Читать книгу Quentin Tarantino - The Man, The Myths and the Movies - Wensley Clarkson - Страница 18

TORRANCE, SOUTH BAY, CALIFORNIA, SUMMER 1973

To a certain extent, the story of Torrance’s post World War II boom is the story of America during that period. Soldiers returned from Europe and Asia and settled down in suburban houses with lawns to tend and cars, appliances and furniture to buy. Then came exciting new devices called televisions; and three children – and a dog – to raise.

But away from the suburbs, in the built-up districts of the South Bay, blacks, Mexicans and white trash thrived in low rent, mixed-race areas. The area had more than its fair share of the infamous Southern California bike gangs, and out by the ocean was a nether world of massive oil refineries belching flames and smoke into a sooty sky. Yet just along the coastline were some of the world’s finest beaches. It was full of contradictions.

When Connie arrived in one of Torrance’s better neighbourhoods she had the dog, but only one child and little besides a television. Neighbours were initially inquisitive, but soon dismissive. Some were even horrified when they realised that Connie was not living with her son’s father. Quentin had just arrived back in the Los Angeles area from Tennessee, only vaguely hinting at the horrors he had suffered at the hands of his grandmother. Probably out of concern for his mother, with her health and divorce problems, he did not make a fuss. But then disaster struck when his beloved dog Baron died after being hit by a car.

Quentin was more than just heartbroken, he was devastated. Baron had become his friend, brother and pet all rolled into one. He cried for days afterwards. Connie tried to console him and hoped that he would eventually get over it, but little Quentin just couldn’t understand why Baron had abandoned him for ever.

Apart from Baron, the only other consistent character in his life was GI Joe. Quentin began inventing more and more sophisticated scenarios for his small army. Having seen new movies that caught his imagination, his ambition was still firm – he wanted to be an actor and he was honing his skills through those dolls.

Not long afterwards, Connie bought Quentin an Old English Sheepdog which was immediately christened Conde Azul (Spanish for ‘Count Blue’, according to Connie).

The name was dreamed up by Connie’s latest boyfriend, ‘a dishy Guatemalan’. While Quentin was delighted with the dog, he made it absolutely clear that Conde Azul could never be considered a replacement for Baron.

Conde’s appearance on the scene and Connie’s return to good health coincided with a marked improvement in the family’s living standards. Connie was rising fast through the managerial ranks of the healthcare company and her salary was going up in leaps and bounds.

Meanwhile, Quentin’s growing obsession with movies led him to try his hand at writing scripts as early as the sixth grade. One particularly moving piece was constructed specifically as a tribute to the only girl of his age that he was remotely interested in – child actress Tatum O’Neal.

Quentin got quite emotional when watching Tatum’s Oscar-winning performance in Paper Moon, co-starring her father, Ryan.

In his locker at school, he had press photos of the young actress covering every inch of the inside of the door. Connie noticed that each time he caught a glimpse of her on television, he would go weak at the knees. It took months, and a lot of ribbing from his classmates, before he accepted that he would never actually get to meet Tatum, let alone go on a date with her. After this, he rapidly retreated into his role as school geek.

Quentin never once formed an equivalent attachment to any of the girls at school. He had hidden his true emotions by doting on Tatum because he knew he could not possibly get near her in real life. Like Connie, he had already discovered that it was much easier to form attachments to celluloid fantasy figures.

Connie’s decision to splash out on a sumptuous split-level rented house in the Palo del Amo Woods area of Torrance certainly improved the standard of life for both mother and son. It was a palace compared to what they had been used to. Besides a huge den, where Quentin could indulge his superhero fantasies, there was a vast living room, with an incredibly kitsch rock fireplace and a large kitchen and dining area. Best of all, there was a ten-foot-deep swimming pool complete with diving board. The only problem was that Quentin couldn’t swim. A few weeks of private tuition followed and he finally got the hang of it – just.

But thanks to that pool, Quentin went from being the nerd nobody wanted to know to one of the most popular kids in class. Most afternoons after school, at least three or four of his new best friends would herd into the pool. Conde Azul would go crazy every time the kids dived under the water for fear that they would drown.

When temperatures topped the nineties, Connie had the dog’s shaggy coat shaved off to make him more comfortable.

‘But the result was that he looked a kinda weird dog,’ she explains. ‘His face was still hairy but the rest of him looked like a greyhound.’

Quentin’s mother was also surprised to discover the dog’s sensitive nature. ‘I sat by the side of the pool as Quentin and his friends jumped in and just couldn’t stop laughing at Conde Azul. He looked ridiculous. Suddenly I looked at his face and realised he was mortified. Quentin later told me off about that. “Dogs have feelings too, Mom,” he told me.’

With Quentin’s new-found popularity came a fresh awareness of race and class. He was now 12 years old. He would often bring back a mixed group of friends and he knew that some of his classmates had less money than others.

