FilmCouch

Question from FilmCouch #94, who's better, Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino?

While discussing Zack & Miri Make a Porno, Paul made the claim that in the future, film scholars will agree that Kevin Smith is a more "historically significant" filmmaker than Quentin Tarantino. I say no way.

What do you think?

Re:Question from FilmCouch #94, who's better, Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino?

Film critics comparing the significance of these two writer/directors is similar to historical scholars disputing the relative impacts of Grotius Flaccus and Miminicus Flautus, two emperors of the late 360s. Flaccus could be counted upon to produce a bloody violent good show at the coliseum of a weekday evening, while Flautus was famous for his brownbag lunchtime punch-and-judy romances at the Cloaca markets, but neither ruler is ever mentioned in the same breath as, say, Caesar Augustus (Walt Disney in the analogy).

Re:Question from FilmCouch #94, who's better, Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino?

So if I'm understanding you, joem, you're saying that while both can create a good time, they will be lost to history?

Interesting point. But I think Tarantino will have longevity, at least Pulp Fiction, if not more.

Re:Question from FilmCouch #94, who's better, Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino?

Aside from "Mallrats", I have enjoyed every Kevin Smith effort, to this point, but really... this is an apples an oranges discussion. I find it hard to imagine a Smith film that is an equal to "Pulp Fiction". Smith hones his craft to a finer point (almost) every time out, but "Zack and Miri..." is no "Kill Bill". Love 'em both, but in vastly different ways.

Re:Question from FilmCouch #94, who's better, Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino?

dexx:

Love 'em both, but in vastly different ways.

This is a good point. In the podcast we were talking about not only who was better, but who would be seen as more "historically significant." I think the fact is that any survey of American film of the 90s and 00s that goes deeper than just the Oscat winners would be remise to overlook either of them. But like you said, for different reasons.

Re:Question from FilmCouch #94, who's better, Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino?

I'm too lazy to look into it, but I wonder what effect, if any, Smith had on the mumblecore DIY movement at its inception. "Clerks" came out when Andrew Bujalski was 16, for example. Did Booge watch that movie and think, Hey, I could do that? I see Smith's historical legacy as a goofy child of Cassavetes. He started at ground zero and built from there. I'm just reviewing a movie sent to Spout called "Game Over," which two fellows shot in nine days on a 29K budget. Wave of the future? It takes place in a Clerks-like game store.

Whereas Tarentino took what existed in cinema around him and began to riff on it. Decadent or evolutionary?