Robert Rodriguez

Robert Rodriguez

Robert Anthony Rodriguez (born June 20, 1968) is an American filmmaker, writer, producer, cinematographer, editor and musician. He is perhaps best known for making profitable, crowd-pleasing independent and studio films with fairly low budgets and fast schedules by Hollywood standards. He shoots and produces many of his films in Texas and Mexico.

Rodríguez was born in San Antonio, Texas, the son of Rebecca, a nurse, and Cecilio G. Rodríguez, a salesman. He began his interest in film at age 7 when his father bought one of the first VCRs, which came with a camera.

While attending St. Anthony High School Seminary, he was commissioned to videotape the school's football games. According to his sister he was fired soon after for shooting them with a cinematic style; getting shots of parents reactions and the ball traveling through the air instead of shooting the whole play. After graduating Rodriguez went to the College of Communication at the University of Texas where he also developed a love of cartooning. His grades were not good enough to get into the school's film program, so he invented a daily comic strip entitled Los Hooligans with many of the characters based on his siblings – in particular, one of his sisters, Maricarmen. The comic proved to be quite successful, running for three years in the student newspaper The Daily Texan while Rodríguez continued to make short films.

Rodríguez grew up shooting action and horror short films on video, and editing on two VCRs. Finally, in the fall of 1990, his entry in a local film contest earned him a spot in the university's film program where he made the award-winning 16 mm short, "Bedhead". The film chronicles the amusing misadventures of a young girl whose older brother sports an incredibly tangled mess of hair that she cannot tolerate. The rest of the short film is a humorous account of how the young girl tries to fix her brother's follicle monstrosity when she discovers her telekinetic abilities. Even at this early stage, Rodríguez's trademark style began to emerge: quick cuts, intense zooms, and fast camera movements deployed with a sense of humor that offsets the action.

This short film attracted enough attention to encourage him to seriously attempt a career as a filmmaker. He went on to shoot the action flick El Mariachi in Spanish. El Mariachi, which was shot for around $7,000 with money partially raised by volunteering in medical research studies, won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992. The film, originally intended for the Spanish-language low-budget home-video market, was "cleaned up" with several hundred thousand dollars before being distributed by Columbia Pictures in the United States, still being promoted as "the movie made for $7,000". Rodríguez described his experiences making the film in his book Rebel Without a Crew. The book and film inspired legions of hopeful filmmakers to pick up cameras and make no-budget movies. The film and the book are widely considered important touchstones of the independent film movement of the 1990s. Many people realized for the first time that with only a little money and a lot of hard work and talent, it was possible to make a successful and popular film.

His next feature film was Desperado, a sequel to El Mariachi starring Antonio Banderas. The film introduced Salma Hayek to American audiences. Rodríguez went on to collaborate with Quentin Tarantino on the vampire thriller, From Dusk Till Dawn (he co-produced two sequels), and with Kevin Williamson on the horror film The Faculty.

In 1999 Kevin Smith offered directorial duties on the film Dogma to Rodríguez, yet he passed insisting that Kevin should direct the film himself. In 2001, Rodríguez enjoyed his first $100,000,000 (USD) Hollywood hit with Spy Kids, which went on to become a trilogy, with the last film released in a crude form of 3D. A third "mariachi" film also appeared in late 2003, Once Upon a Time in Mexico which completed the Mariachi Trilogy. He operates a production company called Troublemaker Studios, formerly Los Hooligans Productions.

Rodríguez co-directed Sin City (2005), an adaptation of the Frank Miller Sin City comic books; Quentin Tarantino guest-directed a scene. During production in 2004, Rodríguez insisted that Miller direct the film with him because he considered the visual style of Miller's comic art to be just as important as his own in the film. However, the Directors Guild of America would not allow it, citing that only "legitimate teams" could share the director's credit (e.g. the Wachowski Brothers). Rodríguez chose to resign from the DGA, stating, "It was easier for me to quietly resign before shooting because otherwise I'd be forced to make compromises I was unwilling to make or set a precedent that might hurt the guild later on." By resigning from the DGA, Rodríguez was forced to relinquish his director's seat on the film John Carter of Mars (in development) for Paramount Pictures. Rodríguez had already signed on and had been announced as director of that film, planning to begin filming soon after completing Sin City.

Sin City was a critical hit in 2005 as well as a box office success, particularly for a hyperviolent comic book adaptation that did not have name recognition comparable to the X-Men or Spider-Man. Rodríguez is currently in pre-production for a sequel, Sin City 2, which will be based on the Sin City story A Dame To Kill For and is scheduled for release in early 2010. He has stated that he is interested in eventually adapting all of Miller's Sin City comic books.

Rodríguez released The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl in 2005, a superhero-kid movie intended for the same younger audiences as his Spy Kids series. Shark Boy & Lava Girl was based on a story conceived by Rodríguez's 7 year-old son, Racer, who was given credit for the screenplay. The film was not a major success, having grossed 39 million dollars at the box office. No new 3D projects have been announced by the Troublemaker group.

Since 1998, he has owned the film rights to Mike Allred's off-beat comic Madman. The two have hinted at the project being close to beginning on several occasions without anything coming of it. However, other projects have been completed first (Allred was instrumental in connecting Rodríguez with Frank Miller, leading to the production of Sin City). In 2004, Allred, while promoting his comic book, The Golden Plates, announced that a screenplay by George Huang was near completion. In March 2006, it was announced that production on Sin City 2 would be postponed. Allred announced at the 2006 WonderCon that production would likely commence on Madman the Movie in 2006. Huang is actually friends with Rodriguez, who advised him to pursue filmmaking as a career when Rodriguez landed a deal with Columbia Pictures where Huang was an employee.

Rodriguez wrote and directed the film Planet Terror for the collaboration with Quentin Tarantino in their double feature Grindhouse (released in 2007). This film was a throwback to the Grindhouse exploitative cinema of the past.

He also has a series of "Ten Minute Film School" segments on several of his DVD releases, showing aspiring filmmakers how to make good, profitable movies using inexpensive tactics. Starting with the Once Upon a Time in Mexico DVD, Rodríguez began creating a series called, "Ten Minute Cooking School". where he revealed his recipe for "Puerco Pilbil" (based on Cochinita pibil, an old dish from Yucatán), the same food Johnny Depp's character, "Agent Sands" ate in the film. The popularity of this series lead to the inclusion of another "Cooking School" on the 2-Disc version of the "Sin City" DVD where Rodríguez teaches the viewer how to make "Sin City Breakfast Tacos", a dish (made for his cast and crew during late-night shoots) utilizing his grandmother's tortilla recipe and different egg mixes for the filling. He had initially planned to release a third "Cooking School" with the October 16 DVD release of "Planet Terror" but then announced on the "Film School" segment of the DVD that he would put it on the upcoming Grindhouse Theatrical DVD set instead. The Cooking School, entitled, "Texas Barbecue...from the GRAVE!", is a dish based on the "secret barbecue recipe" of "JT Hague", Jeff Fahey's character in the film.

