A religiously devout sermon from the church of Quentin Tarantino.
An opportunistic hatchet job of easy target Harvey Weinstein.
And a vanity project for its own self anointed brave female director, who feigns fighting the good fight and sticking it to the man to bring us this exciting exposé pried straight from the fangs of the big bad wolf (Weinstein).
Look, this is a fawning frivilous featurette assembly which had some interesting anecdotes from a few of its interviewees, but basically glosses over any critical analysis of its worshiped subject.
There's no mention at all of the tumultuous and contentious relationship between Tarantino and his Video Archive's colleque (and fellow Academy Award winning "Pulp Fiction" co-writer) Roger Avary who also contributed seeds to "True Romance", "Natural Born Killers", and "From Dusk Till Dawn".
Much is said about Tarantino being so "original", but just one snickery quotation screen is all this film devotes to the absolute fact that Tarantino ruthlessly steals from both friends and foreigners with abandon, while deliberately neglecting to be gracious or forthright about their immense contributions to his own pastiche driven tweeks and rifts. So that's a major rock left unturned - it's maybe nudged slightly, but the dark underbelly of Quentin's ambition for validating acclaim at the expense of others is not examined with any vigor whatsoever.
I did especially appreciate that his editor Sally Menken was given due credit here. In my opinion more of such notice should have also gone to his cinemtographers - especially Robert Richardson whom is no mere technician for hire by any stretch.
But why is Tarantino's other writing and acting film work not given more attention? I'd be intersted to learn more about his relatonships to Tony Scott, Oliver Stone, and Robert Rodriguez. What about his script polishing work for "True Romance" director Tony Scott on that filmmaker's subsuquent "Crimson Tide"? Tarantino disowned and disavowed Oliver Stone's deconstruction of his "Natural Born Killers" script and refused to ever watch it. Has that changed? What about the fact that Quentin went on to commandeer Oliver Stone's long-time cinematographer/collaborator Robert Richardson (who helped much in making NBK an experimental departure from QT's script)? Or that Tarantino later co-starred in his own scripted "From Dusk Till Dawn" with "Natural Born Killers" star Juliette Lewis. For that matter Robert Rodriguez's "From Dusk Till Dawn" is barely even cited as existing, even though it is written by and co-starring Tarantino and even has "Tarantino-verse" Big Kahuna Burger/Red Apple Tobacco brands in it! And what about Tarantino's great scene stealing cameo in Rodriguez's "Desperado" - how much original writing did Tarantino contrubute to his big monologue for that scene and did he lend any other additions?
This doc doesn't say anything about Tarantino's adamant stance and ardent leadership in preservation for physical chemically processed Film negative vs digital capture - as a shooting medium (it does glance over his unenthusiastic attitude for the sterility of digital projection, however). I particularly find QT's very vocal distaste for the digital camera revolution in Cinema to be wholly appropriate and his railing against the trend of easy technological inferiority of aesthetics to be inspiring.
So, instead of delving into any of these intersting aspects of Tarantino's Cinematic impact and interplay - we get a trivial and cheesy "E! True Hollywood Story" level display of histrionics with accompanying ominous soundtrack undertones about Harvey Weinstein - who was nothing but a daddy warbucks to Quentin. Yeah, I get it - he was a big fat sweaty odious creep of no redeeming value (except for producing the best autered Cinema of the 90's) who suffered no qualms in taking advantage of the ambitions of ingenue starlets to their sub-advantage (sometimes resulting in their burgeoning careers in return). Wow, news flash - heterosexual men have sexual appetites for young beautiful vivacious women and some of those men will use whatever means at their disposal to satisfy that. It's just shocking to learn the heinous revelation that women whom profit primarily by using the fleeting allure of their ripe supple nubility upon the beguiled male-gaze to fake intimate relations in front of camera lenses for such approval, would be subjected to quid-pro-quo solicitation in exchange for opportunity - that's a totally unnatural progression of their aspirations. I for one just can't fathom why the profession of actors has always been equated with the oldest profession... Hey, but what about Tarantino's questionable liaison with his actress Uma Thurman? Wasn't QT once engaged to Mira Sorvino (who claims to have been abused by QT mentor Harvey)? How exactly does the circle curve anyway? What about QT's degenerate fetish for female feet that he indulges in many of his masterpieces? I mean, since we're going to get tawdry, why not at least stay on target? Reeks of disingenuous opportunism to divert off into an exploitively melodramatic conformation bias of a zeitgeist's preoccupation toward an ancillary's extraneous misdeeds while glossing over the proteged primary's less than always stellar professional etiquette in even equal balance. I merely must mention it here, to say that it wasn't worth more than a mention there, and to illustate the exasperatingly un-nuanced glibness with which it is handled. I think the time consuming tack-on was tact-less.
Then to fill out the feature length running time of this doc we get treated to the epic behind-the-scenes saga of its director as she pretends to have really stormed up that hill and took on the system to regain the rights to complete this lazy puff piece away from the crumbling Weinstein Company by essentially just waiting for it to all collaspe. For my tastes, this sidenote is a little too much self aggrandizing vanity from a mediocre sycophant to insert herself into the narrative and pat herself on the back about it. Whatever, guess she had an ax to grind and figured she'd sandwitch it in here, no matter how inelegantly.
So, in lieu of more interesting and pertinent material, we get unnecessary tangents that are unrelated to the actual contextual content of examining the creative factors that made Quentin Tarantino into the most iconic filmmaker of his generation.
I enjoyed much of what was presented here, I just wish it was deeper and more consistantly focused on its primary subject in earnest.
