Ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be involved in movies. I didn’t know
what a director was; I just knew they were the only thing I gave a damn
about.
My favourite movie when I was a little, little boy was Bud Abbott and Lou
Costello Meet Frankenstein. It’s very funny when Abbott and Costello are
around, but when they’re gone, it’s actually played very straight. I
remember having the thought: “These are the best movies ever! When it’s
supposed to be funny, it’s really funny, and when it’s supposed to be scary,
it’s really scary. I can’t believe they make movies like this!” So, even as
a really young child, I was making genre distinctions. I liked this genre
and I liked that genre, and actually blending them was a really sexy thing
to me.
During the 1980s, which was probably one of the most repressive times in
Hollywood cinema, there seemed to be so many rules — heroes can’t be this
and can’t be that and can’t be unlikeable. One of my favourite scenes of all
time is the opening scene of Pedro Almodovar’s Matador: the guy getting off
on slasher films. That is a touched-by-God, genius moment. I remember
talking to some of the guys I worked with at the Video Archives store and
saying, “Man, I’d love to do an opening to a movie like that.” And someone
said: “Yeah, they wouldn’t let you.”
People have said little things like that all my life. But who’s “they”? I’ve
given nobody the authority over me to say I can’t do anything — I can do
anything I want or can achieve. I don’t ask permission. I might ask
forgiveness, but I won’t ask permission. There is no “they”.
Here’s the thing: they can write a mean letter, they can write a mean memo,
but these guys don’t have any real fight in them. If you’re an artist, as
opposed to a careerist, and your movie is more important to you than a
career in this town, they can never beat you. You have a loaded gun, and you
know you’ve got what it takes to put it in their faces and blow their heads
off. It’s about never taking the gun out. It’s about never touching the gun,
never raising it, never pulling the trigger, never blowing their heads off.
It’s about not going there — but knowing you can. So, if you have to flash
it, it means something.
Violence is one of the most cinematic things you can do with film. It’s
almost as if Edison and the Lumiere brothers invented the camera for filming
violence. The most cinematic directors, they’re taking cinema and exciting
you. I really do think about it like that. I’m doing my own thing, but I’m
thinking about the audience, too, though not in a manipulative way. I am
the audience. When they’re sitting there and they’re waiting for a car to
crash, it’s like a money shot. At that moment, they want it: they want it to
happen as much as the bad guy does. That’s what they’ve paid to see. And if,
at the last minute, [it is] averted, that’s just me as director as torturer,
’cos I can.
Here’s the thing I had in my life: I never had to worry that I was gonna die
before I made a movie. God had put me on earth to do this thing — he’s not
going to take me out before I can do it. To me, writing the dialogue is so
easy, I actually feel sort of a fraud for taking credit for it, even though
I’m protective of it; I feel like it’s some sort of God antenna. I grew up
in LA, and I loved earthquakes — I didn’t care if they happened in the
morning, the afternoon, the evening. I didn’t get out of bed; I’d surf the
earthquake. God didn’t put me on the earth to die in an earthquake. After
Pulp Fiction, maybe I could go.
I got to know, and had a lovely relationship with, the director Sam Fuller
before he died. I met him on the film-festival circuit. I was there with
Reservoir Dogs, and he goes: “Okay, who’s in your picture?” And I go:
“Harvey Keitel.” “Harvey Keitel? Harvey Keitel is in your picture? Who the
hell are you to be making your first picture with Harvey Keitel? He’s not a
star — he’s a planet!” Then he says: “I’ll tell you what I liked about your
movie: it’s a movie about idiots. All those guys are morons. I don’t even
know how they tied their shoes in the morning. I mean, Harvey, he makes
movies about professionals. Your guys were idiots. It’s about failure.
That’s good; you don’t see that.”
Robert [Rodriguez, the director] and I are doing a double feature, which is a
really fun project because, you know, we’re best friends. We’re doing two
separate movies and releasing them together. It’s really cool, because he
actually got the idea to do this just from hanging out in my house and
watching movies. I really like the exploitation stuff. I have posters all
over my house from the 1950s and 1960s, double-feature posters. I want to
deliver what these posters promise, but those movies never delivered.
Robert’s story is like a zombie movie, and mine is a slasher movie, except
that, as opposed to a guy with a hockey mask and a machete, it’s a guy with
a car. It’s kind of cool, what I’m doing — the New Zealand stunt girl in the
film, Zoe Bell, she was Uma Thurman’s stunt double [in Kill Bill]. She’s
gonna play herself and do her own stunts. It’s cool, also, because I’ve
never done a car chase before, and if I’m gonna do it, it has to be one of
the best in the history of cinema. But that’s really throwing my hat in a
different ring. Like Kill Bill was the first time I’ve ever done that kind
of thing before.
I consider making Kill Bill as like me climbing Mount Everest. I taught
myself how to climb as I climbed it. I would write all these little
scenarios of things that could happen with [Thurman’s character] the Bride,
and I’d take her in one direction, then I’d be like: “Nah, I don’t want to
go there.” So at one point I thought it would be cool for her to get into a
big car chase. She’s in the Pussy Wagon, and she drives under the “bat
bridge” [in Austin, Texas; home to a giant bat colony], and so it’s bats
just bouncing off the windshield. And you cut to the outside of the bridge,
and it’s like 2m bats and this car just ... BOOM!
Now that I’ve climbed Mount Everest, I don’t know if these little hills are
going to be so attractive, but I don’t know if I want to start that
expedition again, either. I met Francis Coppola’s wife, Ellie, and she asked
me: “So, what are you doing next?” And I said: “Well, I’ve been planning
this second world war film for a long while, and it’s time to do it. The
only thing about it is, it’s a big, Mount Everest kind of epic, and I’ve
already climbed a Mount Everest, and I’ve got to get myself up to climb it
again.” When I was through talking, she said: “I think maybe this is the
time in your life that you climb Mount Everest. You may not want to be
climbing Mount Everest 15 years from now.”
