20 Friendly Facts About Quentin Tarantino & Robert Rodriguez Collaborations

Young readers may not remember this, because they live in a world in which Grindhouse and Sin City exist (and, well, apparently also that Sin City sequel, somehow), but those movies represented the last major collaborations between Tarantino and Rodriguez, which can help create the illusion that they used to be awesome. The collaborations, we mean. And they were. Kinda. Four Rooms was never too good, while Grindhouse, Sin City, and the former’s two, derivative twin, movies, Death Proof and Planet Terror, are pretty awesome themselves. Yet back in the day there was much more promise – just because cult, exploitation, and B-movies hadn’t gone mainstream, and so in that pre-internet time Rodriguez and Tarantino could well exist as the representatives of non-Hollywood weirdness. And then the Spy Kids movies happened.

Alright, that was unfair. Our point is that really back in the day, when Tarantino meant Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, and Rodriguez meant El Mariachi and Desperado, something like From Dusk Till Dawn was (and we cannot stress this enough) the most awesome thing in the world. Now, let us be clear in case there’s any confusion: lots of their later collaborations are equally great. And of course, their individual films are too: Once Upon A Time in Hollywood is amazing, and Alita: Battle Angel is, erm, a movie that exists. But while the spark of the Tarantino + Rodriguez combo seems to be gone, in this Pictofact we honor it with 20 friendly facts about their cinematic friendship. Now, we’ve devoted lots of attention to both Tarantino and Rodriguez. Here, however, we’re strictly focusing on their joint works, because the world is not ready yet for “20 Facts About We Can Be Heroes.”