The Power of Food in Quentin Tarantino’s Films

Few liv­ing film­mak­ers have proven as able to spin their obses­sions into cin­e­mat­ic gold as Quentin Taran­ti­no. The most obvi­ous of these spring from film­go­ing itself — he’s rein­vent­ed and con­tin­ues to rein­vent so many of his favorite tech­niques from genre pic­tures of all eras and nations — but it does­n’t take an obses­sion with Taran­ti­no to find oth­ers. His sweep­ing, often motor­mouthed­ly expressed ideas about vio­lence in mod­ern soci­ety will give film schol­ars plen­ty to write about for decades to come; those of baser inter­ests might find some sat­is­fac­tion track­ing the direc­tor’s pen­chant for shots of wom­en’s feet. And any­one who thrilled, ear­ly in Pulp Fic­tion, to John Tra­vol­ta and Samuel Jack­son’s con­ver­sa­tion about what the French call a Quar­ter Pounder with cheese knows that he also must main­tain a deep per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al inter­est in food.

Fur­ther­ing this very spe­cif­ic sub­field of Quentin Taran­ti­no Stud­ies, Dan Good­baum has edit­ed togeth­er the video above, which com­piles images from notable food scenes in Taran­ti­no’s work. (Grant­land’s Zach Dionne cat­a­logued twen­ty of them here.) Over it, we hear a seg­ment from Elvis Mitchell inter­view­ing Taran­ti­no on his radio show, The Treat­ment. Mitchell, ace noticer of his film­mak­ing guests’ themes, tricks, and tics, men­tions to Taran­ti­no “how food is used for pow­er in your movies.” We then see and hear about the mean­ing of, among oth­er comestibles, the burg­er in Pulp Fic­tion, the nachos in Death Proof, the rice in Kill Bill Vol­ume 2 , the strudel in Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds, and all the sweets (tak­en from Leonar­do DiCapri­o’s real eat­ing habits) in Djan­go Unchained. “When you watch Jack­ie Brown,” Taran­ti­no says, “you want a screw­driv­er.” We see a shot of the drink, albeit dom­i­nat­ed by Patri­cia Arquet­te’s feet. But that’s anoth­er video.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wes Ander­son from Above. Quentin Taran­ti­no from Below

The Best of Quentin Taran­ti­no: Cel­e­brat­ing the Director’s 50th Birth­day with our Favorite Videos

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.