The Twilit Ten:

putting out the fire with gasoline

in the allegorical film art

of

Quentin Tarantino

by

Gary W. Wright

        Like most of the film artists who emerged in the Eighties and Nineties, the iconoclastically and indomitably indie docufeature film art of Quentin Jerome Tarantino exploded out of and raged against the horrifying and outraging helicopter crash that killed actor/writer/director Victor “Vic” Morrow and illegally hired and employed child extras Renee Chen and Myca Le around 2:20 am in the early morning of July 23, 1982 on the George Folsey jr. produced John Landis set of the twilit, allegorical, computer generated imagery [CGI] enhanced, and Landis and Steven Spielberg executive produced and Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall produced Landis, Spielberg, Joe Dante, and George Miller docufeature film TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE [1983].  A disaster so game changing that youthful Boomer Brat audiences, soon to be dubbed “Generation X”, turned against Folsey jr., Kennedy, Landis, Marshall, Spielberg and, when he shocked, equally outraged, and disappointed Gen X by helping Kennedy, Marshall, and Spielberg escape justice in the TZ disaster, George Lucas jr., and embraced equally horrified and outraged young film artists like Luc Besson, Kathryn Bigelow, Tim Burton, James Cameron, Alex Cox, and Spike Lee and older, established, and exuberantly indie and iconoclastic film artists like David Cronenberg, Terry Gilliam, and David Lynch who shared the outrage and pain of Gen X.

        However, while sharing the pain and outrage of Gen X, Boomer film artists were not born in the mid-Sixties to mid-Seventies like Gen X, nor did they grow up with the high hopes and dreams of a better world for all people the filled the restless and rebellious Sixties and Seventies with its exuberant, sundrenched, and Skyrockin’ Good Force be dashed by the equally horrifying, outraging, embittering, and dispiriting lack of jobs and low wages and the permanent part-time hours with no benefits, bonuses, or pensions for the few jobs that could be found in the Edgy Eighties and Nasty Nineties.  A dismal socioeconomic situation that increased the pain and the rage of Gen X, and caused them to turn to Gen X film artists who shared and sympathized with their rage and pain.  Thus, the Boomer Brats of Gen X were pleased when the Nasty Nineties brought with it not just the end of the Cold War at last but also Tarantino, the twilit tornado from Knoxville, Tennessee who fully embodied and expressed their anger, angst, bitterness, frustration, depression, dreams, nightmares, hopes, fears, pessimism, optimism, cynicism, and caustic amusement, causing them to eagerly embrace him and his indie docufeature film art when he arrived in the early Nineties and immediately establish his cinematic and sociocultural importance starting with his first indomitably iconoclastic film, the twilit, allegorical, and CGI free indie docufeature film RESERVOIR DOGS [1992], fittingly released on January 21, 1992 to truly kick off a bold new year and era of film art.

“A psychopath ain’t a professional.

You can’t work with a psychopath.”

        Indeed, Tarantino made his twilit anger, bitterness, despair, and frustration implicitly clear in this first fine feature film.