Quentin Tarantino vowed as a kid never to share a ‘penny’ with his mom
Quentin Tarantino has revealed in a new interview that he vowed as a kid never to share a penny of his movie-making fortune with his mother, because she allegedly discouraged his writing career.
The Oscar-winner told “Billions” co-creator Brian Koppelman on his acclaimed podcast, “The Moment,” that he first began writing screenplays in grade school, but got in trouble with his teachers, who, “looked at it as a defiant act of rebellion that I’m doing this instead of my school work.”
The “Pulp Fiction” director reportedly wrote a script called, “Captain Peachfuzz and the Anchovy Bandit” when he was just 12.
Tarantino shared with Koppelman that he struggled academically in school, and that, “my mom always had a hard time about my scholastic non-ability.”
When Tarantino was in trouble for writing the screenplays in school, he recalled of his mom, “she was bitching at me… about that…. and then in the middle of her little tirade, she said, ‘Oh, and by the way, this little ‘writing career,’ with the finger quotes and everything. This little ‘writing career’ that you’re doing? That s–t is over!’”
Tarantino recalled, “And when she said that to me in that sarcastic way, I was in my head, and I go, ‘OK, lady. When I become a successful writer, you will never see penny one from my success. There will be no house for you. There’s no vacation for you, no Elvis Cadillac for mommy. You get nothing. Because you said that.”
Koppelman asked Tarantino, “Did you stick to that?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Tarantino said. “I helped her out with a jam with the IRS. But no house. No Cadillac, no house.”
Tarantino said his mother is still living, but added of his decision long ago to cut her out financially, “There are consequences for your words as you deal with your children, remember there are consequences for your sarcastic tone about what’s meaningful to them.”
His mother, Connie, was reportedly 16 when she gave birth to the future directing icon in Tennessee, and they subsequently moved to LA when Tarantino was 4.
The New Yorker wrote in 2003 of the director’s childhood that one biography, “correct[ed] the Agee-esque legend that had grown up around Tarantino since the release of ‘Reservoir Dogs’: that he was a dirt-poor illiterate hillbilly from Tennessee, brought up by a teen-age dropout.”
The piece quoted Tarantino’s mother as telling film critic Jami Bernard — who penned the book, “Quentin Tarantino: The Man and His Movies” — “Quentin would have you believe he was raised by wolves.” But the New Yorker reported of Connie, “It’s true that she was born in Tennessee and had Quentin when she was sixteen, but he was an accident. She got married in order to become an emancipated minor and go to college; she was, therefore, furious to discover that she was pregnant after her husband, Tony Tarantino, had assured her that he was sterile. She was angry enough to divorce him, and she didn’t introduce him to his son until Quentin was a few years old.”
During the wide-ranging 90-minute talk on “The Moment,” Tarantino also detailed how he serendipitously cast Christophe Waltz in his 2009 epic, “Inglourious Basterds,” and then inventively had Waltz rehearse separately from the rest of the cast, including Brad Pitt, to keep the foreign actor’s vast talents under wraps till cameras rolled.
He also discussed his new novelization of “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.”
Koppelman — whose credits also include “Rounders” and “Ocean’s Thirteen” with writing partner David Levien — recounted how he’d read and admired Tarantino’s screenplays for “Natural Born Killers” and “True Romance” before they were ever sold as films. He also told Tarantino of his writing: “Thank you for all the gifts that you’ve given me. You read me the first 15 pages of ‘Kill Bill’ on an airplane one time… it was really an incredible experience, and so inspiring. Just the impact your work has had on me is really indescribable.”
Tarantino also mentioned he is a “Billions” fan who unusually discovered the Showtime series in Israel. The director, whose wife is Israeli, reportedly moved to Tel Aviv for three months, but wound up staying longer because of the coronavirus pandemic.
source: pagesix.com
