Quentin Tarantino [LIVE]

30:25But he really was all hung up on Vincent. And so he goes, well, just think about it. And so I think about it, and then I go to call him, and we're talking, and I go, you know, and then he realizes that I'm not going to go with Vincent. He goes, well, we'll make it easy for you. Hey, look, it's not going to work out on this one. That's okay. I go, look, Bruce, I'm not trying to have my cake and eat it, too. I think you should be in this movie. I just think you're butch. You have this 50s quality. You remind me of Aldo Ray, and you remind me of Ralph Meeker, and those are two of my favorite actors from the 50s, and there's a 50s noir quality about this character, and I think you're the only Hollywood guy that has it.

31:09So look, you don't have to say yes, but look, you have the script. Just read it again tonight. Let go of everything else and just think about Butch. And if the answer is no, the answer is no. That's fine. But just give me that because I think you need to be in this movie. And I didn't mean that. I need Bruce Willis, the big movie star. He got it. He got the material. He really appreciated what it was. And so he did. He read it. And then we had a call set up for like eight o 'clock the next morning he got on the phone and he goes quentin and like this is like a big deal if he says yes okay and he says quentin the shortest sentence in the bible is jesus wept the shortest sentence in hollywood is i'm in

32:07and I'm in that's awesome now I want to come back to Samuel L. Jackson because I don't think there's an actor who you've worked with more it started with Jules and has continued ever since and you have said when you write words on a page your actors speak those words the only person who's given a little leverage with that is Samuel L. Jackson because when he varies off from what you've written it's usually not a detraction maybe an improvement i want to ask you what has made him your go-to guy your kind of actor soulmate over the years well there's no way to say this without sounding self-aggrandizing it's actually me giving it to him via me yeah when i write dialogue.

32:56I'm writing music. I'm writing poetry. I'm writing a little hip-hop, and I'm writing stand-up comedy. And they're all right next to me. And real life. I'm really trying to capture the cadence of real life. So it's like all those slashes are there. And when he says the dialogue, I hear the music. When he says the dialogue, I hear the poetry. When he says the dialogue, I hear the comedy, I hear the hip-hop, and I hear the real life. That's awesome. And it is amazing how close things can come to changing life in a totally different way or a career. I mean, because my understanding is he came in for Reservoir Dogs, and it did not go well to the extent that he was and then came back for hope and was well he did a great job he just didn't get the part yeah yeah but he almost wasn't even jewels right well no he wasn't but that was just because another actor came in and smoked him all right you know uh you know he he was getting fat and sassy by that time so he didn't think he needed to do it in the room right and then like A hungry actor comes in, does it in the fucking room.

34:16Oh, my God. We just saw the movie. This guy is amazing. And the guy is amazing. He's a fantastic actor. So we got everybody back together again. And look, I could have gone with that other actor. And he would be fantastic. And that would have been great. And he's in the movie. Yeah, and he would be the guy that you would be talking about now as Jules. And I would work with Sam and something else. And I'm sure the same relationship would happen. But that's not what happened. What happened is what happened. And I'm happy about it. Absolutely. Pulp premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d 'Or.

34:47The next screen is the New York Film Festival, where someone famously fainted when the stabbing with the needle scene occurred. Yeah, my mom was there that day, too, when the person fainted. They stopped it. Stop the film! Stop the film! Somebody's dying! Then it, of course, opens and becomes a giant hit,$214 million worldwide. worldwide and suddenly you are a global superstar in a way that very few filmmakers have ever been and i i guess again that moment there's these decision points in a life and in a career what are you going to do next and i just find it interesting that your next decision and first i guess from dusk till dawn gets made in 96 from a script of yours but that was setting that aside the next film that you directed is the one, the first and still the only time you've adapted somebody else's material, in this case, of course, Elmore Leonard's 92 novel, Rum Punch.