A strong supporter of digital film making, Rodríguez was introduced to this by director George Lucas, who personally invited Rodríguez to use the digital cameras at Lucas' headquarters.

In May 2007 it was announced that Rodríguez had signed on to direct a remake of Barbarella for a 2008 release. At the 2007 Comic-Con convention, actress Rosario Dawson announced that because of Barbarella, production of Sin City 2 would be put on hold. She also announced that she would be playing an amazon in the Barbarella film.

As of June 2008, plans to remake the film Barbarella with Rose McGowan as the lead have been delayed; the actress and director are instead remaking the film Red Sonja.

A prodigious filmmaker, Rodriguez has always steadily had several projects lined up in the future.

Machete is an upcoming feature by Robert Rodriguez. It is an expansion of a fake trailer Rodriguez directed for the 2007 film Grindhouse. It will star Danny Trejo as the title character. Trejo has worked with Rodriguez in some of his other movies such as Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Spy Kids. Although originally announced to be released direct-to-DVD as an extra on the Planet Terror DVD, the film is now being produced as a theatrical release.

At South by Southwest, Rodriguez announced that he would be expanding his trailer for Machete into a feature-length movie.

Rodriguez hopes to film Machete at the same time as Sin City 2. Additionally, during Comic-Con International 2008, he took the time to speak about Machete, including such topics as: status, possible sequels after the release of Machete, and production priorities. It was also revealed that he has regularly pulled sequences from it for his other productions including Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

Rodriguez officially announced in April 2006 that he and his wife Elizabeth Avellán separated after 16 years of marriage. They have five children: sons Rocket Valentino (b. 14 September 1995), Racer Maximilliano (b. 16 April 1997), Rebel Antonio (b. January 1999), Rogue Joaquin and daughter Rhiannon Elizabeth.

In May 2007, it was reported that he confirmed his relationship with McGowan when they appeared hand-in-hand at the 60th Annual Cannes Film Festival. In October 2007, Elle Magazine revealed that Rodríguez cast McGowan as the title role in his remake of Barbarella. On October 12, 2007 it was announced by Zap2it.com that the two are engaged. On July 2, 2008, it was reported that Rose McGowan dumped Rodriguez, partly over issues due to the financing of the Barbarella remake. However, on July 3, PEOPLE Magazine posted an article with a quote from McGowan's rep stating that the two were still together.

He calls his style of making movies "Mariachi-style" (in reference to his first feature film El Mariachi) in which (according to the back cover of his book Rebel Without a Crew) "Creativity, not money, is used to solve problems". Stu Maschwitz coined the term "Robert Rodriguez list", i.e. you make a list of things you have access to like cool cars, apartments, horses, samurai swords and so on you and people you know own or have access to and then write the script based on that.

He also collaborated with actor Danny Trejo and Cheech Marin in Desperado, Once Upon a Time in Mexico, From Dusk Till Dawn, Spy Kids trilogy and the Grindhouse spinoff Machete.

Rodríguez collaborated with Kevin Williamson, filming the film-within-a-film Stab in Scream 2 (written by Williamson) and directed The Faculty based on his screenplay.

Rodríguez composed the track "Avenging Angel" for the soundtrack of Edgar Wright's Hot Fuzz; Wright also directed a faux trailer for Grindhouse.

Robert had a special appearance in the sitcom George Lopez, starring the comedian of the same name, in the episode "George Buys a Vow" as part of the band in the wedding ceremony. Lopez also starred in Rodriguez's film Sharkboy and Lavagirl.

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Robert Rodriguez filmography

Robert Anthony Rodriguez is a American film director, film producer, writer, composer, cinematographer and film editor. He has contributed to many projects as combination of the six. Less commonly, Rodriguez has also worked as a second unit director, animator and a visual effects supervisor.

Despite being rejected from the University of Texas' film school due to poor academic promise. of the Arts, Robert Rodriguez created his first 16mm short film Bedhead which opened many doors for him. Rodriguez then created his first feature length film El Mariachi which was picked up by Columbia Pictures. After directing the television film Road Racers, Rodriguez continued work in Hollywood.

El Mariachi, was the first of Rodriguez Mexico Trilogy that included Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico. Rodriguez continued working on several other film series including the crime-horror film hybrid From Dusk Till Dawn and the family-oriented adventure film series Spy Kids. Rodriguez has also collaborated with film director Quentin Tarantino on various projects including Four Rooms, From Dusk Til Dawn, Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Grindhouse.

This is a list of the top 10 highest domestic-grossing films in which Rodriguez has written, directed, or produced, according to Box Office Mojo. This does not include films in which he had a minor role or appeared as a participant, according to the same site. Rodriguez's films have grossed domestically a total of more than $590 million, with an average of $54 million per film.

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Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Jerome Tarantino (born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. He rose to fame in the early 1990s as an independent filmmaker whose films used nonlinear storylines and aestheticization of violence. His films include Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill (Vol. 1 2003, Vol. 2 2004) and Death Proof (2007). His films have earned him Academy, BAFTA and Palme d'Or Awards and he has been nominated for Emmy and Grammy Awards. In 2007, Total Film named him the 12th greatest director of all-time.

Tarantino is presently editing Inglourious Basterds, a World War II movie planned to be released at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2009.

Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of Connie Zastoupil (née McHugh), a health care executive and nurse, and Tony Tarantino, an actor and amateur musician born in Queens, New York. Tarantino's father is part Italian and his mother is Irish with part Cherokee Native American ancestry. Dropping out of Narbonne High School in Harbor City, California at the age of 15, he went on to learn acting at the James Best Theatre Company. At the age of 22, he landed a job at the Manhattan Beach Video Archives, a now defunct video rental store in Manhattan Beach, California where he and fellow movie buffs like Roger Avary spent all day discussing and recommending films to customers such as actor Danny Strong.

After Tarantino met Lawrence Bender at a Hollywood party, Bender encouraged Tarantino to write a screenplay. In January 1992, Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs hit the Sundance Film festival. The film garnered critical acclaim and the director became a legend in the UK and the cult film circuit. Reservoir Dogs was a dialogue-driven heist movie that set the tone for his later films. Tarantino wrote the script in three and a half weeks and Bender forwarded it to director Monte Hellman. Hellman helped Tarantino to secure funding from Richard Gladstein at Live Entertainment (which later became Artisan). Harvey Keitel read the script and also contributed to funding, took a co-producer role, and a part in the movie.

