Just when you thought there was for once, at least one man in this world who could be content enough to ride on the laurels of merely an artistic legacy instead of a spawn-related one, along comes Quentin Tarantino at fifty-six deciding, yeah, why not? I’ll get my wife to pop one out. With a predictable twenty-one year age difference, Daniella Pick, at thirty-five, just misses what men of Tarantino’s variety would deem her “cutoff” for propagating. Like some alternate universe Gal Gadot that Tarantino didn’t manage to meet while promoting Inglourious Basterds in Israel (somewhat hot button considering the film’s subject matter), he instead encountered Pick, and the two dated on and off since 2009, ultimately marrying in 2018. A wedding that Uma Thurman graced her presence with–even in the wake of all that bad blood the car crash story from the filming of Kill Bill Vol. 2 unearthed.
Now merely a year later, Tarantino proves his virility just like he always wanted to as evidenced by that scene in Planet Terror when his penis becomes a living, breathing mutant with a mind of its own. For he has managed to get Pick pregnant. Pick, the singer/actress/Instagram model (these terms are all somewhat loose outside of Israel) with a heavy-hitter father in the music industry, Svika Pick. It’s unclear what her angle is in all this for it surely can’t be l’amour in the purest sense of the word and she already has the wealth and connections that so many Israelis in the industry do. Was it a master plan in the vein of Ruby O’Carroll in The Kitchen? Waiting to have his child so that she could transition seamlessly into Hollywood–and, more specifically, become Hollywood royalty simply by birthing it? What’s more, her acting career is already on the upswing with a middling part as an actress named Daphna Ben-Cobo (no, she’s not the Italian wife just because she has olive skin, okay?), who plays a role on one of Rick Dalton’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) Western-themed piles of shite in Once Upon a Time… If one foot was planted firmly in H’wood, it’s now definitely two (barefoot and pregnant ones). Or make that four, with Baby’s feet on the way. While, sure, there’s nothing wrong with a well-played social climb, now, unfortunately, the rest of us will have to endure watching yet another child of privilege “rise through the ranks” in the spirit of any Coppola, De Sica, de Laurentiis or other such Italian name synonymous with iconicness in the film industry. It also helps that Tarantino somehow has an Italian moniker in spite of being Tennessean.
What will make things truly interesting is whether or not Tarantino lands with a boy or girl. Obviously, the former would be much easier for the auteur’s noted brand of blood and violence-drenched machismo intermixed with more than occasional chauvinism (unless said boy turns out to be gay in which case one supposes he’ll have an easy entry [no pun intended] into the Velvet Mafia). The latter gender (or initial gender for those already convinced Tarantino’s “product” will be trans) would be much more of a challenge for the always button-pushing director. For how will he ever be able to explain his relationship with Harvey Weinstein to a little girl that might also one day have to come face to face with a predator in the industry (which there always will be so long as Hollywood doesn’t burn down in yet another California fire)? Maybe he’ll get Daniella to do it. Or maybe Little Sharon or Mia or Beatrix won’t bother to ask when the success starts rolling in instantaneously. Whether that comes in the form of being an actress, director, writer or producer (or all of the above) only time will tell. But surely this child cannot evade a love of film either inherited or drummed into him or her from Tarantino himself.
That said, the implications, ultimately, of Tarantino finally succumbing to the trap of spawning, is that he has only added to the already endless tradition of how stars are literally born. That is to say, into film families already ready and eager to give their likely not all that naturally talented progeny a leg up so as to put the “gel” in legacy when it comes to how much more effortless things are when one has a greasing agent (and a normal agent) to get them through the door.
