Culture time !!! Hahaaa… (wanna try some new stuffs on the appearance of this one) So…
I read Hov’s conversation with Elvis Mitchell in the Interview mag february issue. He loves Pulp Fiction (it influenced his writing of Meet The Parents) ! Yep… Well I guess it’s hard not to, Google it and you’ll see those millions of fans out there.
I re-watched the movie. Again. For the 687th time ! Can’t help, IT IS still my favorite flick ever. Period. Of course there were Black Cat White Cat, Beijing Bicycle, The Taste of Others, Kikujiro, The Crime of Padre Amaro, Old Boy… anyway, just a bunch of other movies I like very much. But in my list, only Fargo may come close to this classic. From the story to the dialogues to the soundtrack to the framing to the calibration to the casting to… whatever ! I mean, all Tarantino’s joints are damn good, this one is BANANA !!! Pulp Fiction became my… bedside book !
I remember I couldn’t see it in theatre cause I was too young, so Sitraka gave me that pirate VHS tape he brought from Canada. The movie kicked my a$$ so hard I wrote my first screenplay right after I saw it ! Hahahaaa… A so-called screenplay I should say. It was titled Une Journée De Merde and my buddy Thibault should have played the leading character !! I never finished it though. Unfortunately (or luckily, it depends !) I lost the 3.5inches 120 Mb floppy disk (!) in which I saved it. It was in 1996, USB key wasn’t even a fantasy back then. In short, Pulp Fiction just marked the beginning of my relationship with… images.
I’m seeing Tarantino’s work like a good old 90s Hip Hop track. He samples as good as DJ Premier. The way he picks references here and there and put them together to make something on his own is insanely brilliant. The travelling shot at Jack Rabbit Slim reminds me of Ray Liotta bringing Lorraine Bracco through a restaurant’s kitchen in Goodfellas. And I’m pretty sure the drug dealing scene came from Iceberg Slim’s Pimp novel… That’s exactly what Tarantino’s haters blame him for. Plagiarism. Eternal debate. That’s not true to me.
Like many, I think they can’t stand the fact that his (mostly cinematographic) culture is so huge that it ultimately defines his vision. Simple as that. Once you assume you’re inspired, sorry but you can’t be accused of plagiarism anymore. It’s in the dictionary ! This has nothing to do with movies but I feel Nigo faces the same unfair controversy. People who diss him don’t see that A Bathing Ape’s DNA is based on pop art and pop culture combined with Hip Hop roots, and it’s his own knowledge and sense of style that allow him to appropriate those cultures in a way it makes his brand so unique. Even if a pair of Bapestas looks exactly the same than a pair of Nike Air Force One, it’s not.
I relate to that. Getting inspiration from Issermann to Aagaard and everyone in between (I know, that’s large) to humbly build my own creative identity is what’s defining my life’s trip. Sample and twist, that’s what it is. Quentin Tarantino is a genius, Nigo the same, I’m still a idiot…
By the way, you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in France ?!…
P.S : I just noticed this is my first post not full of cusswords ! That’s the reason why I love culture ! Hahahaaa… SH*T !!!