35:46Why were you in that moment when you could have done anything? Why did you want to adapt a novel? And why have you not adapted again? In that case, I'd read the novel before and I reread it again and then i just saw the movie i just saw the movie in my head it just played itself out and what i had done with reservoir dogs and pulp fiction had ended up by the end of 94 and into 95 had become so such a big deal it was just one of those phenomena things that happened. And so you can't expect the next movie to be a phenomenon like that. That is a once in a lifetime catch lightning in a bottle kind of thing.

36:35So you're betting against yourself if you're trying to double down on that. So it was not an idea to top Pulp Fiction. That's not, you know, even more phantasmagorical. All right? Blow your mind even more. No, no, no. That would be a stupid bet. So let me just make a good movie. Let me just make a good movie. And let me just show that I'm not just a flare ball, that there is construction behind what I do. There are characters behind what I do. Now, there was a time, time doesn't exist now for me, but there was a time, especially before I was making, starting writing more, that I thought, oh, okay, well, what I would do was I'll do a Quentin script, and then I'll do an Elmer Leonard adaptation, and then I'll do a Quentin script, and then I'll do another Elmer Leonard adaptation.

37:27I could have done eight Elmer Leonard adaptations. I mean, his books are so good. And you said true romance is kind of... Yeah, yeah, well, it's very similar to an Elmer Leonard thing, and for that matter, so is kind of these Cliff Booth movies, too. All right, there's a quality of, like, he might as well be stick. You could take a stick book and just put Cliff Booth in there and that would like work. I really responded. So this was the time for us to get together. And then I also thought because my dialogue had become such a thing that rather than cram it down your throat, it would be nice if it was bracketed with basically the person who taught me how to write dialogue, which was from reading Erma Leonard books.

38:05And it is the case, as you've said before, quote, the film comments, sight and sound crowd actually look at my work and say, there's Jackie Brown and then there's everything else. That was at one point in time, but it's certainly, it's very admired. Then there's this six-year gap where people were saying, has Quentin gotten bored or got writer's block or burned out or all these things? As it turns out, you were working on something that you had first discussed with Uma Thurman on Pulp Fiction, which was Kill Bill. And you've described her. Yes. just hanging out with Uma eight days ago nice well you've described her as your actress and you have described yourself as a method writer and I'd love for you to explain why she's your actress and what that actually means using Kill Bill as an example of how you would have been a method writer well we just had a magical connection on Pulp Fiction it was just magical.

39:10And she just became one of my favorite human beings in the world after that. And we were really, really close friends. And I did feel that I had a whole Marlene Dietrich, Joseph von Sternberg thing. All right. You know, I'm her von Sternberg. She's my Dietrich. And we're going to do nine movies together. And each one is going to be a testament to our collaboration and Kill Bill was like going to be the end all. But it was also though, as much as I was so really hung up on this director and his muse kind of thing, but it wasn't just this feminine aspect. She was also my Eastwood. You know, I looked at it, I was Leonie and she was my Eastwood.

39:57And if you're like going to do the good and bad and the ugly and Eastwood gets pregnant, well you wait for fucking Eastwood, alright? You know? And that's what happened. And so she got pregnant. We had to wait for her, but we waited. There was all the other people that we could have done it with. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We got to wait for Uma. And that was a huge commitment. But she saw that commitment. She saw that I could have moved on, but I didn't. I spent like a year writing it for her. There was no point in doing it unless I did it with her. And during that year, in terms of the method writer thing, you've said people who know you, who are around you, felt that you were different.

40:34And that is a result of the method writing. What does that mean what how do you get you assume the identity of or attributes of the characters you're writing 20 years later it doesn't seem so profound it seems actually rather maybe childish but at but when you're in it whoever i'm writing at the time especially if it's like a lead character i become them you know and in the case of kill bill it was like a year but now i become them But at the same time, like I spent that entire year with Uma and her husband. Like I was like a part of their family. I mean, I mean, to like a crazy degree. I was like a part of their family.

