Quentin Tarantino is an old-school film nerd, and it informs everything about his life. It’s why he makes the movies he does, it’s why people love those movies, and it’s why those movies have so many shots of feet (we’re just guessing on that last one). Being an old-school film nerd, though, tends to also make one a nerd about film itself—as in, the thing off of which all movies used to be projected. Like music geeks and their vinyl, film nerds believe a movie is a richer and truer experience when presented in a non-digital format. Tarantino, unsurprisingly, is no different, but apparently takes it even further than that.
According to an excerpt from Tom Roston’s book I Lost It At The Video Store posted by Indiewire, Tarantino is “not excited about streaming,” and he refuses to “use Netflix at all,” preferring to have “something hard and tangible.” To that end, when rental store Video Archives went out of business, Tarantino bought their entire inventory (“close to eight thousand tapes and DVDs”) just so he could preserve the collection. Also, to push this whole thing from “old-school film nerd” to “obsessed,” Tarantino adds that he even tapes movies off of TV—with a VCR and tapes, not a DVR—so he can keep making the collection bigger. That means he’s a guy who is truly committed to his personal brand, and we can only assume a good percentage of the things he tapes are somewhat foot-related.