Excellence #5: Quentin Tarantino

The bad boy of 1990s cinema turns out to be a very good man, and for that he gets the honors in the latest installment of my series on everything excellent.

According to this article, a family by the name of Torgan has been showing classic and art-house double features in the New Beverly Cinema (see photo) for more than thirty years. With the rise of DVDs devastating movie ticket sales, they started having trouble making their rent. Enter Quentin Tarantino, who asked them how much they needed every month--the answer was a cool $5000--and started sending them checks to keep the place going. But in 2007 the Torgan patriarch suddenly died, and in the ensuing disarray their evil landlord found a buyer who wanted to turn this classic 1929 movie theater into a discount hair salon--a discount hair salon!--and kick the Torgans out.

Enter Tarantino again. His lawyers went head to head with the landlord, arguing that the Torgans' lease had a right of first refusal clause that let them buy the building themselves or find their own buyer if the landlord ever threatened to sell. The landlord fought back, but ultimately he gave in and Tarantino is now the proud owner of the New Beverly. Everything's back to normal for the Torgans, except that their new landlord is a movie star. Quote from Quentin: "As long as I'm alive, and as long as I'm rich, the New Beverly will be there, showing double features in 35mm."

Yet another example of what my husband once said: "The great thing about being rich is that if you see an injustice, you can just write a check and it's gone."