41:19I was with their daughter all the time. So, you know, so now part of that was getting to know Uma even more. And I'm writing it as we go. And I'm reading her scenes and I'm taking bits from her and putting it in. But I'm also living these bits. and I'm also, I am the bride, but I'm also Bill at the same time. I'm Bill and the bride. And anything I would say would be simplistic, all right, but the point being, though, is, but that is my process. And so it wasn't just enough. So the bride was never, oh, I'm, yeah, she was Uma, but not really. The bride, if a bunch of assassins walk into a room, Uma's reaction would be different from Beatrix's kiddos.

42:06But I'm never like any characters, a black character, a female character, anybody who's different from exactly who I am. They are never an other. They are me. I am them. And I look through their eyes. I'm never looking at them. I'm only looking through their pupils. your kind of close of the first half of your of your 10 films uh if we count kill bill one and two as one which i know you do death proof in as part of grindhouse i know that for you this was kind of a personal callback to the some of the movies you saw as a child an homage to monty hellman and people like that but it was the first time that you you had a movie that didn't do tremendously well commercially.

42:57Did that shake your confidence? Yeah, well, it shook my confidence on the opening weekend. It was one of those things where it's an even different world now, but you work really hard on a movie, and then the opening weekend happens, and people either go see it or they don't, and then that time they didn't, and it was one of those situations that me and Robert Rodriguez had kind of gotten used to kind of going down our own little road, that we blazed our own trail me would kill bill him with sin city and then the spy kids movies i mean like like really we kind of went our own way and people followed us and we kind of thought they would follow us anywhere but they didn't get it so they didn't really follow us there at the time it felt like the movie going audience was my girlfriend and my girlfriend broke up with me and i remember talking to my agent about it.

43:54And he was like, no, well, you know, Quentin, you've had a lot of good luck, but this is all part of the game. This is part of it. Now you are a well-rounded person. You know both sides of it. And I remember actually, I called two people to get their advice about how to handle them. It sounds very dramatic talking about it now a lot of times, but like on On that Monday and Tuesday, you feel it. Sure. It is a big thing on that Monday and Tuesday. Not 20 years later, but on that Monday and Tuesday, yeah. It stings. And so I called Steven Spielberg, who I was friendly with, and I called Tony Scott, who I was very friendly with.

44:36And they've been through this. And so I called them and told them that I was like in kind of, you know, had a bad weekend and didn't work with the audience and stuff. And they both gave me, hey, look, it happens. It's just the way it is, you know. But they both said the two good pieces of advice that was really important. They go, look, the way Tony would say it. Yes, I know. You do a film and then, you know, some fucking kids movie comes out, gets you right in the shorts. I know. When the movie opens, this happened to me too. Well, did you make the movie you wanted to make? Yes. Are you happy with the movie?

45:17Yes. Well, there's a lot of people out there who can't say that. So just think about how lucky you are to work in the business that you work, that you're able to make the movies that you wanted to make and the way you want to make. And sometimes the public gets them and sometimes they don't, but you're still able to do what you want to do. So that's a very lucky position. So just take that in.

45:46But then Stephen said, along with that, they both said those exact same things, as if they wrote them together. Then Stephen said, okay, but Quentin, now, you've been pretty lucky. The next film you have that's a hit, you're going to enjoy that more than all your other hits put together. Because you've been here now. you know what it's like to have a flop so the next time you have a hit it's going to be even sweeter and i imagine that was the case with a movie that you'd been talking about since you were at video archives the original inglorious bastards that you were at one point planning to make after jackie brown and ended up giving the bride i think you've said a lot of the attributes that you were going to give shoshana anyway you finally got to write what you've called your bunch of guys on a mission movie and you have said that you think it's your best script and it's hard to argue when people think even just about that 20 minute opening scene featuring Christoph Waltz's Hans Landa interrogating the French farmer I think you've said that in your mind that displaced the Sicilians scene from yeah the Sicilians speech I think was the best scene I'd ever written before that yes and then when I wrote the Hans Landa scene with the french farming oh no i think i finally beat the sicilian scene and then nothing else in the script necessarily worked out but i knew i was going to make that one day just for no other reason than to do that opening scene and it really is an all-timer and the first of your collaborations with christoph waltz who ended up winning and that was followed by django unchained which was your spaghetti western civil war era film you have not been deterred by people who have griped about the language or violence in your films.

