Quentin Tarantino - The Man, The Myths and the Movies. Wensley Clarkson

      Craig Hamann – small, dark, shy bank teller – had always wanted to act but the cost of simply surviving in Los Angeles made it impossible for him to do anything about it. He had taken a ‘normal’ job in order to pay for rent and food. Then into the bank walked attractive Jena Lucarelli, wife of the drama coach at the James Best Acting School. She had exchanged pleasantries with Craig on a number of occasions and knew he was interested in acting. ‘Why not join the school?’ she said. ‘We’d love to have you.’

      So it was that three days later Craig Hamann, then the wrong side of 25 but looking considerably younger, walked into the life of Quentin Tarantino.

      Hamann was an altogether different proposition from Quentin’s other friends at the school, like Rich Turner. Here was a man on the edge, constantly losing his temper, always willing to argue a point. Quentin was immediately attracted to the moody Hamann. This guy is wild, he told himself, within minutes of being introduced to him.

      Quentin rapidly joined forces with Hamann and another rebel, Rick Squery, and the threesome fast managed to cause as much controversy as is possible in a sedate place like the James Best Acting School. They began borrowing scenes from controversial movies and reworking them during performances in front of their class. ‘We were always coming up with ideas. We wanted to do our own stunts, everything. Nothing fazed us,’ explains Hamann.

      To Quentin these two guys were like a breath of fresh air. One day, he and his two friends decided it would be a gas to recreate a scene from John Carpenter’s Escape from New York. Quentin, Hamann and Squery had first been turned on to Carpenter thanks to his highly acclaimed but extremely low-budget Assault on Precinct 13, so it seemed only natural to perform what they considered to be a tribute to a master director.

      Hamann decided that, for the sake of authenticity, he would bring in his own awesome collection of real guns to use as props. They included an M16 assault rifle, a .41 Magnum, a pump-action shotgun and a whole selection of knives. ‘That really bothered people,’ admits Hamann now. ‘They got kinda freaked out, I guess.’

      The person it bothered most was acting teacher Jack Lucarelli. He stopped the trio’s performance in mid-sentence and insisted on inspecting the weapons just to make sure there were no stray bullets still in them.

      Hamann was so determined to retain the authenticity that from then on he insisted on bringing in the guns each time there was a relevant scene to act out. Tension grew between him and coach Lucarelli. While others in the class were rewriting scenes from dramas like Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the threesome would be putting their own spin on the grisly shoot-out from Jimmy Cagney’s White Heat.

      Quentin and Hamann were quickly acknowledged by the other students as fine writers, even though their choice of material was seen as rather too gory at times. They were often secretly asked to write scenes for other people to perform. Quentin didn’t mind because he believed that practice made perfect and the more writing he did the better.

      However, when he and his friends acted out their own crime-riddled mini-plays, some of their classmates found the content quite disturbing. ‘Craig, especially, would have a mad glint in his eye and it was pretty weird stuff at times,’ recalls one student. ‘Killings, maimings, decapitation. You name it and they did it.’

      Quentin would go out of his way to be as politically incorrect as possible, stoutly defending Sylvester Stallone in fierce arguments with teacher Jack Lucarelli, who tended to look down his nose at such macho performers.

      Quentin and his friends did not really consider themselves rebels. They simply had a passion for gangster movies and those bleak film noirs of the 1950s.

      Despite being so much younger than his two friends, Quentin could more than hold his own when it came to talking about movies. At the time, he was particularly nuts about Jim McBride’s Breathless, starring Richard Gere. The others were not so keen and took some persuading to even agree to see the movie.

      Quentin had first seen Breathless at a cinema in a shopping mall near his home. He fell in love with Breathless because the movie incorporated all his obsessions – comic books, popular music, rockabilly. In particular, Richard Gere’s character was completely rockabilly. Quentin loved the way the movie was shot as if Los Angeles had been turned into a back-lot.

      Later, Quentin told his friends at his favourite comic book store all about Breathless and they couldn’t get over how he seemed to know virtually all the dialogue word-for-word. The scenes Quentin liked best were the ones where the characters read comic books as a test of true love.

      Back at the acting school, Quentin eventually managed to get Craig Hamman to see Breathless. Having been virtually dragged into a cinema, Hamman also fell in love with the film and realised that Quentin had incredibly good taste in movies. It also became increasingly clear to him that Quentin had educated himself through film.

      Curiously, throughout Quentin’s first year at the James Best Acting School, he never once admitted he was working in a daytime job at the Pussycat porno theatre. All his fellow students just presumed he was paying for his acting tuition by doing some part-time job or other and they still had no idea how young he was.

      Quentin constantly lectured his friends Hamann, Squery and Turner about his love for ‘blaxploitation’ movies, which had started with Shaft! in 1971 and led to at least a dozen poor imitations. Quentin seemed completely enamoured with the language and the music in those movies, even though the storylines were often far from satisfactory.

      The big difference between Craig Hamann and Quentin’s other friends in and out of acting school was that Hamann seemed to be on a knife-edge virtually the whole time. He was the kind of guy who would lose his rag with anyone for the smallest of reasons. Quentin seemed to understand this, although there were occasions when even Quentin pushed his friend too far.

      During one incident at the James Best Acting School, Quentin and Hamann were acting out a scene in which Hamann – armed with his real M16 assault rifle – was supposed to do a stick-up on Quentin, who was to instantly drop his gun: Hamann’s real .41 Magnum.

      ‘Drop it!’ barked Hamann at Quentin in front of the entire class.

      ‘Nope,’ replied Quentin, much to everyone’s amusement because this dialogue was definitely not in the script.

      Then Quentin turned to their teacher Lucarelli and said, ‘Jack, he has to command me much stronger than that.’

      Hamann was incensed that his friend should humiliate him in front of the other students. He paused for breath, then screamed the command again. This time Quentin dropped his weapon with a told-you-so expression on his face.

      An hour later, Quentin walked into the bathroom at the school and found Hamann alone. He was still fuming about what had happened earlier.

      ‘Just fuck off, Quentin. Fuck you.’

      Quentin was mortified and walked straight out of the bathroom. Thirty seconds later he returned, obviously close to tears.

      ‘Craig, I know you got a bad temper but you save your “fuck you”s for somebody who doesn’t love you.’

      When Quentin said that, Hamann was overcome with remorse. He hugged his friend and apologised for his outburst. Hamann never forgot that incident because he felt it bonded the two friends together forever.

      Quentin