Vulture talks to Quentin Tarantino

August 28, 2015 8:39 AM

Frankly, sophisticated audiences are not a problem. Dumb audiences are a problem. But I think audiences are getting more sophisticated — that’s just a product of time. In the ’50s, audiences accepted a level of artifice that the audiences in 1966 would chuckle at. And the audiences of 1978 would chuckle at what the audience of 1966 said was okay, too. The trick is to try to be way ahead of that curve, so they’re not chuckling at your movies 20 years down the line.
posted by octothorpe (30 comments total)

...so they’re not chuckling at your .... 20 years down the line.

Clearly this place needs to upgrade the level of snark.


(folks in 2 weeks let alone years will be groaning at this lame comment)
posted by sammyo at 8:47 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

(folks in 2 weeks let alone years will be groaning at this lame comment)

Try 10 minutes.
posted by The Michael The at 8:58 AM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

http://www.vulture.com/2015/08/quentin-tarantino-lane-brown-in-conversation.html?mid=fb-share-vulture

I'm groaning and I haven't clicked on the link.
Check yo' HTML people.
posted by Mezentian at 8:59 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Q is always an interesting interview, wish he did more, he's right about It Follows, too.
posted by Cosine at 9:13 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

There's some weird sexism in here in a place or two (not unusual for him tbh), but overall this is a really neat interview. I'm glad the Hateful Eight script leak didn't 10000% tank the project because it was an amazing read and the first trailer suggests it will be even more delightful when brought to life but an excellent cast. In particular, I liked his thoughts about how he has/hasn't felt competitive at certain points in his career.

I love It Follows, and would love to really nerdily hash out why he thinks it violated its premise but enh. Pointless because he did say it was good, just frustrating in that way and I can sort of tilt my head and squint just so and understand that.
posted by sparkletone at 9:15 AM on August 28, 2015

Vulture talks to Quentin Tarantino

Eponysterical.
 
posted by Herodios at 9:20 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Steven Johnson: Watching TV Makes You Smarter :P (w/charts & graphs!)
posted by kliuless at 9:22 AM on August 28, 2015

Awesome interview. QT is in a good place.
posted by davidmsc at 9:30 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

sparkletone-- yeah, I try not to read too much into Tarantino's interviews, because he's always just into whatever he's into at the moment, but this bit was weird:

I don’t know if we’re going to be talking about The Town or The Kids Are All Right or An Education 20 or 30 years from now. Notes on a Scandal is another one. Philomena. Half of these Cate Blanchett movies — they’re all just like these arty things. I’m not saying they’re bad movies, but I don’t think most of them have a shelf life. But The Fighter or American Hustle — those will be watched in 30 years.

I think we'll be watching I'm Not There long after anything by David O. Russell, and I don't know what these movies have in common other than being middlebrow (and Russell isn't?), but whatever. Then he says "I'm not Nostradamus," which made me chuckle.
posted by thetortoise at 9:37 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Mellow, older QT makes a good interview. Makes me think "This is the kind of interview I wish Bill Hicks had lived long enough to give".

Really looking forward to Hateful 8.
posted by Pirate-Bartender-Zombie-Monkey at 9:38 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Yeah, we're not going to be talking about The Fighter or American Hustle 30 years from now, let alone The (Freaking) Town, unless we're talking about them the way we talk now about Brewster's Millions.
posted by blucevalo at 10:21 AM on August 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

Antoine Fuqua is doing Magnificent Seven, starring Denzel Washington

Not a huge fan of all the remakes lately but that actually sounds kinda interesting.
posted by Hoopo at 10:48 AM on August 28, 2015

Yeah, we're not going to be talking about The Fighter or American Hustle 30 years from now, let alone The (Freaking) Town, unless we're talking about them the way we talk now about Brewster's Millions.

Reverently you mean?
posted by fullerine at 10:48 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

I read this the other day, because his Obama remarks hit the politicoblogosphere. I didn't see The Fighter, but I did watch American Hustle. Once was enough for that movie, I think. Probably not seeing what he is seeing...
posted by Chuffy at 10:51 AM on August 28, 2015

Antoine Fuqua is doing Magnificent Seven, starring Denzel Washington

Not a huge fan of all the remakes lately but that actually sounds kinda interesting.

It's Denzel riding a stagecoach for one day, trying to get six other cowboys to use angel dust.
posted by maxsparber at 10:56 AM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]

Not a huge fan of all the remakes lately but that actually sounds kinda interesting.

