LA Confidential

Quentin Tarantino invites fans into his 8216;Grindhouse8217; which inspired most of his movie characters and dialogues.

Some kids love Disneyland, but for little Quentin Tarantino, the happiest place on Earth was always a scabby L.A. movie theatre. That8217;s where he could sit in the dark with bloodied samurais, dangerous pimps and zombie brides. Sometimes, it8217;s even hard for the filmmaker to say where the movie screen stops and the real Los Angeles begins.

8216;8216;I was watching this blaxploitation movie called Death Force at the World Theater. In the movie two gang members are walking down Hollywood Boulevard and a car pulls up and guns them down right in front of the theater that I8217;m sitting in! I was like 16, and it remains to this day one of the great moments for me.8217;8217;

No one mixes art house and butcher shop quite the way 43-year-old Tarantino does. This Sunday marks the start of his Los Angeles Grindhouse Festival 2007, a tenderly titled, eight-week retrospective of five dozen deliriously bad films. For the uninitiated, 8216;8216;grindhouse8217;8217; is a nickname for the creaky theatres that would 8216;8216;grind8217;8217; away their projectors for triple features filled with second-run films, exploitation flicks and foreign-film curiosities.

He talks fast and loud, his synapses are set on rapid-fire mode, and silent places seem to make him itchy. That8217;s one reason he does much of his writing at Toi on Sunset, the spiky Thai restaurant that is about as serene as a mosh pit.

8216;8216;It8217;s the best place to eat after 2 a.m.,8217;8217; Tarantino said.

8216;8216;The Carson Twin Cinema, that was pretty much the perfect grindhouse theater, 8217;8217; he said. 8216;8216;They would show Enter the Dragon and The Five Fingers of Death as a double feature three times a year, because it would always sell out.8217;8217;

Tarantino would spend his weekends soaking up Italian horror films, pompom-girl flicks and an endless parade of kung fu fights. The dialogue Tarantino heard from the other patrons stuck with him as much as the cheesy lines from the movies; the racial epithets, drug talk and leering blue chatter taught him the celebrated idioms of his characters in Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown.

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8216;8216;I8217;m never going to be shy about anything, it8217;s more about my version of the truth as I know it,8217;8217; Tarantino said. 8216;8216;That8217;s part of my talent, really putting the way people really speak into the things I write.8217;8217;

Tarantino used to ride city buses to the far corners of Los Angeles in search of the gritty movies that taught him about violence, sex and culture. 8216;8216;I like to go down to the Magic Johnson Theatres to see my movies there. I like to see them in the suburbs, and downtown, just to see how the audiences take it all in.8217;8217;

Raymond Chandler created a fictional Los Angeles that seemed to somehow make the city more real. In his own way, Tarantino has done the same with his films.

GEOFF BOUCHER