A guy named Stephen Tramontana, whom I haven’t spoken to but who resides in the L.A. area, has a website called The Real Grindhouse. It’s largely about a film called Grindhouse, a kind of hommage to grindhouse movies made in the same style as the real McCoys from the ’60s and ’70s, that he and a partner, Lenny Shteynberg, made and finished in ’03 for about $4,000.

Tramontana is claiming on the site he and Shteynberg met Quentin Tarantino at a party in ’02, and that they told him about their Grindhouse movie idea during a brief conversation. Flatline response. And that they sent a copy of the finished film via registered mail to Tarantino teh following year, hoping to find some way of landing a DVD deal. Nothing happened. And then two years later Tramontana read about Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez planning to make their own Grindhouse, which he and Shteynberg felt was a ripoff of their idea.

Tramontana is claiming that “all efforts to receive credit for the idea from the production company or Tarantino were constantly squashed.” Tramontana has therefore concluded that Tarantino is “a thieving piece of shit and he knows it…he stole Grindhouse from a bunch of kids who were just asking for his help….and he helped them by stealing their title and concept.”

I have done no digging except to try and call Tramontana. He offers no e-mail or phone contact info through his website. He apparently exists and has a phone, but it’s not obtainable for free through Switchboard. Intelius has information on him but you have to pay $7.95 to get it. He’s selling copies of his Grindhouse flick through Google checkout at 99 cents a pop.