I have a tinfoil hat theory about all the remakes. Many of the originals are considered classics, and every remake changes the movie, sometimes less subtly, to make it more "modern." There is a significant right-wing takeover of public radio, the news media and even music and movies...by remaking films, the message or symbolism can be removed/replaced to suit a different paradigm. We'll wind up with a re-writing of history to reflect a more conservative viewpoint, even to the extent that movies like All The Presidents Men becomes a thriller about Benghazi and Hillary.

Then I got depressed and took off the tinfoil. Now I can watch the remake of Rollerball to soothe my paranoia.
posted by Chuffy at 11:06 AM on August 28, 2015 [3 favorites]

The only Magnificent Seven remake I'm interested in is a Seven Samurai reimagining set in the Star Wars universe during the dark days before A New Hope, with seven hunted Jedi Knights coming out of hiding to defend a small impoverished planet from a raiding party of scum and villainy that descends upon it every year.
posted by Ian A.T. at 11:08 AM on August 28, 2015 [14 favorites]

Seven Samurai reimagining set in the Star Wars universe

So, Battle Beyond the Stars.
posted by maxsparber at 11:14 AM on August 28, 2015 [6 favorites]

My fave take-away from that article was him mentioning the movie Too Many Ways to Be No. 1 as one of his favourite imitation of his 90s movies. I've never heard of that but now I will watch it, and I bet it'll be great!
posted by wyndham at 11:18 AM on August 28, 2015

Apparently it takes non-stop n-bombs to stay 20 years ahead of racism in the sophisticated 1990s.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 11:26 AM on August 28, 2015

The accompanying quiz is brutal.
posted by whuppy at 11:32 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also there is bonus material: How Quentin Tarantino Would Fix It Follows (and Other Outtakes From Vulture's Interview) (kind of spoilery with regard to indie horror film It Follows, which I have seen.)
posted by larrybob at 1:02 PM on August 28, 2015

I wish Tarantino, who is obviously skilled, would do something more than just ultra-violence.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 1:10 PM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]

I wish Tarantino, who is obviously skilled, would do something more than just ultra-violence.

I would argue that this is a facile statement. While Tarantino's movies do not shy away from depicting violence (and excepting Kill Bill Volume 1, which is an homage to chop socky films and so would be expected to be filled to the brim with violence), most of the screen time in his films is spent on dialog and character, and he is certainly a master of cinematic language and pastiche.

And indeed, some of the most 'memorable' acts of violence in his films happen either off camera (Mr. Blond slicing off the cop's ear) or in an indirect way (Marvin's head being shot off)

That is not to say that he shies away from gruesome depictions of violence, especially in Inglorious Basterds or Django, but saying that all he does is ultra-violence paints him unfairly with a very broad brush.
posted by aerosolkid at 1:27 PM on August 28, 2015 [9 favorites]

I think he's right about The Fighter and American Hustle -- that is, I can't really tell you if these two will be talked about twenty years from now, but I feel pretty certain that they're better bets than many others. He picked those two because he's thinking that DOR right now is a good candidate for this, and he's right. You can already tell this with Flirting with Disaster and Three Kings. Not that we talk about those films much now, but I think they both hold up quite well relative to their contemporaries and Russell has built a body of work that I am certain is going to remain well-regarded for decades to come. Tarantino thinks Russell is at his peak now, and I think that's probably true. So those two films are good bets for longevity.

It's weird -- Tarantino kept dropping these high self-regarding bits in the interview and it was slightly annoying and then slightly amazing to me because, well, I think he's pretty much right every time.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:47 PM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

The accompanying quiz is brutal.

wow. I got like the first 11 or 12 right and still only ended up with 24/47. Brutal indeed.
posted by mannequito at 1:58 PM on August 28, 2015

The only Magnificent Seven remake I'm interested in is a Seven Samurai reimagining set in the Star Wars universe during the dark days before A New Hope, with seven hunted Jedi Knights coming out of hiding to defend a small impoverished planet from a raiding party of scum and villainy that descends upon it every year.

I can give you about 80 percent of that.
posted by sandswipe at 10:12 PM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

Everyone is wrong. The DOR flick with the longest and most well-loved tail is going to be Huckabees. That's his shining "totally going for it" moment.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 11:01 PM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]

The accompanying quiz is brutal.

I did fairly well on questions that were just about the content of the movies, but all the extra-curricular stuff about QT's life left me guessing a lot. But also, some of the questions were poorly phrased ("Which character...." and then listing 1 actual character name and 3 characters' fake names) to nearly the point of being trick questions.
posted by dogwalker at 9:44 AM on August 29, 2015

Senor Cardgage, I hope you're right, I really really love Huckabees and think American Hustle was a piece of garbage.
posted by crashlanding at 2:03 PM on August 29, 2015 [1 favorite]