“I have always considered that with all the setbacks I had, the fact that I didn’t give up is maybe the one thing in my life that I am most proud of,” he says. “I just knew I would live a life of unfulfilment if I didn’t keep trying.

“So I just kept at it and by the time I wrote Reservoir Dogs it was time. It was time. And then as much as everything else was just this huge build-up to this tremendous let-down, this was…” He pauses, holding the next word in his mouth, relishing the feel of it, “…easy! I wrote the script quickly and we were making the film in, like, seven months.” The movie premiered to acclaim at the 1992 Sundance film festival, securing Tarantino’s reputation, at the age of 29, as one of the most exciting new talents in the business. “It was,” he says, “the complete utter payoff of perseverance.”

Tarantino, Anderson, and the Coen brothers talk about their first feature films