Critic Ken Dancyger, when reviewing hotshot new director Quentin Tarantino's second feature Pulp Fiction, called it "a new phenomenon, the movie whose style is created from the context of movie life rather than real life. The consequence is twofoldthe presumption of deep knowledge on the part of the audience of those forms such as the gangster films or Westerns, horror films or adventure films. And that the parody or alteration of that film creates a new form, a different experience for the audience." Tarantino himself has agreed with this assessment, splitting his films up further into the "realer than real" and "movie movies". The "realer than real" - Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown - are still pretty divorced from reality, but they're still more grounded than the "movie movies" like Kill Bill and Death Proof. As over the top as his characters can be, though, and as unbelievable the scenarios they end up in (usually because, as Dancyger pointed out, they're drawn from other movies instead of real life), a surprising amount of them have a basis in reality. We're not sure how much Tarantino is aware of it, considering how much time he spends in his private cinema watching crappy blaxploitation and chop socky movies, but a load of his plot points, characters and overarching stories have actually happened in real life. Sadly there's never been a couple of criminals on the run who bump into vampires at a Mexican titty bar, or badass black slaves getting revenge on their owners (so far as we know), but here are ten Quentin Tarantino plots that did really happen.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
