The Emperor's new clothes: volumes 1 & 2
I blame Robert Redford. It's all his fault really. When he bailed out a small, Utah-based independent film festival, the Sundance Film Festival was born. Under his guardianship, Sundance has become one of the most influential film festivals in the world, championing the best modern American and international independent film makers, among them the Coen Brothers and Steven Soderbergh. And Quentin Tarantino.
A model of low-budget independent cinema, 1992's Reservoir Dogs was fresh, vibrant, funny and violent; a showcase for Tarantino's pop culture sensibilities, his perverse sense of humour and his cheerfully vulgar dialogue, which amused and offended audiences in equal measure. And then there was the ear scene. Elvis impersonator Michael Madsen tortures a bound and gagged cop by dancing to a Gerry Rafferty song. And slicing off his ear with a straight razor. Unfortunately, the cop still has one ear left and is forced to listen to the rest of the song. The scene was horrific. It was nauseating. Worse still, it has inspired drunken men to dance to Stuck in the Middle With You. The controversy surrounding that scene made the film and gave Tarantino a reputation as a dangerous young director surfing the pop culture zeitgeist. So what if we found out later that the film was an unacknowledged remake (or rip-off) of Hong Kong director Ringo Lam's excellent City on Fire?
Tarantino was suddenly everywhere. Passionate, arrogant and as excitable as a puppy in a room full of unhumped legs, you either loved him or you loathed him. He was 30 and he had the world at his feet. No-one knew what he was going to do next. What he did next was Pulp Fiction. It jump-started John Travolta's failing career and made a star of Samuel L Jackson. It won him …