THE 2006 RÉMY MARTIN® X.O HONOREES

Recipient Biographies

BRIDGE – Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino’s rise to fame is the stuff of Hollywood legend. Collecting his extensive knowledge of film literally on-the-job (he worked at Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, CA) rather than in the classroom, Tarantino developed a passion for all types of film, with a particular affinity for Hong Kong cinema.

His first big break as a filmmaker came when he met producer Lawrence Bender while working at Cinetel Productions. It was during that time that he finished the screenplay to "Reservoir Dogs" (1992) with his writing partner Roger Avary. The crime drama became the hit of the Sundance Film Festival in 1992 and garnered widespread critical acclaim. Tarantino became a legend in the UK and throughout the cult film circuit.

His next screenwriting efforts were “True Romance” (1993), which was directed by Tony Scott, and “Natural Born Killers” (1994), directed by Oliver Stone.

Tarantino returned to the director’s chair with the film “Pulp Fiction” (1994). Boasting an A-list cast, including Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman and Christopher Walken, the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the coveted Palme d’Or. “Pulp Fiction” went on to gross over $100 million domestically and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Tarantino and Avery came away with the Oscar Best Original Screenplay.

In 1995, Tarantino directed one fourth of the anthology “Four Rooms” (1995) with friends and fellow filmmakers Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez and Allison Anders. A year later, he wrote and co-starred with George Clooney in “From Dusk Til Dawn.”

As an actor, he started in small roles in independent features ("Sleep With Me" and "Somebody to Love", both 1994) and eventually was cast in low- and medium-budget studio pictures. He was the lead in the comic fantasy "Destiny Turns on the Radio" and played a hapless drug dealer in Robert Rodriguez's "Desperado" (both 1995). He played an unsympathetic version of himself as "QT" in Spike Lee's sex comedy "Girl 6" in 1996. Segueing to TV, Tarantino did a guest shot on Margaret Cho's ABC sitcom "All-American Girl" and directed an installment of the hit NBC medical drama "ER".

Tarantino and Bender expanded their production company A Band Apart (taken from "Bande a Part", the original French title of Jean-Luc Godard's 1964 classic "Band of Outsiders") to include A Band Apart Commercials and Rolling Thunder. The latter was a specialty distribution label under Miramax Pictures designed to acquire, distribute and market four films per year. The emphasis would be on visceral, exploitation-tinged genre movies. The first acquisition was a quirky Hong Kong import, Wong Kar-Wai's "Chungking Express" (1994; released in the USA in 1996).

In 1997, Tarantino adapted Elmore Leonard's novel "Rum Punch" and turned it into "Jackie Brown, a vehicle for actress Pam Grier.

After a hiatus, Tarantino came out with his self-penned script "Kill Bill," an unabashed if violently bloody valentine to the kung fu and blaxploitation films he loved as a youth. Miramax, the studio behind "Kill Bill," decided to issue the film in two parts just months away from each other as "Kill Bill, Vol. 1" (2003) and "Kill Bill, Vol. 2" (2004). "Kill Bill, Vol. 1" proved to be every bit as critically polarizing as each previous Tarantino effort. "Kill Bill, Vol. 2" spun the already established formula on its head when it scaled down the action in favor of unexpected character moments and the writer-director's characteristically absorbing dialogue.

Tarantino next appeared as a "special guest director" in director Robert Rodriguez and writer-artist Frank Miller's adaptation of Miller's crime noir comic book series "Sin City" (2005), with Tarantino helming the tense, eerie sequence within "The Big Fat Kill" storyline.

Continuing to demonstrate his love of a wide-ranging array of pop culture icons, Tarantino stepped behind the camera to direct the 2005 season finale of "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," which featured the final TV performance of Frankl Gorshin. As a performer, he had a cameo as himself in the ABC telepic "The Muppets' 'Wizard of Oz'" (2005).