Cinema Speculation

by Quentin Tarantino

Just making a list of the wild violent images I witnessed from 1970 to 1972 would appall most readers. Whether it was James Caan being machine-gunned to death at the toll booth, or Moe Greene being shot in the eye in The Godfather. That guy cut in half by the airplane propeller in Catch-22. Stacy Keach’s wild ride on the side of the car in The New Centurions. Or Don Stroud shooting himself in the face with a tommy gun in Bloody Mama. But just listing grotesque moments—out of context of the movies they were in—isn’t entirely fair to the films in question. And my mother’s point of view—that she later explained to me—was always a question of context. In those films, I could handle the imagery, because I understood the story.