Tarantino's screenplay True Romance was optioned and eventually released in 1993. The second script that Tarantino sold was Natural Born Killers, which was revised by Dave Veloz, Richard Rutowski and director Oliver Stone. Tarantino was given story credit, and wished the film well. Following the success of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino was approached by Hollywood and offered numerous projects, including Speed and Men in Black. He instead retreated to Amsterdam to work on his script for Pulp Fiction.

After Pulp Fiction he directed episode four of Four Rooms, "The Man from Hollywood", a tribute to the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode that starred Steve McQueen. Four Rooms was a collaborative effort with filmmakers Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, and Robert Rodriguez. The film was very poorly received by critics and audiences. He appeared in and wrote the script for Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn, which saw mixed reviews from the critics yet led to two sequels, for which Tarantino and Rodriguez would only serve as executive producers.

Tarantino's third feature film was Jackie Brown (1997), an adaptation of Rum Punch, a novel by Elmore Leonard. A homage to blaxploitation films, it starred Pam Grier, who starred in many of that genre's films of the 1970s. He had then planned to make the war film provisionally titled Inglorious Bastards, but postponed it to write and direct Kill Bill (released as two films, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2), a highly stylized "revenge flick" in the cinematic traditions of Wuxia (Chinese martial arts), Jidaigeki (Japanese period cinema), Spaghetti Westerns and Italian horror or giallo. It was based on a character (The Bride) and a plot that he and Kill Bill's lead actress, Uma Thurman, had developed during the making of Pulp Fiction. In 2004, Tarantino returned to Cannes where he served as President of the Jury. Kill Bill was not in competition, but it did screen on the final night in its original 3-hour-plus version.

The next project was Grindhouse, which he co-directed with Rodriguez. Released in theaters on April 6, 2007, Tarantino's contribution to the Grindhouse project was titled Death Proof. It began as a take on 1970s slasher films, but evolved dramatically as the project unfolded. Ticket sales were low despite mostly positive reviews.

Among his current producing credits are the horror flick Hostel (which included numerous references to his own Pulp Fiction), the adaptation of Elmore Leonard's Killshot (for which Tarantino was credited as an executive producer but with the movie set for release in 2009 he is no longer associated with the project) and Hell Ride (written and directed by Kill Bill star Larry Bishop). Tarantino is credited as "Special Guest Director" for his work directing the car sequence between Clive Owen and Benicio del Toro of Robert Rodriguez's 2005 neo-noir film Sin City.

Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the 1994 Cannes film festival. That film earned Tarantino and Roger Avary Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay, and was also nominated for Best Picture.

In 2005 Quentin Tarantino won the Icon of the Decade award at the Sony Ericsson Empire Awards.

On August 15, 2007, Philippine president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo presented Tarantino with a lifetime achievement award at the Malacañang Palace in Manila.

Tarantino finished writing Inglourious Basterds, the story of a group of guerrilla U.S. soldiers in Nazi occupied France during World War II. Filming began in October 2008 with a projected Summer 2009 release.

Before this project, Tarantino had considered making The Vega Brothers. The film would have starred Michael Madsen reprising the role of Vic (Mr. Blonde) from Reservoir Dogs and John Travolta reprising his role of Vincent from Pulp Fiction. He decided to abandon the project because of the age of the actors. In 2007, he claimed that the Vega Brothers project (which he intended to call Double V Vega) is "kind of unlikely now".

Tarantino has expressed interest in filming a much more faithful adaptation of the book Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis.

Tarantino divulged information about possible anime prequels to the Kill Bill films. These would probably center around the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, Bill or The Bride before the events of the first two films. In a recent interview with The Telegraph he mentioned an idea for a form of spaghetti western set in America's Deep South which he calls "a southern." Stating that he wanted "to do movies that deal with America's horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it's ashamed of it, and other countries don't really deal with because they don't feel they have the right to".

Tarantino confirmed at the 2008 Provincetown International Film Festival that a full length version of Kill Bill will be released and will hopefully contain an extended "anime" section that detailed the development of Lucy Liu's character.

The episode was delayed in being shown in the UK as the broadcast date coincided with the 7/7 terrorist attacks in London and it was felt that the depiction of a suicide bomber could cause offense. This double-length episode was released on DVD on October 10, 2005. Tarantino was nominated for an Emmy for this episode.

Tarantino directed an episode of ER called "Motherhood" that aired May 11, 1995, an episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, and an episode of then-girlfriend Margaret Cho's show, All American Girl. He was featured as a guest judge on the televised singing competition American Idol for one episode during its third season. His reputation for creating memorable movie soundtracks was cited as qualifying him for the role.

Tarantino directed the season 20 (1994–1995 season) episode of the NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live hosted by John Travolta (musical guest: Seal), which featured a sketch called "Quentin Tarantino's Welcome Back, Kotter", a hybrid of the 1970s sitcom, Welcome Back, Kotter and Tarantino's film Reservoir Dogs. He also hosted an episode of SNL in season 21 (1995–1996 season) with musical guest The Smashing Pumpkins.

Tarantino was originally slated to direct an episode of the X-Files, but was prevented from doing so by the Directors Guild of America. The episode, titled "Never Again," featured Scully heading to Philadelphia while Mulder was on vacation, to talk to a man who claims his tattoo is talking to him. The episode was written specifically for Tarantino to direct. The DGA contended that Tarantino, who is not a member, failed to compensate the union for lost revenue as a result of his directorial work on ER.

Although Tarantino is best known for his work behind the camera, he appeared in his own films Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Death Proof as minor characters, and co-starred alongside George Clooney in From Dusk Till Dawn. He has also appeared on the small screen in the first and third seasons of the TV show Alias. Tarantino once played an Elvis impersonator on an episode of The Golden Girls. He played cameo roles in Desperado (directed by his friend Robert Rodriguez), and Little Nicky (as a crazy, blind, apocalypse preacher). In 1998, he turned his attention to the Broadway stage, where he starred in a revival of Wait Until Dark. In November 2006, an episode of the Sundance Channel's Iconoclasts features Quentin Tarantino interviewing and spending time with singer Fiona Apple. Tarantino appeared briefly in the beginning of Spike Lee's film Girl 6. Tarantino had substantial screen-time in Grindhouse's double-features, Death Proof and Planet Terror, where he respectively takes on the roles of Warren, a bartender, and The Rapist, an infected member of a rogue military unit. He starred as Johnny Destiny in the film Destiny Turns on the Radio. In 2007 he had a small role as Ringo in the Takashi Miike film Sukiyaki Western: Django.

