in his films.
Not the silent type
Tarantino drives a hulking Ford Mustang that's painted yellow and black to match the famous fighting togs of Uma Thurman's character in the "Kill Bill" movies, and the director himself is about as subtle as his ride. While scavenging for a parking spot along Sunset Boulevard, he paid roughly equal attention to the radio and the road.
