Quentin Tarantino: Violence is what makes movies good

Quentin Tarantino has defended the gore that defines his movies, saying "violence is so good".

The 46-year-old writer and director, who attracts praise and criticism for the bloodshed in his films, claims it is the most effective way to connect with an audience.

"In general cinema, that's the biggest attraction. I'm a big fan of action and violence in cinema," he said during an appearance at the home of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts in Piccadilly last night.

"That's why Thomas Edison created the motion picture camera — because violence is so good. It affects audiences in a big way. You know you're watching a movie."

The Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds director, who was at the Alfred Dunhill Bafta A Life in Pictures awards, also revealed that he would love to make a movie in the capital.

He said: "I've never made a movie in London, I'd love to do that, if ever I had the right story that would be a dream to have an excuse to come out here and live here for a while."

Giving a talk on his experiences of the industry, Tarantino told how he uses violence in his films to engage an audience's feelings. "What I'm about is playing the audience," he said.

"I feel like a conductor and the audience's feelings are my instruments. I will be like, Laugh, laugh, now be horrified'. When someone does that to me I've had a good time at the movies."

He went on: "If a guy gets shot in the stomach and he's bleeding like a stuck pig then that's what I want to see — not a man with a stomach ache and a little red dot on his belly."

Tarantino also attacked film studies courses, encouraging would-be directors to simply pick up a camera and learn themselves. He said: "That was my film school — and it was pretty goddam cheap. Rather than studying the film industry aspect, just pick up a camera and shoot a movie."

Tarantino is credited with bringing John Travolta's career out of the doldrums by casting him in Pulp Fiction in 1994 — a role that earned the star a best actor Oscar nomination.

But the director revealed things could have turned out very differently for the 55-year-old actor, whose career slumped in the Eighties, had Tarantino not stumbled across an LA Times article quoting his favourite film critic, Pauline Kael.

"I always thought he was a terrific actor and felt bad that he had fallen on hard times," Tarantino said. "Pauline Kael was asked, Do you think John Travolta can ever come back?' She said, He has to. Movies need him'. I never forgot that and believed her.

"[Pulp Fiction producer] Harvey Weinstein didn't want him, but I fought him and he backed down."