Here, in his own colorful, slangy words, is the true American Dream saga of a self-proclaimed "film geek," with five intense years working in a video store, who became one of the most popular, recognizable, and imitated of all filmmakers. His dazzling, movie-informed work makes Quentin Tarantino's reputation, from his breakout film, "Reservoir Dogs" (1992), through "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" (2003) and "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" (2004), his enchanted homages to Asian action cinema, to his rousing tribute to guys-on-a-mission World War II movie, "Inglourious Basterds" (2009). For those who prefer a more mature, contemplative cinema, Tarantino provided the tender, very touching "Jackie Brown" (1997). A masterpiece--"Pulp Fiction" (1994). A delightful mash of unabashed exploitation and felt social consciousness--his latest opus, "Django Unchained" (2012).

From the beginning, Tarantino (b. 1963)--affable, open, and enthusiastic about sharing his adoration of movies--has been a journalist's dream. "Quentin Tarantino: Interviews," revised and updated with twelve new interviews, is a joy to read cover to cover because its subject has so much interesting and provocative to say about his own movies and about cinema in general, and also about his unusual life. He is frank and revealing about growing up in Los Angeles with a single, half-Cherokee mother, and dropping out of ninth grade to take acting classes. Lost and confused, he still managed a gutsy ambition: young Quentin decided he would be a filmmaker.

Tarantino has conceded that Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson), the homicidal African American con man in "Jackie Brown," is an autobiographical portrait. "If I hadn't wanted to make movies, I would have ended up as Ordell," Tarantino has explained. "I wouldn't have been a postman or worked at the phone company. . . . I would have gone to jail."

Here, in his own colorful, slangy words, is the true American Dream saga of a self-proclaimed "film geek," with five intense years working in a video store, who became one of the most popular, recognizable, and imitated of all filmmakers. His dazzling, movie-informed work makes Quentin Tarantino's reputation, from his breakout film, "Reservoir Dogs" (1992), through "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" (2003) and "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" (2004), his enchanted homages to Asian action cinema, to his rousing tribute to guys-on-a-mission World War II movie, "Inglourious Basterds" (2009). For those who prefer a more mature, contemplative cinema, Tarantino provided the tender, very touching "Jackie Brown" (1997). A masterpiece--"Pulp Fiction" (1994). A delightful mash of unabashed exploitation and felt social consciousness--his latest opus, "Django Unchained" (2012).

From the beginning, Tarantino (b. 1963)--affable, open, and enthusiastic about sharing his adoration of movies--has been a journalist's dream. "Quentin Tarantino: Interviews," revised and updated with twelve new interviews, is a joy to read cover to cover because its subject has so much interesting and provocative to say about his own movies and about cinema in general, and also about his unusual life. He is frank and revealing about growing up in Los Angeles with a single, half-Cherokee mother, and dropping out of ninth grade to take acting classes. Lost and confused, he still managed a gutsy ambition: young Quentin decided he would be a filmmaker.

Tarantino has conceded that Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson), the homicidal African American con man in "Jackie Brown," is an autobiographical portrait. "If I hadn't wanted to make movies, I would have ended up as Ordell," Tarantino has explained. "I wouldn't have been a postman or worked at the phone company. . . . I would have gone to jail."

In the early twentieth century, the art world was captivated by the imaginative, totally original paintings of Henri Rousseau, who, seemingly without formal art training, produced works that astonished not only the public but great artists such as Pablo Picasso. Samuel Fuller (1912-1997) is known as the ""Rousseau of the cinema,"" a mostly ""B"" genre Hollywood moviemaker deeply admired by ""A"" filmmakers as diverse as Jim Jarmusch, Martin Scorsese, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and John Cassavetes, all of them dazzled by Fuller's wildly idiosyncratic primitivist style. A high-school dropout who became a New York City tabloid crime reporter in his teens, Fuller went to Hollywood and made movies post-World War II that were totally in line with his exploitative newspaper work: bold, blunt, pulpy, excitable. The images were as shocking, impolite, and in-your-face as a Weegee photograph of a gangster bleeding on a sidewalk. Fuller, who made twenty-three features between 1949 and 1989, is the very definition of a ""cult"" director, appreciated by those with a certain bent of subterranean taste, a penchant for what critic Manny Farber famously labeled as ""termite art."" Here are some of the crazy, lurid, comic-book titles of his movies: Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss, Verboten!, Pickup on South Street. Fuller isn't for everybody. His fans have to appreciate low-budget genre films, including westerns and war movies, and make room for some hard-knuckle, ugly bursts of violence. They also have to make allowance for lots of broad, crass acting, and scripts (all Fuller-written) that can be stiff, sometimes campy, often laboriously didactic. Fuller is for those who love cinema--images that jump, shout, dance. As he put it in his famous cigar-chomping cameo, acting in Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965): ""Film is like a battleground . . . love, hate, violence, death. In a single word: emotion."" After directing, Sam Fuller's greatest skill was conversation. He could talk, talk, talk, from his amazing experiences fighting in World War II to the time his brother-in-law dated Marilyn Monroe, and vivid stories about his moviemaking. Samuel Fuller: Interviews, edited by Gerald Peary, is not only informative about the filmmaker's career but sheer fun, following the wild, totally uninhibited stream of Fuller's chatter. He was an incredible storyteller, and, no matter the interview, he had stories galore for all sorts of readers, not just academics and film historians.

