Quentin Tarantino Tells You About The Actors & Directors Who Provided the Inspiration for “Reservoir Dogs”

Quentin Taran­ti­no has nev­er been one to shy away from shar­ing his views on film­mak­ing with the pub­lic, and we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about his 2008 and 2012 lists of the great­est movies ever made. Even a casu­al com­par­i­son of his 2008 and 2012 picks, how­ev­er, shows that the one­time video store clerk’s tastes are liable to change over time. When mak­ing his direc­to­r­i­al debut with Reser­voir Dogs (1992), Taran­ti­no made anoth­er list; on the sec­ond page of the script, under a head­ing marked “Ded­i­cat­ed to:” Taran­ti­no enu­mer­at­ed the actors and direc­tors who had inspired him to make what Empire Mag­a­zine would rank the great­est inde­pen­dent film of all time.

In the video above, which was shot some years after Reser­voir Dogs’ release, Taran­ti­no revis­its this list and gives his lat­est thoughts on its con­stituents. Some are scarce­ly-remem­bered fig­ures, such as the king of ‘60s and ’70s mis­fit roles Tim­o­thy Carey whom Taran­ti­no wry­ly remem­bers treat­ing flat­u­lence “almost like a reli­gion.” Oth­ers include then obscure actors on their way to becom­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly-rec­og­nized names, such as Chow Yun Fat. Although Taran­ti­no ini­tial­ly saw some­thing effort­less­ly cool about Fat, rem­i­nis­cent of trench­coat-wear­ing French star Alain Delon, he claims to have since down­grad­ed his opin­ion of the Hong Kong actor. And don’t even get him start­ed on Jean-Luc Godard. For the full list accom­pa­nied by Tarantino’s col­or­ful com­men­tary, check out the video.

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Quentin Tarantino’s Hand­writ­ten List of the 11 “Great­est Movies”

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists the 12 Great­est Films of All Time: From Taxi Dri­ver to The Bad News Bears

Tarantino’s 10 Favorite Films of 2013

Quentin Taran­ti­no Lists His Favorite Films Since 1992