LOS ANGELES — Quentin Tarantino is brewing some coffee and it is, as Samuel L. Jackson's "Pulp Fiction" hit man would enthuse, "some serious gourmet s—," served up in a mug bearing the logo of his podcast "Video Archives," named after the famed Manhattan Beach video store where Tarantino worked in his early 20s before becoming a filmmaker.
We're settling into the library of Tarantino's Hollywood Hills home, though pretty much any room in this spacious, multilevel mansion could technically qualify as a library. There are piles of film books and magazines in nearly every corner and on every surface, rows of vinyl record albums snaking across the carpeted and tiled floors, metal carts overflowing with VHS tapes just off the kitchen, revolving racks of comic books clamoring for attention. And we haven't even ventured into the guest house, where Tarantino stores a vast collection of magazine and newspaper clippings. It's not "Hoarders" — there's too much floor space — but, safe to say, the man will never want for entertainment.
It's Halloween, and Tarantino's wife, Daniella, and their two children are home in Tel Aviv, where the family splits its time during the year. Left to his own devices, Tarantino has been going through his horror movie collection, making a little stack to watch later that evening. These are films he hasn't viewed since they came out, like the 1977 supernatural thriller "The Sentinel," and others he has never seen at all ("perhaps for good reason," he says, laughing) like "Man's Best Friend," which has Ally Sheedy unwittingly adopting a genetically altered dog.
