How Quentin Tarantino’s One-Night “Detest Fest” Changed His Life & Set Him on the Path to Pulp Fiction

Just days ago, a game came out whose unlike­ly premise has already drawn a good deal of atten­tion. “Man­age your very own video store in the ear­ly 90s!” exclaims the descrip­tion of Retro Rewind. “Rent, sell, dec­o­rate and expand your busi­ness from the ground up and relive the gold­en ages of video rentals!” Those of us old enough to have relied on such estab­lish­ments for our ear­ly cin­e­mat­ic edu­ca­tion can all too eas­i­ly remem­ber how frus­trat­ing they could be, what with their phys­i­cal­ly lim­it­ed selec­tions, sel­dom-rewound tapes, and puni­tive late fees. Even so, younger gen­er­a­tions aren’t wrong to imag­ine that some were spe­cial places where it felt like a cinephile’s dreams could come true. Just ask Quentin Taran­ti­no.

The clip above comes from Joe Rogan’s inter­view with Taran­ti­no and Roger Avary, who worked togeth­er at Man­hat­tan Beach’s Video Archives before they co-wrote Pulp Fic­tion. “Work­ing at that store, I just got caught up in the lit­tle life there,” Taran­ti­no says. Yet he also remem­bers him­self think­ing, “Well, this isn’t my dream. This isn’t what I want­ed to do work­ing at a video store for years. I want­ed to actu­al­ly make movies. It’s not my dream, what I’m doing — but it’s dream-adja­cent!” It turned out that get­ting paid to watch movies all day long (to say noth­ing of becom­ing local­ly famous for sheer cinephil­ia) with­out putting in any seri­ous man­u­al labor “put my ambi­tions to sleep a lit­tle bit.”

Taran­ti­no explains that his awak­en­ing from this retail rever­ie began with wit­ness­ing the sud­den embit­ter­ment of fel­low clerks who passed the age of thir­ty doing the same “cool” jobs they always had. This set him on the path to under­go­ing a series of dark nights of the soul he called “Quentin detest fests,” dur­ing which he would make a no-excus­es account­ing of all the mis­takes he was active­ly or pas­sive­ly mak­ing. “I would spend all night lay­ing out every­thing I’m doing that’s wrong, and then I would spend the last two hours fig­ur­ing out how I could change it. And as opposed to just doing it and then going to get some sleep, and then you for­get about it and fall back into your rou­tine, I decid­ed to change my life.”

Attach­ment to his job was a big part of the prob­lem. “I’ve got to just move to Hol­ly­wood, I’ve got to get involved there, I’ve got to meet oth­er peo­ple that are in the busi­ness,” he real­ized. “I should­n’t be mak­ing mon­ey until I’m mak­ing mon­ey doing what I want to do.” Not long after relo­cat­ing from the South Bay to Kore­atown — still well south of Hol­ly­wood, but close enough — he start­ed mak­ing con­nec­tions in the low-bud­get hor­ror world. “Well, if these guys can do it, I can do it,” he came to believe, and with­in a year and a half he was mak­ing a liv­ing as a screen­writer. The video rental indus­try has long since col­lapsed, but Quentin Taran­ti­no is still going strong as a film­mak­er. If he takes a break from work­ing on what may be his last pic­ture to play Retro Rewind, we’d sure­ly all be inter­est­ed in hear­ing what mem­o­ries it brings back. Maybe he and Avary can dis­cuss it on their Video Archives Pod­cast.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sto­ry of How Quentin Taran­ti­no Became a Film­mak­er and Cre­at­ed Pulp Fic­tion, as Told by Quentin Taran­ti­no

My Best Friend’s Birth­day, Quentin Tarantino’s 1987 Debut Film

Quentin Taran­ti­no Explains How to Write & Direct Movies

Quentin Taran­ti­no Gives a Tour of Video Archives, the Store Where He Worked Before Becom­ing a Film­mak­er

Quentin Taran­ti­no & Roger Avary Rewatch Cult-Clas­sic Movies on Their New Video Archives Pod­cast

What Is a Life-Chang­ing Real­iza­tion You Wish You’d Had Soon­er in Life?

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.