the hate towards him from some folks...

Is it just me or do some folks who deeply despise the man come off reeking of jealousy a little? Hear me out...

Now I'm not saying that every single person out there who dislikes Quentin Tarantino is jealous of him, or even the vast majority. What I'm saying, is that there seems to be a small contingent of vehement haters out there whose spitefulness seems to be driven, at least in part, by jealousy.

Quentin Tarantino is in many ways, the ideal self-projection of the self-taught, non-academic cinephile. The man accumulated his vast array of cinema knowledge not through film school or academically approved movie encyclopedias, but just by watching movies. His time spent working in Video Archives gave him access to many old, obscure films that many would not have been able to see prior to the discovery of the Internet. As such, he developed an edge over his many contemporaries by having far more eclectic influences than just the guys you learn about in film school (Welles, Hitchcock, Kurosawa etc).

In many ways, his rise to success is the stuff of fairy tales. Plenty of aspiring filmmakers out there naively believe that if they just spend all their time watching movies, they will someday amount to the same level of greatness. Yet, most of them fail, as few have the innate talent someone like Tarantino was blessed with. Hell, some don't even have the motivation to pick up a camera and start making a film.

This is where I believe the plagiarism allegations come in, mostly from people who haven't even seen the films he's allegedly "stolen" from. They are jealous, and they want to prove that they know cinema just as much, if not more so than Quentin. Anyone who's ever hung around movie discussion sites and movie fan meetup events knows that there is an innate sense of competition over whose seen more stuff whenever you attend such arenas. For some, having seen more Truffaut or Fellini over others is like a membership to MENSA.

I think for a lot of aspiring/failed filmmakers out there, Quentin is an easy guy to hate as he's become the living embodiment of the movie obsessed, cinephile director out there. Most other directors are big movie fans too, of course, but Quentin has the reputation for being the one director who's seen them all. He doesn't even try to hide his influences much, and often goes out of his way to promote the films that inspired him growing up. I think a lot of people just hate seeing a guy who's succeeded not by doing anything wildly different to what they did (watching movies, reading film criticism, borrowing from them etc), but by doing it well. I think for a lot of people, that idea of pure talent scares them. His cocky, brash persona doesn't help either.

Any thoughts?

Discuss...