Quentin Tarantino his next effort, Tarantino paid homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s with "Jackie Brown" (1997), an adaptation of Elmore Leonard's novel "Rum Punch". "Kill Bill", a highly stylized "revenge flick" in the cinematic traditions of Kung fu films, Japanese martial arts, Spaghetti Westerns and Italian horror, followed six years later, and was released as two films: "" in 2003 and "" in 2004. Tarantino next directed "Death Proof" in 2007, as part of a double feature with friend Robert Rodriguez, under the collective title "Grindhouse". His long-postponed "Inglourious Basterds", which tells the fictional alternate history story of two
Quentin Tarantino with Roger Avary as production assistants on Dolph Lundgren's exercise video, "Maximum Potential". The following year, he played the role of one of a group of Elvis impersonators in "Sophia's Wedding: Part 1", an episode in the fourth season of "The Golden Girls", which was broadcast on November 19, 1988. Tarantino received his first paid writing assignment in the early 1990s when Robert Kurtzman hired him to write the script for "From Dusk Till Dawn". In January 1992, Tarantino's neo-noir crime thriller "Reservoir Dogs"—which he wrote, directed and acted in as Mr. Brown—was screened at the Sundance Film Festival. It