Later criticism of his attitude towards blacks in his movies brought this response from Connie: ‘Quentin understands racial minorities more than anyone else in Hollywood. He films it as he sees it and he saw it all while growing up.’

But one aspect of life that Quentin could never come to terms with was sport. He was too awkward and gangly to be good at most school sports and, although he had started swimming regularly, he tended to flop and splash all over the place.

Connie even bought season tickets for the LA Lakers basketball games and the Rams football games in a last-ditch attempt to get her son more interested in such activities. But Quentin refused point blank to attend any of the games. Instead, he tried to persuade his mother to give him the cost of a ticket so he could buy himself a hamburger or hot dog and then go to a movie theatre.

Connie often ended up taking her son’s friends to the Lakers and Rams games simply because she couldn’t bear to see such valuable seats going to waste.

Quentin insisted that sport was stupid, boring and brutal. His own theory was that nobody really liked sport. He actually believed that men felt they should adore sport, so they pretended to do so.

Quentin was equally dismissive about some of his mother’s friends, who were forever holding forth about how marvellous The Who rock group were.

‘I don’t think anyone really likes that band,’ he said later. ‘Everyone thinks they are supposed to like The Who, so they just pretend. They’re afraid to say the emperor has no clothes.’

When Quentin reached his early teens, the by-now relatively wealthy and successful Connie decided it was time to travel and see something of the world. Unfortunately she never encouraged her young son to accompany her. Today, Connie insists she had no idea that Quentin was even remotely interested in travelling with her. ‘I would have taken him all over the world with me if I had known.’

Instead, schoolboy Quentin Zastoupil was left alone at the family home in Torrance with a housekeeper, as Connie tried to forget her two disastrous marriages by escaping to exotic places.

While she was away, Quentin would slip out to a nearby movie theatre and watch the latest releases. He actually preferred going on his own because there were fewer distractions and he could really concentrate, memorising the lines and even the credits at the end of each film. Quentin also spent a lot of time in the rougher neighbourhood of Carson, where the Carson Twin Cinema showed kung-fu movies as well as Allied International low-budget specials like The Van, one of the first films ever made by Danny DeVito. Quentin also liked sneaking out to see naughty late-night Roger Corman double bills like The Student Teachers and Night Call Nurses.

At other times he went to the Del Amo Mall Theatre to see the latest Hollywood blockbusters. When he was 13 he fell in love with the horror classic Carrie, directed by Brian de Palma (who later became his directorial hero) and starring John Travolta. A few days after seeing it for the second time in a week, he walked into a Miller’s Outpost with Connie and spotted a redneck puffy vest and a red flannel shirt just like the one worn by Travolta in the movie. Connie reluctantly bought her son the outfit and he wore it for weeks afterwards.

Quentin’s childhood centred on going to those grind houses and the art houses and he loved them both equally. The less commercial movies showed him a world he had never experienced and that he was anxious to learn about, while the Hollywood films proved just how brilliant some blockbusters could be.

Quentin began to list all the movies he had seen, although he would only count the ones he’d watched in a movie theatre, rather than on television. He’d circle the ones he thought were good and eventually built up the list to more than 200.

Meanwhile, between long hours at work and regular trips abroad, Connie finally found time to tell her son about the birds and bees.

Years later, she explains her actions in intriguingly businesslike terms. ‘I have been in management since my early twenties and I don’t have any trouble coping with such issues. I was determined that there should be some measure of control. I was genuinely worried about what effect being a single mother would have on a child in such matters.’

So, one day after school, Connie announced that she had something very important to tell Quentin and would he please join her in the living room. Quentin was mystified. He wondered what on earth he had done wrong this time. He had also got used to running his own life and couldn’t quite cope with the prospect of actually sitting down with his mother and talking to her.

‘It’s time we had a talk,’ muttered Connie.

That was all Quentin needed to hear to know exactly what was coming next. He had been to enough movies to recognise that classic line. He tried to move out of his chair. But Connie would not let him get up. Five minutes later, Quentin was allowed to leave the room after he had heard his mother describe male and female anatomy in such direct terms that it threatened to put him off sex for life.

In fact Quentin already knew all about sex from some of the racier movies he had seen. However, hearing his mother explain it in such graphic detail was enough to dampen his interest for many years. At that time, his only love affair was with the cinema and it was proving a time-consuming and expensive mistress.

Then, out of the blue, Quentin found religion – thanks to his best friend at the time, Kevin Minky. The two boys met at the Hawthorne Christian School on the borders between Torrance and Harbor City. Connie, a strictly non-practising Catholic, had sent 12-year-old Quentin to this private school in preference to the local junior high school where drugs and crime were prevalent, even in a suburban community such as Torrance.

Young Kevin proved a very significant influence on Quentin and the two boys began attending a local Protestant church every Sunday. Connie felt she could not stop Quentin since he was so firm in his own opinions and beliefs. She also tended to go through bouts of guilt about her efforts as a single parent. Quentin was entitled to experiment with different aspects of his life. Why shouldn’t that include going to church, which was hardly in the same league as drinking or taking drugs?

