Quentin Tarantino Explains How Pedro Almodóvar’s NC-17 Pic ‘Matador’ Influenced His Take On Cinematic Violence

While director Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction”) is one feature film away from retirement—at least if his ten film proclamation stands— he still has many projects in the works. Tarantino’s aim when he retires is to focus on writing books and directing television projects —maybe he’ll finally make that “Bounty Law” spin-off from “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” he’s been threatening to make. He’s seemingly already moving into retirement mode by writing books such as a companion novel to his acclaimed “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” fleshing out those characters like Brad Pitt’s Cliff Booth and the newly released nonfiction work, “Cinema Speculation.”

“Cinema Speculation” dropped earlier this month and focuses on vital American films from the 1970s, all of which he first saw as a young moviegoer at the time and left an impression on the future filmmaker. However, that’s not the only kind of film that inspired him. As IndieWire revealed in an excerpt from the book, Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar’s NC-17 effort “Matador” from 1986, featuring a young Antonio Banderas, had a massive impact on how he would later tackle cinematic violence in his own projects (Tarantino would later work with the actor on Robert Rodriguez’s “Desperado”)

READ MORE: ‘Django/Zorro’: Antonio Banderas Says Quentin Tarantino Approached Him About Starring In The Crossover Film

“I remember when I worked at my Manhattan Beach video store, Video Archives, and talked to the other employees about the types of movies I wanted to make and the things I wanted to do inside of those movies,” Tarantino wrote in the book. “And I would use the example of the opening of Almodovar’s ‘Matador.’ And their response would be, ‘Quentin, they won’t let you do that. To which I replied back, ‘Who the fuck are “they” to stop me? “They” can go fuck themselves,’”

He further described the impact of “Matador” on him, given it was just the right mixture of age and time for the aspiring director to be influenced by the movie’s tone by having violence combined with sensuality and humor. “At the right age (mid-twenties), and at the right time (the fucking eighties), the fearlessness demonstrated by Pedro Almodóvar led by example,” Tarantino wrote. “As I watched my heroes, the American film mavericks of the seventies, knuckle under to a new way of doing business just to stay employed, Pedro’s fearlessness made a mockery of their calculated compromises. My dreams of movies always included a comic reaction to unpleasantness, similar to the connection that Almodovar’s films made between the unpleasant and the sensual.”

Tarantino continued to describe how that first screening of “Matador” left a lasting impression and might explain his take on cinematic violence. “Sitting in a Beverly Hills art house cinema, watching Pedro’s vividly colorful, thrillingly provocative, 35mm images flickering on a giant wall — demonstrating that there could be something sexy about violence — I was convinced there was a place for me and my violent reveries in the modern cinematheque.”

It’s also hard to avoid the other obvious influential directorial that shaped Tarantino’s take on violence, such as Sergio Leone, Sergio Corbucci, Brian De Palma, Sam Peckinpah, and others. We can only assume more insightful tidbits from “Cinema Speculation” will surface.