In recent years, Tarantino has used his Hollywood power to give smaller and foreign films arguably more attention than they would otherwise have received. These films are usually labeled "Presented by Quentin Tarantino" or "Quentin Tarantino Presents". The first of these productions was in 2001 with the Hong Kong martial arts film Iron Monkey which made over $14 million in the United States, seven times its budget. In 2004 he brought the Chinese martial arts film Hero to U.S. shores. It ended up having a #1 opening at the box office and making $53.5 million. In 2006, the latest "Quentin Tarantino presents" production, Hostel, opened at #1 at the box office with a $20.1 million opening weekend, good for 8th all time in January. He presented 2006's The Protector, and is a producer of the (2007) film Hostel: Part II.

Election isn't one of "Quentin Tarantino presents...", but Tarantino loved the film so much that he still helped the DVD release of the film in some way; his quote "The Best Film Of The Year" is on this film's United States DVD cover.

In addition, in 1995 Tarantino formed Rolling Thunder Pictures with Miramax as a vehicle to release or re-release several independent and foreign features. By 1997, Miramax shut down the company due to "lack of interest" in the pictures released. The following films were released by Rolling Thunder Pictures: Chungking Express (1994, dir. Wong Kar-Wai), Switchblade Sisters (1975, dir. Jack Hill), Sonatine (1993, dir. Takeshi Kitano), Hard Core Logo (1996, dir. Bruce McDonald), Mighty Peking Man (1977), Detroit 9000 (1973), The Beyond (1981, dir. Lucio Fulci) and Curdled (1996).

In the opening credits to Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, he omits his own credit as writer and director. Characters in nearly all of his movies have aliases. Examples include Honey Bunny and Pumpkin from Pulp Fiction, the heist crew in Reservoir Dogs, Stuntman Mike and Jungle Julia in Death Proof, and many different characters in Kill Bill. Most of his films feature a "Mexican standoff" scene, in which three or more characters are simultaneously pointing guns at each other. This is a reference to typical spaghetti westerns, especially those directed by Sergio Leone.

Tarantino's films are renowned for their sharp dialogue, splintered chronology, and pop culture obsessions. His films have copious amounts of both spattered and flowing blood that are graphically violent in an aestheticized sense. His depictions of violence have also been noted for their casualness and macabre humour, as well as for the tension and grittiness of these scenes.

In the 2002 Sight and Sound Directors' poll, Tarantino revealed his top-twelve films: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Rio Bravo; Taxi Driver; His Girl Friday; Rolling Thunder; They All Laughed; The Great Escape; Carrie; Coffy; Dazed and Confused; Five Fingers of Death; and Hi Diddle Diddle.

He has been a supporter of Kevin Smith's work. Smith hit success with Clerks around the time Tarantino released Pulp Fiction. Tarantino cited Smith's Chasing Amy as his favorite movie of 1997. In one of the Train Wreck making-of shorts for Smith's Clerks II, he invited Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez to a private screening of the film at the View Askew offices.

In August 2007, while teaching a four-hour film course during the 9th Cinemanila International Film Festival in Manila, Tarantino cited Filipino directors Cirio Santiago, Eddie Romero, and Gerardo de León as personal icons from the 1970s, citing De Leon's "soul-shattering, life-extinguishing" movies on vampires and female bondage, particularly Women in Cages. "It is just harsh, harsh, harsh," he said, and described the final shot as one of "devastating despair".

Tarantino makes references to and features music from cult movies and television. He often features a character singing along to a song from the soundtrack, such as Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) with "Stuck in the Middle With You" by Stealer's Wheel in Reservoir Dogs and Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) with "Flowers on the Wall" by The Statler Brothers and Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) with "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" by Urge Overkill in Pulp Fiction.

He will incorporate a scene in which music is heard to fade out completely before fading back in again (known as Diegetic music), such as in Reservoir Dogs with the ear scene wherein Mr. Blonde walking to his car, then back inside to "Stuck in the Middle With You".

There are a variety of camera angles and types of shots that are considered typical of a Tarantino movie. He often frames characters with doorways and shows them opening and closing doors, and he often films characters from the back. He uses widely-imitated quick cuts of character's hands performing actions in extreme closeup, a technique reminiscent of Brian De Palma.

He will use a long closeup of a person's face while someone else speaks off-screen (closeup of The Bride while Bill talks, of Butch while Marsellus talks, Ted's face when Chester talks in Four Rooms). Although he did not invent it, Tarantino popularized the trunk shot, which is featured in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, and Kill Bill. In Grindhouse (Death Proof feature), Tarantino's traditional shot looking up at the actors from the trunk of a car is replaced by one looking up from under the hood. Often he will shoot a character's feet during a key moment (such as the depressing of a car's pedals, as seen in Pulp Fiction).

Tarantino often makes minor connections between his films, usually by reusing names, locations, and fictional brand names and business. An example of this is Tarantino's assertion that John Travolta's character in Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega, and Michael Madsen's character in Reservoir Dogs, Vic Vega, are brothers. Harvey Keitel's character in Reservoir Dogs, Larry Dimmick/Mr. White, is also said to be related to Tarantino's character in Pulp Fiction, Jimmie Dimmick. In Death Proof, the Twisted Nerve title theme, featured in Kill Bill: Vol. 1, can be heard as a ringtone. The character Sheriff Earl McGraw appears in both Kill Bill, Vol. 1 and Death Proof, as well as From Dusk Till Dawn (written, but not directed by Tarantino) and Planet Terror (written and directed by Robert Rodriguez). The name 'Alabama' was used in Reservoir Dogs as Harvey Keitel's former female partner in crime, and in Tarantino's screenplay for True Romance, in which it was the lead female character's name. In Death Proof Stuntman Mike mentions that he once saw one of Jungle Julia's billboards at Big Kahuna Burger, the fast food place mentioned in Pulp Fiction.

Almost all of his films are set in Los Angeles (Death Proof, Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds being notable exceptions, although Kill Bill had a minor scene taking place in Los Angeles).