Directors don’t get better as they get older. They get worse — they get out
of touch. There is this weird thing about movie-making where you kind of
figure out how to do it. You’re just pulled along by the experience —
there’s no way you can predict what’s going to happen. And on the second
one, you know a hell of a lot more than you did on the first one, but you’re
still being pulled along at least 25%. But when it came to the third one,
now I kind of got it, and that was scary to me.
I don’t want to be a professional. I’m not in the Directors Guild; I don’t
want to be. I like holding on to my amateur status. I wanted to be a
professional in all the right ways, but I didn’t want it ever to be a job. I
even asked: “Would I die for Jackie Brown?” I would have died for Reservoir
Dogs. I would have died getting a shot for Pulp Fiction. I don’t know if I
would have died, would have thrown myself into that kind of harm’s way, for
Jackie Brown, and that scared me a little bit. I think the reason was that
that film was based on a novel; it wasn’t an original thing, born from me.
Whether it’s hardship or ruin, or hardship or good times, or happy or sad,
or profitable or destitute — whatever the deal is, you go down the road
today, and maybe your rewards are today, or maybe your rewards will be
tomorrow, or maybe in another life, but you’re going your own way.
The Iconoclasts series returns to Sky Arts tonight at 9pm, with Quentin
Tarantino Meets Fiona Apple, from which this is an edited extract. Tarantino
and Rodriguez’s Grindhouse is released later this year
I'll talk like I'm actually talking to Tarantino himself -- you're the reason why Spiderman and Batman Begins and Dark Knight were transcendant. Not because Nolan and Raimi were fans of these comics, but because they approached these projects as if witnessing you was their Pai Mai.
P Gorner, Chicago, Illinois
I just can't believe some of you guys are challenging Quentin Tarantino.
Tara, Brisbane, Australia
quentin, tou are an amazing dialogue writer for sure. you can think up really cool things for your charcters to say, like"Did they look like psychos, Carlos. Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, i dont care how crazy they are." i really like from dusk till dawn b/c it was like 2 movies in one. but my favorite movie of all time is Pulp Fiction. Probably the most influential film of the 1990's, you have redifined cinema. Keep up your awesome work.you have inspired me to become a writer. i want to write short stories and novellas for a living.
keith, Pickens, , South Carolina
Akira Kurosawa and Kinji Fukasaku are prime examples of directors improving with age, though it does vary between individuals.
A.Pallas, Orlando, FL
I think saying all directors lose their touch as they grow older is a bit of a misnomer - it seems that most keep making films because it *is* they're job and they are expected to.
What they lack was the passion they used to have - perhaps the continual efforts to climb mount everest finally got to them because they waited too long.
baker, Columbus, United State/Ohio
"Directors don’t get better as they get older. They get worse — they get out of touch."
Well, maybe. For example, it's hard to believe that WAR OF THE WORLDS and MUNICH were made by the same person who made CE3K and SCHINDLER'S LIST. Also, Hitchcock's last film was FAMILY PLOT, but his next-to-last was FRENZY.
OTOH, Spielberg followed up CE3K with 1941. Dennis Hopper went straight from EASY RIDER to THE LAST MOVIE. And of course, poor Ed Wood never rose above PLAN 9.
The reason it seems like most directors with long careers go downhill at the end, is that you don't have a long career without being great at the beginning -- and for a long stretch of the middle, too.
Carey, Greenville, NC
What he's talking about is directors lose their edge. Ask George Lucas about it. As for Scorsese he won an oscar for remaking a film which is superior to his. This is the guy who brought us Mean Streets Goodfellas, Raging Bull and the best film ever made Taxi Driver. People are just pissed cause Quentin and Robert can do whatever they want and that scares hollywood.
Jango, Mississauga, Canada
if directors get worse as they get older then how does tarantino explain "Clint Eastwood" or "Martin Scorsese" for the departed this year. What great filmakers become when they get older is wise and more mature. Their films aren't as energetic as their early work, but they're wiser and more complete. I feel Quentin is scared he's going to lose his edge. My dear Quentin, fear not you won't lose your edge, unless you lose the passion to make films. Even if you never truly regain your young glory. As long as your flimaking voice evolves you will as have your true devoted fans.
such as I
RICARDO RODRIGUEZ, Gainesville, UNITED STATES/FLORIDA
How can you even think about mentioning comparing Pulp Fiction and Night At The Museum?
Sertan, London,
ask Orson Welles or Darren Aronofski if that attitude really works and lets you make the films you want to make they way you want to make them.
Tim, Charlotte, NC
Thanks Quentin for putting the little kid back in all of us when we go to the movies. It's nice to see that there is success still to be found in the "heart" of Hollywood.
Ryan Hansen, topeka, ks
Or maybe you'd get more crap like Plan 9 From Outer Space or Heaven's Gate and less entertaining adaptations like Silence of the Lambs or Bourne Supremacy. Bottom line is the Tarantino has a God-given talent (as mentioned) that many other wanna be iconoclasts do not.
Burton, Greenville, NC
I think Tarantino has the right idea. Autuer as the iconoclast, making what he wants. For his kind of reasons. Personally all filmakers should adhere to this rule. They are the ones who make films producefilms get films into production. I think films would be just as profictable if people such as Tarantino where calling the shoots on the kind of films that where being made. We would get more Pulp Fiction and less Night at The Musuem.
Mark, Mooresville,