BEFORE HE WAS a superstar auteur, a Royale-with-Cheese rock star, the divisive and worshiped motormouth who launched a thousand dissertations and 10 times as many Film Twitter flame wars, Quentin Tarantino was a movie fanatic.

It pays to remember this fact — not that the raconteur would ever let you forget it. Read those early interviews, right as Reservoir Dogs was beginning to establish him as one of the exciting (and the most excitable) filmmakers of the 1990s, and you’ll hear him wax poetic about John Woo and Jean-Pierre Melville, Rio Bravo and Brando’s One-Eyed Jacks, arthouse staples and drive-in classics.