Tarantino is known to go out of his way to avoid placement of real products and/or places in his movies, often placing fake or long-since discontinued products in scenes when the situation calls for it. An ad for Jack Rabbit Slim's, the restaurant at which characters in Pulp Fiction dine, is heard shortly before Bruce Willis/Butch enters Vincent Vega's apartment, and Red Apple cigarettes, the brand smoked by Bruce Willis/Butch and Mia Wallace (she reaches for the pack before Vincent gives her one) in Pulp Fiction has a prominent billboard in the subway in Kill Bill. Although Robert Rodriguez directed Planet Terror in Grindhouse, El Wray is tossed a pack of Red Apple cigarettes. In Death Proof, Abernathy asks Kim to get her a pack of Red Apple 'Tans' when she goes into the store. Tim Roth's Ted the Bellhop character has a half-smoked pack lying on a shelf near his belongings in Four Rooms. Freddy Rodriguez's character in Planet Terror is called El Wray, which is also the name of the place the Gecko Brothers are traveling to in Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn.

Big Kahuna Burger has been referenced in several of Tarantino's films. In Reservoir Dogs, Michael Madsen's Mr. Blond character shows up at the warehouse, the principal setting of the film, holding a soft drink from the burger joint. In Pulp Fiction, Samuel Jackson's character, Jules Winnfield, makes small talk about Big Kahuna Burger with Brett and his associates upon noticing food from there in the apartment. In From Dusk Till Dawn, Seth Gecko brings burgers from Big Kahuna Burger to the motel. Stuntman Mike from Death Proof also mentions Big Kahuna Burger in passing because Jungle Julia has a billboard next to it. In the final Four Rooms segment which Tarantino directed, Jennifer Beals's Angela character is seen sipping from a violet-colored soft-drink cup with a Big Kahuna Burger logo on it.

The cereal Fruit Brute (not fictional, but discontinued in 1983) is featured in Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Kill Bill, Vol. 1. Also, in Grindhouse, there is an ad for a non-existent Mexican restaurant called "Acuña Boys," a name given a fleeting mention in Kill Bill, Vol. 2. Characters in Death Proof are seen drinking sodas from cups with the restaurant's logo on them. A character from Jackie Brown, Sheronda has a cup with the Acuña Boys logo on it as well.

While in general film characters are rarely shown using the bathroom, Tarantino often includes a toilet scene (e.g. Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs, John Travolta and Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction, Christian Slater in True Romance, Juliette Lewis in From Dusk Till Dawn, Uma Thurman in Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Daryl Hannah in Kill Bill Vol. 2). In Death Proof, both Vanessa Ferlito and Rosario Dawson mention that they have to go to the toilet as well as Amanda Plummer aka Honey Bunny, "I gotta go pee!" in the final scene of Pulp Fiction.

He often includes characters dressed in black suits with white shirts and black ties: the thieves in Reservoir Dogs, John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, Pam Grier in Jackie Brown (without a tie), the Gecko brothers in From Dusk Till Dawn, the crazy 88s in Kill Bill Vol. 1. It is stated on the fact commentary on the Pulp Fiction DVD that he uses the black suits as the standard outfit that his characters wear in the way that other directors have certain outfits for their characters, like Leone's main characters usually wearing dusters.

His films often contain lines of dialogue in which a character rhymes when talking. For instance in Kill Bill vol. 1 a character introduces himself by saying: "My name is Buck, and I'm here to fuck" (which is also Robert Englund's first line in Tobe Hooper's Eaten Alive) or, in Pulp Fiction, Jules Winnefield lies: "My name's Pitt, and your ass ain't talking your way out of this shit." Also in Pulp Fiction, a bartender tells Vincent Vega "My name is Paul, and that shit's between y'all." Yet another example is when Tim Roth´s character tells Samuel L. Jackson´s in Pulp Fiction: "If you don´t take your hand off that case, then I´ma unload in your fucking face." In Kill Bill Vol. 2, Michael Madsen's character Budd says to a tied and injured Beatrix (Uma Thurman) "Wakey wakey, eggs and bakey" to wake her up.

Stanley Kubrick's The Killing is a direct influence on the fractured narrative structure (Lionel White, author of the novel Clean Break on which The Killing was based, was given a dedication in the end credits of Reservoir Dogs) while the idea of the color-coded criminals is taken from The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. The infamous ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs resembles a scene in Sergio Corbucci's 1966 Spaghetti Western classic Django, in which a man's ear is cut off and fed to him before he is shot dead.

The Don Siegel version of The Killers played an influence on Pulp Fiction, and the events of the adrenaline-injection scene closely resemble a story related in Martin Scorsese's documentary American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince. The line about going "to work on homes here with a pair of pliers and a blow torch" is similar to "You know what kind of people they are. They'll strip you naked and go to work on you with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch" from another Don Siegel film, 1973's Charley Varrick.

The intro titles to Jackie Brown are a careful homage to the intro titles to The Graduate.

Kill Bill Vol. 1 is heavily influenced by the 1973 Toshiya Fujita film Lady Snowblood, in addition to some shots being virtually identical to those in Branded to Kill. The fighting scene where The Bride duels as back lit silhouettes is almost a direct copy of a similar scene in the 1998 Hiroyuki Nakano film Samurai Fiction. The Superman monologue delivered at the end of Kill Bill Vol. 2 was inspired by a passage from Jules Feiffer's 1965 book, The Great Comic Book Heroes, which Tarantino confirmed in a 2004 interview with Entertainment Weekly.

In Tarantino's Death Proof, he pays homage to 1970's sleazy exploitations car chase movies.

The influence of African American culture is apparent in much of Tarantino's work, arguably more than Asian culture, which was more prevalent in the Kill Bill series. His references to blaxploitation films and soul music are complimentary tributes.

Tarantino has defended his use of the word, arguing that black audiences have an appreciation of his blaxploitation-influenced films that eludes some of his critics, and, indeed, that Jackie Brown, another oft-cited example, was primarily made for "black audiences".

Tarantino worked in a video rental store prior to becoming a filmmaker, paid close attention to the types of films people liked to rent, and has cited that experience as inspiration for his directorial career. Tarantino has been romantically linked with numerous entertainers, including actress Mira Sorvino, directors Allison Anders and Sofia Coppola, actresses Julie Dreyfus and Shar Jackson and comedians Kathy Griffin and Margaret Cho. There have also been rumors about his relationship with Uma Thurman, whom he has referred to as his "muse". However, Tarantino has gone on record as saying that their relationship is strictly platonic. He has never married and has no children.

One of Tarantino's closest friends is fellow director Robert Rodriguez (the pair often refer to each other as brothers). Their biggest collaborations have been From Dusk Till Dawn (written by Tarantino, directed by Rodriguez), Four Rooms (they both wrote and directed segments of the film), Sin City and Grindhouse. It was Tarantino who suggested that Rodriguez name the final part of his El Mariachi trilogy Once Upon a Time in Mexico, as a homage to the titles Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon A Time In America by Sergio Leone. They are both members of A Band Apart, a production company that also features directors John Woo and Luc Besson. Rodriguez scored Kill Bill: Volume 2 for one dollar, and the favor was returned in kind, with Tarantino directing a scene in Rodriguez's 2005 film Sin City for the same fee. Rodriguez was responsible for introducing Tarantino to digital cinematography. Prior to this, Tarantino was a vocal supporter of using traditional film.

