America’s most notorious director talks about his most incendiary movie yet
Quentin Tarantino has Westerns in his blood.
With 2012sDjango Unchained, he infused the genre with his provocative brand of cinematic vim.
Paranoia and racial rancor run high.
Credit: Andrew Cooper
What were you most nervous about?
What didnt you know was a sure thing?
QUENTIN TARANTINO: Thats a good question.
Andrew Cooper
I usually talk about the material or cinema in general.
Im never the guy who gives an in-depth interview inAmerican Cinematographer.
Just let [cinematographer Bob Richardson] do those and Ill give them a few sound bites.
Other people have done it before.
We did tests on them and everything.
So we knew they worked.
But the fact that we would be in the freezing cold was an issue.
Even the guns didnt work.
And that happened to be the day we were doing Djangos fast draw.
And we wereneverdown because of camera.
That stuff never happened.
The other dangling participle was just the weather itself.
As it’s possible for you to see, we got all the weather we needed.
But it was never easy.
So depending on what the weather was, were either doingthisor were doingthat.
And then well do some other scene and work it to its emotional integrity.
Which is not my normal way of working, or my preferred way of working.
And our purpose was we wanted to capture that weather.
AfterDjango, there were critics and members of the African-American community who werent happy.
The film touched certain third-rails slavery, race in America, violence on screen.
And as I watchedHateful Eight, I was like, Hes doubling-down.
Thats actually well said.
But its a hassle.
Roman Polanski was one of the best makers of horror films that really got under your skin.
But where Im coming from is, social critics dont mean anything to me.
It is my job to ignore them, because their critiques are about right now: 2015.
My movie is not a carton of milk that has an expiration date.
Its going to be available 20 years, 30 years, hopefully 100 years from now.
Those critics will come and go, but the movie will be the movie.
Theyre going to fry an egg on their bald pate while their grandkids exalt my virtues.
So you said you had no problem ignoring the social critics.
Well, notjust, but I mean, afterDjango, was there a feeling of, Know what…?
I have this other story thats going to make their heads spin.
But the reason its the case is because, I dont give a f about it.
Not because, Oh no, I give a f and Im going to teach you a lesson.
Im going to show you.
If nobody had written that stuff, that wouldve been what they said.
If everybody wrote that stuff, thats still what they said.
Ihopethats where Im coming from.
Its kind of up for you to decide about almost every important aspect in the piece that reveals itself.
Yet theres so much in there about race that resonates true in 2015.
The line where Walton Goggins says white folks are safest when blacks are scared.
Is all that stuff intentional or does that just sprinkle in during the whole evolutionof the writing?
Literally, its sprinkled in just during the hot-house environment of writing this piece.
How much that can would be kicked and how much would spill out, that I didnt know.
And that was just the surface, the process of writing the material.
But I really was coming more from a mystery angle, creating a little Agatha Christie thing.
That was what got me putting pen to paper.
Obviously, I knew I was going to deal with the Civil War.
But I didnt know it would end up being so serious when it came to that issue.
And suddenly theyre all blaming each other for the apocalypse, but the apocalypseisthe Civil War.
Did Samuel L. Jackson say anything specific about his big monologue when he read the script the first time?
He was like, This is myIceman Comethand thats my Hickey monologue.
Race is a recurring theme in your films.
Are you working through your own experiences with race via film?
Do you have
No.
I would never ever give anybody that kind of expertise onmywork.
I am the expert onmywork.
At the Rise Up October rally, you became the story after referring to some police officers as murderers.
Did you say exactly what you intended to say?
I mean, I was completely misrepresented.
I didnt sayallcops were murderers, oreverysingle police shooting was a murder.
We were talking about very specific instances.
Chicago just got caught with their pants down in a way that cant be denied.
But I completely and utterly reject the few bad apples argument.
Yeah, the guy who shot [LaquanMcDonald] is a bad apple.
And the chief of police, is he a bad apple?
I think he is.
Is [Chicago Mayor] Rahm Emanuel a bad apple?
I think he is.
Theyre all bad apples.
That just shows that thats a bulls argument.
Its about institutional racism.
Its about institutional cover-ups that are about protecting the force as opposed to the citizens.
When the police unions threatened a boycott, they also promised that they had a surprise waiting for you…
The cops response to it has made my point for me inso many ways.
Civil servants, even rhetorically, shouldnt be threatening private citizens.
They sounded like bad guys in an 80s action movie.
It was likeJimGlickenhauswrote their dialogue for them.Thatsa reference.