47:37In fact, you know, I know it's something that kind of ticks you off, but you did, even you had some reservations, I think, going into Django about some sensitivities that it might hit. And you have said that of all people in the world, Sidney Poitier was the one who told you to go for it. Well, it's not nothing to go to a southern state and recreate the antebellum South and then cast a whole bunch of black folks and a whole bunch of white folks to act out the most terrible time of this country's history. It's not nothing to do that. I mean, we're like going to build the entire thing and come up with the whole costumes and create cotton fields and then put black folks out there picking them and put white folks out there with whips and on horses overseeing them and you're the the ringmaster of this whole thing that's not nothing no that's a thing so it's early early on i've written i've written the script it is what it is but i'm trying to i'm trying to escape the pain there's pain involved in doing that and i'm trying to see can I sidestep some of this pain and I get a bright idea what if I do it in Brazil all right we we just go to Brazil they got black folks there all right uh we go to Brazil and we can create the plantation and whatever but it will be once removed yeah they're black folks but it's not the exact same history and they won't have the exact same DNA and they won't have the exact same tissue response.

49:31And so maybe I can shoot some Novocaine in this incredible dental pain that I'm facing. And so Sidney was a bit of a father figure mentor to me. And we went out to dinner and I'm talking about what I'm doing. And I talked to him about this and he said, well Quentin I think for whatever reason you were born to make this movie but this is a ridiculous idea you're going to Brazil what it sounds to me and so when Sidney talks also not only is he Sidney Poitier and not only is he this great actor and is he a great man he's also a director so he talks in the nuts and bolts of a filmmaker and he goes it seems to me you are afraid of your own movie, and you need to get over that, or you can't make it.

50:31And he used the expression, you need to man up. And you need to do the work. And then besides, you're going to probably go to Mississippi, or you're probably going to go to Louisiana. You're probably going to go someplace like that. Those black folks there need that job. You're going to be helping people out.

51:00They get it. It's a movie. It's a movie. They'll be drinking coconut water. They all know they're not slaves. They're putting on costumes. They're not really picking cotton. You treat them with respect. You treat them with dignity. and by the way, it was like when we did that movie, the people that were slaves at our movie, they were slaves in Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter just a few months earlier. Then they did our movie and then they were the same slaves in the background for 12 years as slaves that came in and used them in our exact same locations.

51:40But we did help those communities. We helped them out tremendously by what we were able to do. And he was right. I had to face it. I had to shoot on actual plantations that had blood in the soil, that had the ghosts of both the white people and the black people that went through this trauma. All right? Those ghosts were our guides. That's great. Thank you.

52:10we have just a just a few minutes left but of course we have to talk about the hateful eight which you have said you thought of as sort of your western reservoir dogs and also that there's an aspect of it that you regard as probably your finest directorial hour your in terms of the way you handled the direction of it. Can you elaborate on that? Well, it's a little stronger than what I'm thinking. I just think, I don't think it's my best directed movie, but what I do think is, I think it's the best directing of my material. That doesn't necessarily mean it's my best directed movie, but as far as getting the most, writing something that's very significant, it's a significant piece, a piece of writing, and the directing of it, the casting of it, the bringing, cooking the stew to getting all the actors so the gumbo works, all the flavors open up and it all tastes good together and getting the best out of the material.

53:13I think that was, as far as like a significant piece of material, I think that was like my best directing of my written words, if that makes any sense. Sure. That brings us to your most recent and, God forbid, second to last feature, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

53:35You first thought about it after Death Proof. Finally, you get to it with this incredible cast of established stars. Leo, Brad, Margot, Pacino, et cetera. And people who would soon become stars. Austin Butler, Mikey Madison, Sidney Sweeney, Margaret Qualley, Julia Butters. Unbelievable talent scouting there. Thank you. It becomes... Yes, it was all me. becomes a huge hit especially for a non-franchise r-rated film i know tom rothman's here you guys had great success with that that sparked a ton of think pieces and i think my my question on this movie is it seems like you love nothing more than starting a conversation which that movie as much as any i think did right well you know it's it's actually really interesting because growing up in the 70s is like being where i.e.