Tarantino is a friend of Japanese director Takashi Miike, whom he asked to perform a cameo in Eli Roth's film Hostel. As a favor for Miike doing so, Tarantino appears in the opening action sequence of Miike's movie Sukiyaki Western: Django, released in August 2007.

In a Playboy interview, he talked of smoking cannabis and using ecstasy while filming Kill Bill.

He was thanked in the liner notes of Nirvana's final studio album In Utero although the spelling of his name is incorrect. Tarantino returned the favor by thanking Nirvana on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, along with the message "RIP Kurt".

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Grindhouse (film)

Grindhouse is a 2007 film co-written, produced and directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino. The film is a double feature consisting of two feature-length segments, Robert Rodriguez directed Planet Terror and Quentin Tarantino directed Death Proof, and bookended by fictional trailers for upcoming attractions, advertisements, and in-theater announcements. The film's title derives from the U.S. film industry term "grindhouse", which refers to (now no longer existent) movie theaters specializing in B movies, often exploitation films, shown in a multiple-feature format. The film's cast includes Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Michael Biehn, Marley Shelton, Josh Brolin, Jeff Fahey, Naveen Andrews, Bruce Willis, Kurt Russell, Rosario Dawson, Jordan Ladd, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, stuntwoman Zoë Bell, and Vanessa Ferlito.

Rodriguez's segment, Planet Terror, revolves around an outfit of rebels attempting to survive an onslaught of zombie-like creatures as they feud with a military unit, while Tarantino's segment, Death Proof, focuses on a misogynistic, psychopathic stunt man who targets young women, murdering them with his "death proof" stunt car. Each feature is preceded by faux trailers of exploitation films in other genres that were developed by other directors.

After the film was released on April 6, 2007, ticket sales performed significantly below box office analysts' expectations despite mostly positive critic reviews. In much of the rest of the world, each feature was released separately in extended versions. Two soundtracks were also released for the features and include music and audio snippets from the film. In several interviews, the directors have expressed their interest in a possible sequel to the film.

Rodriguez first came up with the idea for Planet Terror during the production of The Faculty. "I remember telling Elijah Wood and Josh Hartnett, all these young actors, that zombie movies were dead and hadn't been around in a while, but that I thought they were going to come back in a big way because they’d been gone for so long," recalled Rodriguez, "I said, 'We've got to be there first.' I had I’d started writing. It was about 30 pages, and I said to them, 'There are characters for all of you to play.' We got all excited about it, and then I didn't know where to go with it. The introduction was about as far as I'd gotten, and then I got onto other movies. Sure enough, the zombie invasion happened and they all came back again, and I was like, 'Ah, I knew that I should've made my zombie film.'" The story was reapproached when Tarantino and Rodriguez developed the idea for Grindhouse.

Many of the cast members had previously worked with both directors. Before appearing in Grindhouse, Marley Shelton had auditioned for The Faculty, but Rodriguez chose not to cast her. She was eventually cast in the role of the Customer in the opening sequence of Sin City. Bruce Willis had appeared in both Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Rodriguez's Sin City, in addition to having a cameo appearance in a segment Tarantino directed for the anthology film Four Rooms. Tom Savini had previously acted in From Dusk Till Dawn, which was written by Tarantino and directed by Rodriguez. Michael Parks reprises the role of Earl McGraw in Planet Terror and Death Proof. Parks first portrayed the role in From Dusk Till Dawn. His son, James Parks, appears in Death Proof as Edgar McGraw, a character that first appeared in From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money. The first time the two characters appeared together was in Tarantino's Kill Bill. Tarantino himself plays small roles in both segments of Grindhouse, and director Eli Roth, who contributed the fake trailer Thanksgiving and whose film Hostel was produced by Tarantino, has a cameo in Death Proof.

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino each acted as cinematographer on their segments. Although Rodriguez had previously worked as the cinematographer on six of his own feature films, Death Proof marked Tarantino's first credit as a cinematographer. The director of photography for Rob Zombie's fake trailer Werewolf Women of the SS was Phil Parmet, whom Zombie had first worked with on The Devil's Rejects. The director of photography for Eli Roth's fake trailer Thanksgiving was Milan Chadima, whom Roth had previously worked with on Hostel.

The film uses various unconventional techniques to make the films more like those that were shown in grindhouse theaters in the 1970s. Throughout both feature-length segments and the fake trailers, the film is intentionally damaged to make it look like many of the exploitation films of the 1970s, which were generally shipped around from theater to theater and usually ended up in bad shape. To reproduce the look of damaged film reels in Planet Terror, five of the six 25,000-frame reels were edited with real film damage, plug-ins, and stock footage. The film prints sent to theaters were also intentionally damaged so that they would become jammed, or "brain-wrap" easily, a common side effect of running films at theaters for very long periods of time.

Planet Terror makes heavy use of digital effects throughout the film. Perhaps the most notable effect is Cherry's (played by Rose McGowan) fake leg. To accomplish the fake leg that Cherry sports after her accident, during post-production the effects teams digitally removed McGowan's right leg from the shots and replaced it with computer-generated props — first a table leg and then an M16 rifle. During shooting for these scenes, McGowan wore a special cast which restricted her leg movement to give her the correct motion, and helped the effects artists to digitally remove her leg.

The music for Planet Terror was composed by Robert Rodriguez. Inspiration for his score came from John Carpenter, whose music was often played on set. A cover version of The Dead Kennedys' "Too Drunk to Fuck" performed by Nouvelle Vague was also featured. The soundtrack for Death Proof consists entirely of non-original music, including excerpts from the scores of other films. Soundtrack albums for both segments were released on April 3, 2007. "Death Proof" features dialogue excerpts from the film.

Grindhouse is rated R in the United States for "strong graphic bloody violence and gore, pervasive language, some sexuality, nudity and drug use". On March 15, 2007, The New York Post reported that the film would possibly require heavy and extensive cuts in order to avoid an NC-17 rating. Shortly after, the film officially received an R rating from the MPAA. Ain't It Cool News reported that according to Tarantino, only minimal cuts were made which ended up totaling 20 seconds.

