Tarantino record collection is the soundtrack to his success
If anyone can be trusted to put a dampener on a perfectly pleasant emotional experience, it’s a marketing department. When Spotify’s head of sales for the entertainment industry, Andi Frieder, commented on filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s recent takeover of the streaming service’s “Film and TV Favourites” playlist, it’s fair to say no one actually got too excited. with a statement by saying, “o“Our platform empowers entertainment marketers like such as Columbia Pictures to excite consumers about upcoming releases while delivering moments of discovery for our millions of users and celebrate creators,,”” he said., it’s fair to say no one actually got too excited.
Dig beneath the corporate jargon, however, and they people did get excited about the playlist itself. Tarantino knows his music – surely if he wasn’t so busy making great films he’ds be a must-see DJ – and uses it to great effect in his films. Tarantino The filmmaker’s Spotify selection featured music from his films, including Johnny Cash’s A Satisfied Mind (Kill Bill Vol 2), The White Stripes’ Apple Blossom (The Hateful Eight), Dusty Springfield’s Son of a Preacher Man (Pulp Fiction), and Bill Withers’s Who is He (Jackie
Brown) and much more. There are few, if any, directors in the modern era who are better at utilising music to underscore their films,, and many scenes in Tarantino’s films work are elevated to iconic status purely by his choice of soundtrack. Take the scene in Reservoir Dogs where in which Michael Madsen’s Mr White slices off a cop’s ear with a razor. It’s visually arresting, no doubt, but what’s the thing you remember most? In my case, and quite likely yours, It’s less likely it’s notto be the gruesome image of tortures unfolding on screen, but than the dulcet tones of Scottish folk rock band Stealer’s Wheel pumping out of the stereo speakers. I can’t imagine a cop’s ear ever being severed to any tune other than Stuck in the Middle with You. Admittedly, I don’t dedicate a large portion of my time to imagining cops’ ears beings evered cut off, but if I did, that song would absolutely be the soundtrack, 100 per cent of the time.
Tarantino has spoken himself about the importance of music in his movies, in the booklet that accompanied the compilation album The Tarantino Connection. In his introduction to the album, the director noted: “One of the things I do when I am starting a movie, when I’m writing a movie or when I have an idea for a film is, I go through my record collection and just start playing songs, trying to find the personality of the movie, find the spirit of the movie. Then “boom”, eventually I’ll hit one, two or three songs or one song in particular, ‘oh, this will be a great opening credit song’..’’”
He continued: “That’s one of the things about using music in movies that’s so cool, is the fact that if you do it right, if you use the right song, in the right scene; – really when you take songs and put them in a sequence in a movie right, it’s about as cinematic a thing as you can do. You are really doing what movies do better than any other art form; it really works in this visceral, emotional, cinematic way that’s just really special.”
Tarantino is absolutely correct. His films are almost defined by their soundtracks. Just Much as I could never hear Stuck in the Middle With You without thinking of Reservoir Dogs, I can never hear Nancy Sinatra’s Bang Bang without an image of a yellow-catsuit-clad, sword-wielding Uma Thurman popping into my head.
Even Tarantino’s weaker films (and to be fair, he sets the bar high) leave you tapping your feet. Jackie Brown, for example, is for me the weakest link in Tarantino’s output to date. That in itself is a debate that could last all day – the film still manages an 87 per cent rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and there are fans out there who cite it as the director’s best movie.
F But for me, it lacks stunning visual moments like such as the climactic final standoff in Reservoir Dogs or the diner hold-up scene from Pulp
Fiction. Conversely, it may have Tarantino’s strongest soundtrack attached to it. From Bobby Womack to Johnny Cash, Tarantino has dug deep into his record collection – housed in an entire room of his Los Angeles home – and delivered an unforgettable aural experience that almost cancels out the slight disappointment, personally at least, of the visual one.
With Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in cinemas across the UAE this weekend, we can look forward to plenty more treats from the deepest recesses of Tarantino’s record music collection. Covers feature highly among the tracks on the latest film’s soundtrack, and Tarantino has rigidly stuck rigidly to using only songs that came out prior to the film’s 1969 setting. Vanilla Fudge’s psychedelic take on The Supremes’ You Keep Me Hanging On and Jose Feliciano’s version of The Mama’s and Papa’s California Dreamin’ are among the high points, and, like all of Tarantino’s films, you can go to the cinema safe in the knowledge that even if you don’t like the movie, you can close your eyes, drift away and be guaranteed two hours of musical education that you wouldn’t otherwise have had otherwise.
Tarantino has long stated that he intends to quit making movies after his 10th film, and Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood is his ninth to date. He has even intimated that if this