(Source: Wired Magazine)

Issue 13.07 – July 2005
When it snuck onto the scene in 1992, Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs was hailed for its radical blend of raw violence and pop culture banter. Part of the appeal was the way Tarantino eagerly lifted themes and scenes from so many other movies: There’s The Taking of Pelham One Two Three! There’s City on Fire! There’s A Clockwork Orange! His shout-outs announced a new school of filmmaking, one that admits that movies are bastard beasts, their themes and characters easily swapped into new scenes and circumstances. And if the geeks in the audience can spot the references, even better. Today, Tarantino’s overtly allusive style is everywhere. For a new generation of filmmakers – Wes Anderson, Robert Rodriguez, Stephen Chow – filling movies with nods, winks, and references to other films is second nature. But nobody does it better than QT. Here are five of the master’s greatest lifts.

Scene-Stealing, Tarantino-Style

1. The Mexican standoff scene in Reservoir Dogs matches, nearly frame for frame, the end of Ringo Lam’s 1987 Hong Kong action flick City on Fire. One difference: Tarantino’s version is awash in blood.

2. Add Tarantino to the list of those influenced by Stanley Kubrick – but few have gone as far as he did in Dogs‘ gruesome ear scene, which owes much to the rape scene in Orange. They’re two of the hardest moments to watch in film.

3. Kill Bill owes many debts, but its heaviest is to the 1973 Japanese revenge drama Lady Snowblood, about a female samurai who hunts down her family’s killers. Tarantino even copied this point-of-view shot of the bad guys.

4. It’s hard to pin down Tarantino’s biggest rip-off in this scene. Hitchcock’s Marnie? Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill? The winner is John Frankenheimer’s Black Sunday, which also has a killer in disguise as a nurse.

5. “My favorite musical sequences have always been in Godard films,” Tarantino has said – he even named his production company A Band Apart after this film’s French title (Bande � part).

Bonus: Connoisseurs know that Tarantino especially loves to nick from himself, like this auto-homage where Jackie Brown wears a black pantsuit just like the one Uma Thurman wore in Pulp Fiction.