In a rural town in Texas, go-go dancer 'Cherry Darling' (Rose McGowan) decides to quit her low-paying job and find another use for her numerous 'useless' talents. She runs into her mysterious ex-boyfriend El Wray (Freddy Rodriguez) at the Bone Shack, a restaurant owned by JT Hague (Jeff Fahey). Meanwhile, a group of military officials, led by the demented Lt. Muldoon (Bruce Willis), are making a business transaction with a scientist named Abby (Naveen Andrews) for mass quantities of a deadly biochemical agent known as DC2 (codename "Project Terror"); when Muldoon learns that Abby has an extra supply on hand, he attempts to take Abby hostage, and Abby intentionally releases the gas into the air. The gas reaches the town and turns its residents into deformed bloodthirsty psychopaths, mockingly referred to as "sickos" by the surviving humans. The infected townspeople are treated by the sinister Dr. William Block (Josh Brolin) and his abused, neglected anesthesiologist wife Dakota (Marley Shelton) at a local hospital. As the patients quickly become enraged aggressors, Cherry and Wray lead a team of accidental warriors into the night, struggling to find safety.

Three friends—Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito), Shanna (Jordan Ladd) and radio disc jockey Jungle Julia Lucai (Sydney Tamiia Poitier)—spend a night in Austin, Texas celebrating Arlene's birthday, unknowingly followed by a mysterious man in a souped-up 1970 Chevy Nova. The man, Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell), stalks the young women with his 'death proof car,' leading to a deadly encounter. Fourteen months later, Stuntman Mike—now equipped with an equally deadly 1969 Dodge Charger—stalks another group of young women—Lee (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), Abernathy (Rosario Dawson), Kim (Tracie Thoms), and Zoë Bell (herself), a group of women working below the line in Hollywood, whose 1970 Dodge Challenger proves a worthy adversary.

Before each segment, there are trailers advertising fake films, as well as vintage theater snipes and an ad for a fictional restaurant called Acuña Boys. According to Rodriguez, it was Tarantino's idea to film fake trailers for Grindhouse. "I didn't even know about it until I read it in the trades. It said something like 'Rodriguez and Tarantino doing a double feature and Tarantino says there's gonna be fake trailers.' And I thought, 'There are?'" Rodriguez and Tarantino had originally planned to make all of the film's fake trailers themselves. According to Rodriguez, "We had so many ideas for trailers. I made Machete. I shot lobby cards and the poster and cut the trailer and sent it to Quentin, and he just flipped out because it looked so vintage and so real. He started showing it around to Eli Roth and to Edgar Wright, and they said, 'Can we do a trailer? We have an idea for a trailer!' We were like, 'Hey, let them shoot it. If we don't get around to shooting ours, we'll put theirs in the movie. If theirs comes out really great, we'll put it in the movie to have some variety.' Then Rob Zombie came up to me in October at the Scream Awards and said, 'I have a trailer: Werewolf Women of the SS.' I said, 'Say no more. Go shoot it. You got me.'" Each trailer was shot in two days. While Wright and Roth shot only what ended up on screen, Zombie shot enough footage to work into a half-hour film and was particularly pained to edit it down. Some Canadian screening releases included the South by Southwest-winning trailer Hobo with a Shotgun.

Rodriguez wrote Machete in 1993 as a full feature for Danny Trejo. "I had cast him in Desperado and I remember thinking, 'Wow, this guy should have his own series of Mexican exploitation movies like Charles Bronson or like Jean-Claude Van Damme.' So I wrote him this idea of a federale from Mexico who gets hired to do hatchet jobs in the U.S. I had heard sometimes FBI or DEA have a really tough job that they don't want to get their own agents killed on, they'll hire an agent from Mexico to come do the job for $25,000. I thought, 'That's Machete. He would come and do a really dangerous job for a lot of money to him but for everyone else over here it's peanuts.' But I never got around to making it." It was later announced that the trailer will be made as a feature film.

Rob Zombie's contribution, Werewolf Women of the SS, featured Nicolas Cage as Fu Manchu, Udo Kier as Franz Hess, the commandant of Death Camp 13, Zombie's wife, Sheri Moon Zombie, and Sybil Danning as SS officers/sisters Eva and Gretchen Krupp (The She-Devils of Belzac), along with wrestlers Andrew Martin and Oleg Prudius, and Olja Hrustic, Meriah Nelson, and Lorielle New as the Werewolf Women. According to Zombie, "Basically, I had two ideas. It was either going to be a Nazi movie or a women-in-prison film, and I went with the Nazis. There's all those movies like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS; Fräulein Devil; and Love Camp 7—I've always found that to be the most bizarre genre." Zombie is also quoted as saying "I was getting very conceptual in my own mind with it. A lot of times these movies would be made like, 'Well, you know, I've got a whole bunch of Nazi uniforms, but I got this Chinese set too. We'll put 'em together!' They start jamming things in there, so I took that approach." On December 18, 2007, Zombie posted an entry on his MySpace page, asking if people would want to see a feature-length version of Werewolf Women of the SS.

Edgar Wright's contribution, Don't, was produced in the style of a 1970s European horror trailer. The trailer featured appearances from Jason Isaacs, Matthew Macfadyen, singer Katie Melua, Georgina Chapman, Emily Booth, Stuart Wilson, Lucy Punch, Rafe Spall, Wright regulars Simon Pegg and Nick Frost and a voice-over by Will Arnett. Mark Gatiss, MyAnna Buring, Peter Serafinowicz, Michael Smiley and Nicola Cunningham (who played the zombie "Mary" in Shaun of the Dead), among others, made cameo appearances though they eventually went uncredited. To get the necessary 1970s look, Wright used vintage lenses and old-style graphics. During editing, he scratched some of the film with steel wool and dragged it around a parking lot to make it appear neglected by wayward projectionists. According to Wright, "In the '70s, when American International would release European horror films, they'd give them snazzier titles. And the one that inspired me was this Jorge Grau film: In the UK, it's called The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. In Spain and in Italy, I think it's called Do Not Speak Ill of the Dead. But in the States, it was called Don't Open the Window. I just loved the fact that there isn't a big window scene in the film—it's all based around the spin and the voiceover not really telling you what the hell is going on in the film." On the Charlie Rose talk show, Quentin Tarantino also pointed out another aspect of American advertising of British films in the 1970s that is being referenced—none of the actors have any dialogue in the trailer, as if the trailer was intentionally edited to prevent American viewers from realizing that the film is British.

Eli Roth's contribution is a promo for the slasher opus Thanksgiving. Produced in the style of holiday-based slasher films such as Halloween, Black Christmas, April Fool's Day and My Bloody Valentine, the trailer starred Jeff Rendell as a killer who stalks victims dressed as a pilgrim, Jordan Ladd, Jay Hernandez, and Roth himself as his intended victims, and Michael Biehn as the Sheriff. The design for the titles in Thanksgiving was based on a Mad magazine slasher parody titled Arbor Day. Select excerpts of the score from Creepshow were used.

