At the age of 22, he landed a job in Video Archives, a video store in Manhattan Beach, California where he and Roger Avary spent all day watching, discussing and recommending videos. He made his first (unfinished) film in 1986, 'My Best Friend's Birthday', written with acting class friend Craig Hamann, and followed this up by writing his first script, 'True Romance'a year later.
By 1988, Tarantino had written his second script, 'Natural Born Killers' and in 1990 he sold the script for 'True Romance' for $50,000. He decided to use this money to make his third script, 'Reservoir Dogs' on 16mm and in black and white with his friends in the leading roles. It was around this point that Tarantino left the video store to do rewrites for CineTel, a small Hollywood production company - it was at this time he met Lawrence Bender and struck lucky; Bender was attending acting classes with Peter Flood, who was divorced from acting teacher Lily Parker and knew Harvey Keitel from the Actors Studio. Keitel saw the script and was impressed enough to raise some more finance, act in the film and help Tarantino cast the main roles. At this point,producers Monte Hellman and Richard Gladstein also joined the project.
In 1991, Tarantino filmed some scenes at Sundance with him playing the role of Mr White and Steve Buscemi playing Mr Pink. These scenes were shown to various film people to comment on and the group containing Terry Gilliam were particularly impressed.
'Reservoir Dogs' finally premiered at Sundance '92 before appearing at various film festivals around the World. Miramax picked the film up for distribution after Sundance and it was released in the US later in 1992 and in the UK on January 8 1993.
Tarantino traveled around the various festivals in 1992 promoting his filmand writing his next script, 'Pulp Fiction' which went on to win the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1994. It finally opened amidst incredible hype and critical acclaim on October 14 in the US and October 21 in the UK.
'Pulp Fiction' went on to become one of the most highly acclaimed movies of 1994, grossing over 200 million dollars worldwide and picking up seven Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director (Qentin), Best Actor (John Travolta), Best Supporting Actor (Samuel L. Jackson), Supporting Actress (Uma Thurman), Best Film Editing (Sally Menke), and winning an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. (Quentin)