This is the first collection of interviews with John Ford (1895--1973), whom many aficionados of fine films consider not only the major American filmmaker but also one of the most extraordinary American artists of the twentieth century.

Among the world's filmmakers who have been devotees of Ford's work are Jean-Luc Godard, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, Wim Wenders, and Orson Welles, who, when asked from whom he learned how to make "Citizen Kane," exclaimed "John Ford, John Ford, John Ford "

And yet, Ford, unquestionably a giant of the international film world, is far less known, his genius less recognized, although his accomplishments comprise perhaps the best film biography of all time ("Young Mr. Lincoln"), the best war film ("They Were Expendable"), a masterly romance ("The Quiet Man"), a sublime film of childhood ("How Green Was My Valley"), classic adaptations from fiction ("The Grapes of Wrath," "The Long Voyage Home"), and the American Western, on which he left his indelible signature ("Stagecoach," "My Darling Clementine," "Fort Apache," "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," and "The Searchers").

Although his was a brilliant career, Ford was not a self-promoter. He refused to discuss his film art. In fact, with interviewers he proved to be gruff and impatient. With those who asked him intellectual questions he was downright cantankerous. His sarcasm, impatience, and occasional mean-spiritedness were quick to surface during interviews. The legend is that he was the interviewee from hell.

Yet there were times when he let the walls down and spoke openly and even generously. This book includes at least a dozen such lucid encounters with him, many reprinted for the first time. Also for the first time, several French interviews have been translated into English and show how with French critics Ford enjoyed making conversation. Included too are interviews newly discovered and not listed previously in any bibliography, as well as his poignant and revelatory interviews granted when he knew he was dying.

Gerald Peary, a professor of communication and journalism at Suffolk University in Boston, is a film critic for the "Boston Phoenix" and editor of "Quentin Tarantino: Interviews" (University Press of Mississippi).

Not since Martin Scorsese with "Mean Streets" in the mid-1970s has a young American filmmaker made such an instant impact on international cinema as Quentin Tarantino. In many ways, Tarantino is the paradigmatic 1990s success story: from high school dropout, toiling anonymously in a California video store, taking acting lessons, to world acclaim, with "Pulp Fiction" as the Grand Prix winner at Cannes.

With his first film, "Reservoir Dogs," the then 29-year-old became an inspiration for filmmakers even younger than himself on how to produce stylish, subterranean cinema. (Not that his extra-violent imitators, labeled "Tarantino school," could match the wit of his scripts, his talent with actors, and the vivacity, energy, and originality of his shooting style.)

Tarantino, turning famous, remains the same manic talker who is obsessed with American pop culture and is endlessly enthusiastic about his favorite movies and moviemakers. Informal, gregarious, accessible, he has been a journalist's dream, for his wonderfully expressive, almost stream-of-consciousness chatter.

This collection is the first book of Tarantino interviews to be published. The selections are his most uninhibited, far reaching, and revealing. They demonstrate conclusively that the source of his world-renowned pop-culture dialogue is his own brash, vivid, virtuosic conversation.

"I realized I didn't want to be an actor," he says. "I wanted to be a director. My favorite actors were character actors and I realized they still had to read for parts. I didn't want to be fifty years old and still reading for parts. I wanted some control over my destiny, and it seemed to me that directors did."

Gerald Peary is a film critic and columnist for the Boston Phoenix, a professor of journalism and communications at Suffolk University, and a lecturer at Boston University. He is also Acting Curator of the
Harvard University Film Archive.