Some screenings of Grindhouse (mainly in Canada) also featured a fake trailer for a film titled Hobo with a Shotgun. The trailer, created by Dartmouth, Nova Scotia filmmakers Jason Eisener, John Davies and Rob Cotterill, won Robert Rodriguez's South by Southwest Grindhouse trailers contest.

The general plot is that a vagabond with a 20-gauge shotgun is taking the law into his own hands. In the trailer, the main character is seen killing numerous persons, ranging from armed robbers to corrupt cops to a pedophilic Santa Claus. The trailer was available in certain selected movie theaters in the United States and Canada. There have been discussions about making the trailer into an actual feature.

As stated on the fake trailer's Facebook account, the filming of a feature film should start in Spring 2009.

Grindhouse has been called a box office flop, surprising box office analysts and fans alike given the strong reviews and favorable media buzz. Costing $53 million to produce, Grindhouse opened poorly with "a disappointing $11.5 million" in the United States, making only a per-theater average of $4,417; box office analysts originally predicted an opening weekend total of at least $20-$30 million. The opening weekend box office total stood below not only the second weekends of Blades of Glory and Meet the Robinsons, but was also below the opening weekend of the widely panned Are We Done Yet?. In an attempt to explain the film's disappointing opening weekend, box office analyst Brandon Gray suggested that Grindhouse "suffered the usual horror comedy dilemma that afflicted Snakes on a Plane and Slither among others: too funny to be scary, too scary to be funny." Box office analyst Lee Tistaert of popular tracking website Lee's Movie Info compared the result with what may have happened if Tarantino's Kill Bill saga had been released as one film, instead of two separate volumes. "Is it possible that Tarantino got his wish this time as a result of two back-to-back $60 million grosses?" he asked. Others attributed the film's disappointing opening to the timing of Easter weekend, noting that the weekend is more tailored for family-oriented films or light-comedy, not exploitative horror films. Quentin Tarantino is quoted as saying about the film's box office results, "It was disappointing, yeah. But the movie worked with the audience. People who saw it loved it and applauded. I'm proud of my flop." Harvey Weinstein said that he was so "incredibly disappointed" with the film's opening weekend that he was considering re-releasing it as two separate movies and possibly adding back the "missing" scenes. The film has altogether earned $25,037,897 in ticket sales as of June 23, 2007.

The critics who didn't like the film were not amused by the film's graphic and comical violence, with Larry Ratliff of San Antonio Express-News noting that "this ambitious, scratched and weathered venture never manages a real death grip on the senses." Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle awarded the film a high rating, but noted that: "the Rodriguez segment is terrific; the Tarantino one long-winded and juvenile." Others, by contrast, have considered Death Proof to be a deeper and more noteworthy segment. Critic A. O. Scott of the New York Times notes that "t a certain point in Death Proof the scratches and bad splices disappear, and you find yourself watching not an arch, clever pastiche of old movies and movie theaters but an actual movie." Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert was divided. He gave Grindhouse as a whole two and a half stars out of four, awarding Planet Terror two stars and Death Proof three stars.

The double feature appeared at number six on Jack Mathews and Owen Gleiberman's respective top ten lists for New York Daily News and Entertainment Weekly, and at number seven on Stephanie Zacharek's list for Salon. Marc Savlov listed Death Proof at number ten on his list for The Austin Chronicle.

Internationally, Planet Terror and Death Proof were released separately in extended versions, approximately two months apart. The poster artwork for each film's release in the Netherlands claimed that Death Proof would feature "coming attractions" from Rodriguez, while Planet Terror would feature "coming attractions" from Tarantino. While the separated version of Planet Terror includes the Machete trailer, none of the other fake trailers were included when the features were released individually.

In reaction to the possibility of a split in a foreign release, Tarantino stated "Especially if they were dealing with non-English language countries, they don't really have this tradition ... not only do they not really know what a grind house is, they don't even have the double feature tradition. So you are kind of trying to teach us something else." Many European fans saw the split as an attempt to increase profits by forcing audiences to pay twice for what was shown as a single film in the United States.

In the United Kingdom, Death Proof was released on September 21, 2007. The release of Planet Terror followed on November 9. Death Proof was screened in Europe in the extended version that was presented in competition at the Cannes film festival. The additional material includes scenes that were replaced in the American theatrical release version with a "missing reel" title card, such as the lap dance scene. A total of about 27 minutes were added for this version. Between March and June 2008, the US theatrical version of Grindhouse had limited screenings at select cinemas.

In Australia, the edited version of Death Proof was first screened on November 1, 2007 as a separate film. However, from January 17, 2008, Grindhouse had limited screenings. In April 2008, Grindhouse was screened by Dendy Cinemas in one venue at a time across the country, through the use of a traveling 35 mm reel.

Death Proof and Planet Terror were released separately on DVD in the United States. The trailers were omitted from both releases, with the exception of Machete. Death Proof was released on September 18, 2007, with Planet Terror following on October 16, 2007. Both were two-disc special editions featuring extended versions of the films. Robert Rodriguez stated in his 10 Minute Film School that a box set of the two films would be available soon, and that his 10 Minute Cook School would appear on it. This release would also reportedly include Hobo with a Shotgun. A six-DVD edition of the film was released on March 21, 2008 in Japan, featuring the films in both their individual extended versions and in the abridged double feature presentation along with previously-unreleased special features.

Planet Terror and Death Proof were released individually on Blu-ray Disc on December 16, 2008 in North America. The Blu-ray edition of Planet Terror also contained a "scratch-free" version of the film that removed much of the damage effects, while the Blu-ray edition of Death Proof only contained the "damaged" version of the film. The theatrical version of Grindhouse is set for a Region 2 DVD release in Germany on December 31, 2009.

Cable channel Starz aired Grindhouse on March 31, 2008. Prior to the debut on Starz, the theatrical cut was also available On Demand for those with a Starz subscription.

Rodriguez had announced plans to film an adaptation of Machete and release it by the time Planet Terror and Death Proof were released on DVD. However, Machete has yet to be completed. Electra and Elise Avellan, Rodriguez's nieces who play the Crazy Babysitter Twins in both films, have said their uncle wants to do a sequel featuring Machete and The Babysitter Twins, but are unclear when or if production would start. "Robert mentioned something about the end of the world and Hollywood action films, where we'd be trained in Mexico to come back here and fight," Electra Avellan told bloody-disgusting.com.

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