Quentin Tarantino - The Man, The Myths and the Movies. Wensley Clarkson
gaining a father and a big brother. Roger was so overwhelmed by the atmosphere in the house that he told his sister that living with her and her family was like growing up at Disneyland.
Curt even officially adopted Quentin just before his fourth birthday and the boy was called Quentin Zastoupil for the rest of his childhood. His birth certificate was legally changed and has remained that way ever since.
The next few years were the happiest in Quentin’s childhood.
The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the groove; – ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope’s final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths…
Connie watched the excitement in Quentin’s eyes as she read him the climax of Moby Dick. To make it more exciting for the four-year-old, she would imitate the sound of the waves hitting the side of the boat, then the huge splash as the giant whale crashed down into the surf.
Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
Moby Dick, first published in the 1840s, completely captured young Quentin’s imagination. The story of the cunning whale, which becomes the focus of hatred and superstition, appealed to the young boy. Quentin became obsessed with the fearsome yet courageous whale winning out against the loathsome Captain Ahab.
Connie could not stand ‘all the sugary nonsense’ that most people tended to read to their children. The realities of life had hit her hard between the eyes and she couldn’t help passing on that gritty approach to her beloved son.
‘I read him hard, real stories that came alive on the page, not some crap about stupid fluffy toy animals,’ she recalls. Other books read to Quentin included Gulliver’s Travels and Treasure Island.
At that time, Quentin started to develop a talent for mimicry. He also had a remarkably good memory for such a young child. He was forever reciting things around the house. Although Connie recognised this as evidence of some in-built talent, she also found it incredibly irritating. Quentin would drive Connie particularly crazy by memorising both sides of long-playing albums. She had one comedy album by a stand-up called Jose Mendes and the youngster would recite every joke verbatim. It was like having a demented but highly intelligent parrot in the house. Other times Quentin would listen to one particular Fats Domino record over and over again. His taste was already proving eclectic.
There were also musical albums like Dr Doolittle. Quentin knew all the songs and would constantly sing them – out of tune. Unlike most young boys, he wasn’t remotely interested in being a policeman, fireman or pilot when he grew up. His only desire was to be an actor. The bug had already bitten.
One diversion was when Connie bought Quentin a ragged, friendly mongrel puppy, which the little boy immediately named Baron. The spaniel/terrier mix instantly captivated Quentin and he lavished love and attention on the animal.
A few days after getting the dog, Connie had to forcibly drag Quentin away when she found him banging the puppy’s head against a wall in the back yard. Quentin thought he was being playful and had no idea he might be causing brain damage to the animal. Connie reckoned that Baron got ‘real slow’ after the little boy had battered his pet’s head against that concrete.
Quentin gradually started to appreciate that a gentler approach to the dog was preferable and the two became inseparable. Quentin would faithfully take the dog for a walk around the block at least twice a day.
However, after the family moved to the house in Alhambra, which was 15 miles south-east of Los Angeles, Baron became very disorientated and started disappearing with alarming regularity, only to show up in a local dog pound a few days later. It was all extremely distressing for Quentin, who couldn’t understand why the dog he cherished seemed so intent on running away.
A very emotional Quentin would frequently call Connie at work after he got home from school and discovered that Baron had gone missing yet again, and the dog pound had called to say they had him.
‘Baron’s in jail again, Mom,’ Quentin would tell his mother, before collapsing into floods of tears down the phone. Connie would then leave work early, pick Quentin up and rush round to the dog pound, where they’d retrieve Baron once again.
The only other friend Quentin had at this time was a boy called Todd, who lived three houses up from their home on 6th Street in Alhambra. The two little boys would play together in each other’s back yards. But Quentin was very possessive about some of his toys and often found it difficult to share them with other children.
By the age of four, Quentin had developed a virtual obsession with GI Joe dolls. (In Britain, they were called Action Men.) It was slightly ironic that he should take such an interest in these warlike toys, as Connie and Curt had very liberal views on the Vietnam war which was raging at the time.
California was probably the most divided state in the nation when it came to American involvement in Vietnam. Draft-card burnings and peace marches were becoming commonplace; a few American pacifists had even burned themselves to death in sympathy with the self-immolation of Buddhist monks in Saigon.
Woodstock was about to happen, and a strong counter-culture – with its roots in the anti-war movement – was growing. In California, hippies were appearing everywhere, from San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district to Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. Tie-dyed T-shirts, sandals, beads and bell-bottomed jeans were the uniform of the day. Both Connie and Curt supported the anti-war effort so strongly that they wore the bracelets of American POWs in memory of servicemen taken prisoner by the Viet Cong. Connie had the bracelet of an army captain who thankfully was eventually released and made it back to the United States. Her brother Roger was even posted to the Cambodian/Laotian border towards the end of the war.
Curt Zastoupil was entranced by anti-war troubadours like Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. He definitely swung in the direction of jazz, blues and folk music. Peter, Paul and Mary and a band called Scotch and Soda were among his favourites.
Connie had more varied taste in music, ranging from Tom Jones, Engelbert Humperdinck, Jack Jones and Frankie Avalon to certain Beatles tracks and even Isaac Hayes, Janis Joplin and Curtis Mayfield. Connie also liked some Rolling Stones tracks, despite her overall preference for the sweaty ballad school of singing. Her favourite group was a little-known ensemble called The Crooners. Sometimes she persuaded Curt to play his own version of The Beatles’ Day Tripper, but only when he was in the mood.
A sprinkling of poppier music followed in the early 1970s, including Stealer’s Wheel’s Stuck in the Middle with You. Connie was immensely proud of the fact that she liked everything from opera to country & western to soul to blues to rock ‘n’ roll.
Meanwhile, Quentin and his mini-army of GI Joes fought on in deepest Alhambra and poor Connie spent much of her son’s early childhood on her hands and knees, trying to put the little black plastic combat boots back on his toy soldiers. Her other task was to keep reassembling the dolls after Quentin had torn them limb from limb during particularly gruesome battle scenes. Connie still remembers how aggravated she would get because she and Quentin could never find the tiny black plastic bayonets that were forever going AWOL.
Quentin would set up vicious hand-to-hand combat scenes all over the house, usually after he had seen that evening’s television news containing harrowing footage of the real fighting in south-east Asia. The little boy’s voice could often be heard directing entire battle dramas, making sure that each scene worked in relation to the next.
One evening as she settled down on the settee with Curt to watch The Untouchables, Connie could not believe her ears.
‘KEEP YOUR FUCKING