54:26that's the cinema that i'm plugged into there is a little different mindset going on now where it's like people they're afraid of what people will write about them they're afraid about what people will say about them they're afraid about what will the podcast go against them will the will the critic pieces go against them they're afraid of think pieces and i'm not afraid of think pieces and i'm not afraid of podcasts going against me. I mean, there's podcasts that don't like me, and there's podcasts that do. That's fine. But my heroes from the 70s are the people that didn't care about that at all.

55:02The people I wanted to emulate are Ken Russell. The people I want to emulate are Sam Peckinpah, all right, where they didn't care about what people said about them. Sam Peckinpah doesn't care what you think about straw dogs. He cares about what he wanted to do. But now the thing about it, though, is, look, I'm not saying that when the, in the two or three weeks that a movie comes out and there's a, an attacking think piece, well, if I don't think they get it, it doesn't sting, because, well, they just didn't get it. It doesn't mean I don't get mad, doesn't mean I don't, like, screw that guy, or that girl, whatever.

55:40It doesn't mean that I don't, I'm unaffected, but ultimately, it doesn't matter. But the thing is, though, I get good think pieces, too, but It doesn't matter. Good think pieces, bad think pieces. We're talking about the four weeks that the movie is going to be playing at the theater and that it's a contender. It's a contender. This is when it's going to do what it's going to do. If it's going to do what it's going to do when it comes to asses and seats, it's going to do it in those first four weeks. Those think pieces, good or bad, that's a conversation. That's a conversation. That means your movie is being talked about.

56:11Your movie's a thing. It's not a Rotten Tomatoes score. It's not an aggregate. It's not an algorithm. It's a conversation. And some people like it and some people don't. But that going back and forth, that's meaningful. That's really, really meaningful. And those conversations last. And that is what makes it memorable. As opposed to a lot of things that are entertaining in the moment, but they don't last in the memory. They don't linger. Yeah.

56:47our last minute i hope we can do something we call a little rapid fire just the first word or two or three that come to your mind about a bunch of random topics is the tenth feature truly the last that's the plan we'll see okay the movie critic that was rumored to be the the tenth was going to be supposedly paul walter hauser as a reviewer. I've heard that's no longer in the cards, but the one that I've come across as I prep for this, looking at your interviews over the years, one that you have talked about a lot and hasn't happened yet, and you had said once that if it ever did happen, would happen near the end of the run, would be something about the abolitionist John Brown?

57:33I probably won't do that. Probably won't do that. Okay. What does the word Tarantino-esque mean to you? It's literally in the dictionary now.

57:42I guess it means whatever it means. I guess it says the word in a dictionary. It means whatever it says. All right. I can't help but write Tarantino-esque, but when I hear about a movie that's Tarantino-esque, I usually just assume that it's some sort of a crime story with a bunch of smartasses on it. Are you a better screenwriter or director? I think I'm pretty good at both. I think I'm probably a better writer. Who's the greatest living screenwriter not named Quentin Tarantino? The greatest living screenwriter? Yes. Living? Yes.

58:23Living?

58:28Living. I don't know. I will say you've said some very nice things about the dialogue of Aaron Sorkin. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway. Okay. Do you always write? Nah, but you're throwing it, but I won't put it in your mouth. No, if you were to say dead, I could come with... Oh, George Bruce is my favorite screenwriter. Okay. Do you always write during specific hours? No. No, I don't. For a long period of time, I wrote at night. That was like kind of a big ritual. And now I can write any time. But at some point, I started writing during the day. where I would just get up and, like, start writing sometime, like, around 10.30 or 11, and then just kind of work until 6 or so.

59:13If I'm still in a scene, I'm thinking about the scene, and if I finish the scene, then I've got to think of what's next, and then I would go in my pool and just kind of think about everything, and then I'd come up with a bunch of stuff, but then I don't write it. I just make notes, and that's tomorrow's work. When you're writing, do you like background noise or music or silence? It just depends. Depends on the day. It depends. It depends on the movie. It depends on the mood. Sometimes I just turn on the radio. I just listen to the radio. Or sometimes I'll make a couple special tapes. I still make tapes, all right?