Quentin became hooked on God after spending hours discussing the church with his friend Kevin, who lived in nearby Palos Verdes. He was intrigued by religion because it was something that had never really been tackled throughout his childhood. Quentin believed he had missed out badly and he began to theorise about God, almost as much as the movies. For the next two years, Quentin became an avid churchgoer, even though his mother would never go near a house of God. Quentin was undoubtedly intrigued by the mystical elements of religion and he felt much more secure now that he had discovered God. Christianity was a substitute for certain basic ingredients missing from his home life. At this stage, the church seemed much more real than television or films. However, he eventually started to question the wisdom of God’s words and became less interested in it all in his mid-teens.

Quentin left the Hawthorne Christian School when he was 14, having nagged Connie to let him go to the local high school because he was intrigued by the multicultural American free school system. Connie, despite her wide racial mix of friends, was anxious. She didn’t mind him knocking around with kids from all sorts of backgrounds, just as long as she knew precisely who they were.

In the end, they both compromised and Quentin attended a more middle-of-the-road, state-supported school called the Norbonne, on the edge of Torrance. He had difficulties from the beginning and soon started playing truant, often watching films at the two-dollar afternoon matinee performances at local movie theatres. Connie, frequently preoccupied by her high-powered job, was often the last person to discover her son was skipping classes.

When she did eventually find out, she was furious, but concluded that Quentin just wasn’t cut out for school. Connie decided to deal with the situation before he got himself into big trouble wandering the streets of Torrance. She preferred him to get a job rather than continue to play truant. So Quentin quit school before he had completed the tenth grade. He had, in effect, dropped out at just 15 years of age.

By this time, Quentin was well over six feet tall and mature for his age. He had taught himself how to survive on the mean streets of Los Angeles, and the few friends he had tended to be a couple of years older. He had even developed a taste for beer, but could barely afford the bus ride to meet his pals, let alone a round of drinks in one of their favourite dives.

Quentin started to get reckless. There were lots of things he wanted but couldn’t afford. He had read every book and comic in his room at least twice and he felt increasingly bitter about his lack of income. Connie still paid him an allowance, but she made it crystal clear that she would not support him for much longer.

So, one day when he was browsing in a local K-Mart near the family home in Torrance, he found himself tempted into committing a crime. The Elmore Leonard novel The Switch caught his eye. It was the writer’s latest work and Quentin – a keen fan since the age of 12 – could not resist the urge to take it. He snatched the brightly coloured paperback and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

But, unlike the heroes of his films 15 years later, Quentin did not get very far. A store detective collared him just as he stepped outside into the bright Californian sunshine.

Thirty minutes later, a black and white Torrance City police cruiser – motto ‘To Protect and Serve’ – rolled up outside Connie’s house. Neighbours peeked from behind their drapes as the gangly youth was escorted to the front door in handcuffs.

Connie was infuriated because she had always been incredibly generous about allowing Quentin any books and records he wanted. And she was doubly annoyed when she found a $5 bill in his room that he could have used to buy the book.

To Quentin it was just one of those things… ‘I think I’ll do it. I’m here and I want to do it. I don’t have the money on me so I’ll just take it.’ The police officers were very understanding and informed Connie that her son had been so nervous after his arrest that he had burst into tears, and they’d decided to give him a warning rather than charge him. The policemen were concerned when they heard there was no father at home, but as soon as they met Connie they decided she more than made up for the missing parent.

Connie was so angry she grounded Quentin for the entire summer of 1979. She would only allow him out for specific activities, like attending the Torrance Community Theatre Workshop he had only just enrolled in. He also said he had been offered a part-time job as an usher at a local theatre. Connie was relieved. Quentin’s arrest seemed to have shaken some sense into him.

At the workshop, Quentin got one of the lead roles in the progressive play, Two and Two Makes Sex. No one actually realised that he was only 15 at the time. Quentin played the husband in a twenties couple who swapped partners with a couple in their forties. Connie attended the first night and was impressed by her son’s performance. ‘He was very believable as an actor and I forgot he was my son within minutes of seeing him up there on the stage,’ she explains.

There was also the obligatory interpretation of Romeo and Juliet during which Quentin made a less-than-comfortable attempt at the male lead role.

At this point, Quentin went to the trouble of renaming himself Quentin Tarantino after his teacher at the Torrance Community Theatre Workshop said it sounded ‘really cool’. Quentin told Connie that he did it because he was seriously planning a career as an actor. His mother was just pleased that he wasn’t getting into any more trouble. As far as she was concerned, Quentin could call himself Jack the Ripper as long as he kept himself on the straight and narrow.

As Quentin later wrote in a Pulp Fiction scene between boxer Butch and the dishy Colombian cabbie Esmeralda, who helps him flee from a fixed fight, ‘In America, honey, names don’t mean shit.’