Cinema Speculation

Quentin Tarantino has always struck me as an odd duck and between 1997's Jackie Brown and Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (2019), which is a great movie, I didn't care for any of his films.  But I've always enjoyed listening to him talk about movies and his new book, Cinema Speculation, is a treat to read.

Reinforcing his odd duck image, the book is about the movies he grew up seeing in the 1970s and early 1980s, with the first he tells us about being Joe, which he saw when he was seven (and if you haven't seen Joe (I did), it may explain why Quentin grew up like he did).  Quentin was raised by his single mom in L.A. who, as he tells us several times, only dated black guys, and she would take him with her dates to the movies, often to see double features.

Tarantino is very insightful about movies and actors and a great storyteller.  He has chapters on movies that remain well-known like Bullitt, Dirty Harry, Deliverance, The Getaway, Taxi Driver, and Escape From Alcatraz, as well as lesser known films such as Sisters, Daisy Miller, The Funhouse, Paradise Alley (Stallone's followup to Rocky), The Outfit, and Rolling Thunder, the last two of which I now want to watch.  In each chapter he combines his memories of seeing the movie, with whom and under what circumstances, tells us about any number of related films of the time, and often gives us more reflective takes from his older perspective and often after speaking with the directors many years later.

His digressions are as entertaining as his main threads.  In the chapter on Dirty Harry he also writes of director Don Siegel's 1956 film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, remade in 1978 by Philip Kaufman (outstanding film), and in an extended footnote gives us his alternative reading of the film which is, uh, unique, noting that "the movies try to present their [the pod people] lack of humanity . . . as evidence of some deep-seated sinisterness.  That's a rather species-centric point of view.  As human beings it may be our emotions that make us human, but it's a stretch to say it's what makes us great."

Here's a taste:

And then there's Steve McQueen as Frank Bullitt.

The reason why we're here.

The reason we're watching.

The reason the whole f------ thing works.

Rarely in the entire history of Hollywood movie stars being movie stars has a movie star done less and accomplished more than McQueen with this role in a movie.  The part is nothing and yet he makes it a great role.  He practically does nothing, but nobody in the history of movies did nothing like Steve McQueen. 

As great as McQueen could be, this is the role he needs to be remembered by.  Because it's in this role he demonstrates what he could do that Newman and Beatty [his great rivals] couldn't.

Which is just be.

Just fill the frame with him.

I'm not saying McQueen was playing himself.  Steve McQueen in real life was decidedly not like Frank Bullitt.

In real life everything suggests Steve McQueen could be a real hothead.

But McQueen's Lt. Frank Bullitt is no hothead.  He is the epitome of cool.

And when I say cool, I don't mean just the charismatic he-man bad-boy cool McQueen was famous for.

I mean, emotionally, Frank Bullitt is as cool as a reptile.