Getting Out of Looserville!
What made Quentin Tarantino the master of his craft
By Nick Jones
单身母亲在厨房里做饭，等待 16 岁的儿子放学回家，等到的却是儿子的一声怒吼：我要当演员！母亲竭尽所能也没有说 服 儿 子 重 返 学 校。Quentin Taratino就这样退学了，然而他并没有因此荒废堕落。他知道自己要什么，他废寝忘食琢磨职业生涯中的每一处细节，仔细品味学习每一位导演和演员的所有作品，认真研究遭人嫌弃的晦涩电影。鱼与熊掌不可兼得。他有着一般年轻人没有见坚决成熟。他说，如果你想在某一方面卓越超群，就必须心无旁骛，倾其所有，追求那个唯一的目标。一次表演课上，老师赞叹道，Quentin, 你的表演可以和Paddy Chayefsky媲美！Quentin 不解。老师又说道，原剧本里并没有喷泉这段独白，这段话是你自己编的。不断尝试，追求卓越，这就是 Quentin的独家特技。
整个 80 年代 Quentin 都在努力，但是这些辛苦付出并没有让他成为心目中的成功演员。转多处后，30 岁不到的他开了一家音像店。如此收场虽差强人意，但也不失为一剂安慰剂。但 Quentin 最后还是决定走出去，去到真正拍电影的地方，为自己的电影梦拼搏。他说，我是池塘里的一只鱼，与快鱼比起来，我是慢一点，可是因为他们，我不得不游得更快一些。近朱者赤，近墨者黑，与强者为友，择其善者而从之。
Quentin Tarantino at the age of sixteen
Imagine being a single mother in her early thirties, cooking your lunch, waiting for your 16-year-old son to come home from school he's been having real trouble with. He's coming through the front door and he says:"I quit!" How do you react to that? “I don't need school, I'm gonna be an actor!" said sixteen-year-old Quentin angrily. After losing all hope that she could convince her son to stay in school and not make the biggest mistake of his life like she did, his mother says: “If you wanna make adult decisions, then go and apply for a job like an adult!" That decision was the start of the rest of his life!
Quentin Tarantino winning his second Oscar
Quentin may have walked away from the school system, but that doesn't mean he was going to get lazy. He applied for a first job like his mother asked for, by lying about his age, and in his spare time he would keep up with his education on his own. He may have left school for good, but what he did instead is to keep up with his area of interest on his own. namely watching all the movies from a certain director or an actor, knowing all the obscure movies nobody would have ever remembered. His attention wasn't split between many different subjects, he knew what he wanted to do in his life and he devoted his entire young-adult life to learning all the trivia about that career path. He learned things he would've never thought in school, but made all the difference in his professional career. If you want to be exceptional at something, you have got to stop paying attention to things opposed to that goal and waste your time. No war can be fought on two fronts at the same time. Focus all your conscious efforts on that one goal in your life and know as much as humanly possible about that career path!
Another one of those moments that had an impact on Quentin, was during his acting class. Everyone was supposed to bring a certain bit of dialogue to perform, and Quentin wasn't about to spend the money he did not have on plays he was not interested in. He would, instead, watch a movie, remember all the dialogue from a certain scene and re-write the scene himself. On one such occasion Quentin was performing a scene opposite his acting teacher, after which his acting teacher said: "Quentin, you're as good as Paddy Chayefsky!" “What do you mean?!" Quentin replied. “Well Quentin, I have a copy of that script at home, and in the original script there is no long monologue about the fountain in the middle of that scene. You made that part up!" Quentin took a pre-existing idea, and by adding his personal touch, made it his own.
This is the technique Quentin would use for the rest of his life. Don't sit around waiting for the original idea to fall from the sky, because while you're doing that, all Tarantinos of this world are out there trying, and improving their craft.
But all of that still didn't make Quentin the successful artist he wanted to become. He tried through the 80's to make things happen, but ultimately he failed. He was reaching his late twenties and, after going through lots of jobs he settled in a video store. It wasn't the big success he was hoping for, but was almost satisfying enough for him to stop persisting since it was “good enough". And that's when he realized that he had to leave. As he, later in his life explained: “I was a big fish in a puddle. So what, they're not doing anything! I should be the weakest link in my chain! When you run with the people faster than you, you may come in last, but your time will be better because they will make you run just a little faster... I had to get out of Looserville, and get myself to a place where people make films for a living!"
Our surroundings are just as important as our will to succeed. If we're surrounded by people who don't have the same drive for success, then we don't have a motive to push ourselves even further. It's easy to feel like you're doing a lot of work around the people who aren't doing anything. Get yourself out of Looserville, and be in the company of those whom you're looking up to, not the ones you're looking down on. Make your friends be the very best versions of themselves as well, because if you make them run faster, soon enough they'll be fast enough to make you push harder!