59:49And so I'll make a special. I go through my record collection and make, like, two or three tapes, and then that's my background music. Well, along with, you know, kind of that analog approach, you once said you don't even have a, that your TV is not connected to the internet, that you don't stream movies. Is that still the case? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I'm not really connected. I still have a DVD player and a Laserdisc player and a VHS player connected. Okay. If you send me a link to your movie, I'll be forced to watch it on my iPad. It's not, I can't hook it up to my TV. Do you get writer's block?

1:00:24And if so, what do you do about it? Never had writer's block. Never had writer's block. I think it's a myth. I don't believe it. True or false, the title of Reservoir Dogs comes from a mispronunciation of... No, that's bullshit. Au revoir, Léa... My mom started that. No, I know how to say au revoir, les enfants. Okay, all right, all right. Just checking. Mom's here. We had to check. Where do you most see your influence today? I don't know. Where do I most see it? Well, for instance, a lot of people say when they watch cable and streaming and shows where things are out of order and pop culture references and a lot of your hallmarks.

1:01:05I don't know, maybe there's a specific filmmaker or TV creator or something. No, I just think I don't apply a stamp of me to all that stuff. I mean, okay, I can answer that pretty specifically. There is a, before David Mamet, it wasn't that easy to write in that kind of vernacular and not just be considered a Bulgarian, where that could be thought of as poetry, where that could be thought of as comedy, where that could be thought of as even highbrow in its own way, just not a Bulgarian. It could be respected because he's great and his talent. I don't think I write necessarily like David Mamet, but he gave me permission to write in a way that was ever so similar to him.

1:02:02And the same thing with Elmer Leonard. You know, did the same thing. Those two guys together, they gave me the permission to go and do my own thing. So it's not quite so crazy. It's not quite so different. Well, it's a little similar to these guys. And I think that in a lot of those aspects that you're talking about, I've just given people permission to be able to follow in that direction. If the world was on fire and we could only save one Quentin Tarantino movie, which movie would it be? Let the man give his own answer.

1:02:42I think the audience has spoken. What are you proudest of? As you look back, as we forced you to do tonight, where you've come from and what you've achieved, what are you proudest of? You mean in this whole crazy cuckoo world called life or in my accomplishments? You take it how you want to take it. Well, it is about the career, so I'll keep it about the career. I'll say, okay, one of the things that I'm really, really proud about is the idea that in my 20s, I tried to make a movie called My Best Friend's Birthday, It didn't quite work out, but it ended up being like my film school. It ended up being a pretty cheap film school.

1:03:24And in the course of doing it, I learned a lot of lessons that I might have learned at film school, but teaching myself. But the thing is, though, I didn't know it was going to be nothing. I thought it was going to be something. And so for three years, I'm working on it, thinking this is really going to be something. And then it ends up being nothing. None of the other people I knew, if they had put so much into something and it had not worked out so famously, I don't think they would have continued on. And so the idea that I had had a big bomb blow up in my face and I still wanted to defuse bombs after that is what I'm kind of the most proudest about.

1:04:19Because that was enough to just say, okay, I guess this just isn't for me. But I didn't. Well, thank God for that. and thank you so much for doing this we could pick your brain all night where did Mr. Pink go? What's in the Pulp Fiction suitcase? But most importantly what we need to do is bring out a couple of mayors along with Tony from earlier to close the evening out with a proper celebration of you Quentin. So thank you again for doing this Thank you so much

1:05:16Thanks for listening to Awards Chatter. We really appreciate it and would really appreciate you taking just a minute more to subscribe to the podcast and to leave us a rating and review on your podcast app. And to follow us on Twitter and Instagram, where our handle is at Awards Chatter. On those platforms, we announce upcoming guests and provide details about special live recordings of the podcast that you can attend. Until next time, thanks again for tuning in.

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