Quentin Tarantino wrote three films that he was unable to direct for different reasons – see which films and why he left.
Quentin Tarantino he wrote all the films he directed, but he also wrote three films that he was unable to direct – here’s why. Tarantino’s career as a writer and filmmaker began in 1992 with the detective film Reservoir Dogs, who followed a group of thieves whose planned robbery of a jewelry store went terribly wrong, and to make matters worse, there was a disguised policeman among them. Although Reservoir Dogs is considered one of the most influential independent films of all time, his big break came two years later with another detective film: pulp Fiction.
These early films firmly established Tarantino’s visual and narrative style, along with his signature doses of violence, and opened many doors for him in the film industry. Tarantino said he will retire after making 10 films, but taking into account everyone he wrote, he has already exceeded that number – the trick here is that he has not directed all the films he has written. Instead, Tarantino left the director’s chair for three different filmmakers to bring their stories to life, although he did not always like the end result.
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First off True romance (1993), a romantic thriller starring Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette. The roadmap for True romance was Tarantino’s first for a major film, but as he was still new to the film industry, he was unable to direct True romance and Reservoir Dogs and ended up losing interest in the first one. The roadmap for True romance, then, it was sold and landed in the hands of Tony Scott, who changed the non-linear narrative to a more traditional one, but according to Tarantino, the final result was very faithful to the original script. However, the ending was changed and, although Tarantino was not initially on board with it, after watching the film, he agreed that this ending was more appropriate for the film that Scott made.
The following was Born Killers (1994), which he tried and failed to direct for $ 500,000, so he ended up selling the script to producers Jane Hamsher and Don Murphy, who sold it to Warner Bros. The script drew the attention of Oliver Stone, who together with screenwriter David Veloz and associate producer Richard Rutowski rewrote it, to the point that it was little like the original, so Tarantino only won a “story for” credit. Two years later, From Dusk Till Dawn was released, directed by Robert Rodriguez, friend of Tarantino, and with Tarantino playing the character Richie Gecko. In the early 1990s, Robert Kutzman hired Tarantino to write the script as his first paid writing assignment, and Tarantino was reportedly assigned to direct it, but decided to focus on the story and play Richie Gecko. After that, other directors became interested in bringing the story to life, but the big winner was Robert Rodriguez.
Funny, True romance and From Dusk Till Dawn are both considered part of the “Tarantino movie universe”, with the first being part of the “realer than real” level and the last on the “movie on film” side, which means that Clarence and Alabama watched the Gecko brothers fight some vampires at the movies. It is not known if there are other Quentin Tarantino scripts that could be directed by someone else, but it seems unlikely to happen now, as he is already a big name in the film industry and can get the budget and everything you need to make any movie you want.
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