Quentin Tarantino's gifts as an actor were not universally appreciated. "He has," film critic Fintan O'Toole once remarked, "the vocal modulation of a railway-station announcer, the expressive power of a fence-post, and the charisma of a week-old head of lettuce."

[After dropping out of school (in the middle of ninth grade) and briefly working as an usher at a local porn theatre, Tarantino found his way to Video Archives, a video store near his home, where he worked for five years. He showed such promise that a fellow clerk, as obsessed with films as he was, committed suicide because he was convinced that he would never be as successful as Tarantino promised to become.]