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First off, both the Coens and Tarantino have had way too much mainstream success and recognition to be considered true cult filmmakers. Maya Deren, Chris Marker, Kenneth Anger, Monte Hellman...I can list you four or five dozen true cult filmmakers, and neither the Coens or Tarantino would be among them. Yes, they are great and quirky, but they work in the mainstream of Hollywood and are household names.

Second, a comparison like this is pointless because we are talking about two separate MOs here. The Coens are the Robert Altman of their generation. They take well-worn Hollywood genres and deconstruct them, re-imagining the archetypes of American film into their own unique, coy and often hilarious vision. Tarantino operates on an entirely different plane. He's a purveyor of pop culture trash, taking inspiration from several decades of B-pictures for each movie and turning them into high art, finding the links between the Jack Hills and the Sergio Leones of the world.

Their working habits also couldn't be more dissimilar. The Coens have a new movie in theaters every 12 to 18 months. They are usually tight and compact, running 90 to 100 minutes on average. Tarantino can go three to five years between projects, spending an inordinate amount of man hours perfecting his scripts. His films are epics, running about 150 minutes on average, or sometimes up to 4 hours (which necessitated splitting Kill Bill into two parts).

They are both great; I love them both a lot. I like Tarantino a bit more, just because he has fewer films in his canon and they are all perfect, or nearly so. But comparing them against each other is really kind of pointless, because their only similarities are that they are some of the most artsy filmmakers working in the mainstream, and both have rabidly dedicated fans (which is a qualification for a cult filmmaker, but as i alluded to before, true cult films don't play in multiplexes and gross north of $100 million).

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