A high school dropout and video freak, Quentin Tarantino took Hollywood by storm in 1992 with the cult hit Reservoir Dogs. His combination of clever dialogue and brutal violence hit a new peak in 1994 with Pulp Fiction, which won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and revived the career of John Travolta. Tarantino also began to dabble in acting, appearing with Antonio Banderas in Desperado (1995), and with George Clooney in From Dusk Til Dawn (1996).

In 1997 he had a solid, if not spectacular, hit with Jackie Brown, starring Pam Grier. An overnight success by Hollywood standards, Tarantino is considered a genius by some and a snotty imitator by others, adding to his mystique as a moviemaker. In 2003 he announced that his film, Kill Bill (starring Uma Thurman and Lucy Liu) would be released in two parts. The first part was released in 2003, and the second part was released in 2004.