I havent encountered anything like that.
All of a sudden, some regular on-the-street patrolman who would now be like, Oh, look Tarantino.
Fin doesnt know st. Did I feel bad that theyre not going to kiss me for this?
Yeah, a little bit.
A boycott could effect the box office of your movie, though.
Youve worked with studio head Harvey Weinstein from the beginning of your career, and hes releasingHateful.
What was his phone call to you about this like?
If he was Rupert Murdoch, Im sure the conversation wouldve gone a slightly different way.
Harveys a known liberal.
At the same time, Im sure it was a gigantic pain in the ass that he didnt need.
What kind of stuff are we talking about not fast-food restaurants?
But [those companies] got scared, and I understand why they got scared.
That really sucks because
Yeah, that fing sucks!
[Laughs] Itreallysucks!
And they might be more cautious in the future for another film or filmmaker thats slightly controversial.
Look, Im involved in a big commercial endeavor.
Not everyone has a great experience with Harvey.
Yeah, I know.
Were literally like family members.
We have genuine affection for each other.
This is Harveys studio, and the buck stops with him, and he still works from a gut.
Harveys not really coming from things like that; hes coming from his own tastes and his own experience.
He doesnt need market research to back up his own perceptions of things.
One of the common themes of your characters is how they are often pretending they are hiding something.
This goes back toReservoir Dogs, and this film is full of these types.
It must be an obsession of mine to some degree or another.
In movie after movie, characters go undercover as somebody theyre not.
But it wasnt necessarily the intention.
I wrote most of these characters for these actors I called them the Tarantino Superstars.
They can handle my material.
They can handle my dialogue.
It sounds good coming out of their mouths.
They understand the rhythms, but also and this is probably the most important part they get the jokes.
They know when, even when its not officially a joke, they know there is a laugh there.
But thats not for everybody.
Not every actor is born from that kind of theatricality that is required in my pieces.
Ive heard its terrific.
Its terrific, and its the perfect bookend to what she does in your film.
Shes the sweet, kind of meek-voiced character in that animated film.
And in your film, shes a Valkyrie.
Why did you cast her?
You know maybe some of their limitations.
When you close your eyes you’re free to kind of see them doing it.
And that character, Im not worrying about an actors limitations or their pluses it only is the character.
Now you have to find somebody that can take it from the page and take it even further.
He just ended up being able to speak every language that he was encountered with.
I didnt know that at the start, writing that farmhouse scene, but it just kept revealing itself.
So thats a little look into when yourenotwriting the character for an actor.
Single White Malewas definitely one.
I watched that one on my laser disc.
But it was more kind of the combination ofMrs.
Parker and the Vicious CircleandGeorgiaandMiami BluesandThe Hitcher.
I watchedHeart of Midnight.
I watchedThe Mens Club.
I watchedFast Times atRidgemontHigh.
Another big one that helped was a Paul Verhoeven movie she did,Flesh+Blood, with Rutger Hauer.
Shes terrific in it.
So I literally was just having a ball with this Jennifer Jason Leigh film festival.
It was a nice little reminder that in the 90s, she was like a female Sean Penn.
So it got me very, very excited about seeing a performance-dominated Jennifer Jason-Leigh movie.
Well, Im a huge Jennifer Lawrence fan.
She had to do all this publicity on theHunger Gamesmovies.
There was just no fing way in the world that she was available.
Having said that, Im glad I didnt cast somebody that young.
I think I absolutely positively made the right choice, as far as the ages of the characters.
Going back toPulp Fiction, Sam was in the Supporting category.
To me, he was a lead or at least co-lead in that film.
Do you care about such things?
Is Sam a lead actor this year?
Oh, yeah, he absolutely is the lead actor this year.
[I care] only when its absolutely positively completely egregious, and I dont think Sam inPulp Fictionqualifies.
They were talking about Vincent being the lead, and everybody else was supporting even Butch was supporting.
So now the fact that everyone talks about Jules as the lead, thatsnotwhat everyone was saying earlier on.
But where it actually is a thing maybe is Scarlett Johansson inLost in Translation shesobviouslythe co-lead.
Actually, hes co to her lead, in many ways.
You see the movie through both of their eyes, so shes not a supporting.
That was obviously an attempt to get her nominated and I think it actually backfired.
I have to ask you about the music inThe Hateful Eightfrom the legendary Ennio Morricone.
Its very different in the first half and the second half.
Well, I play around with it a little bit.
It was the tension that was carrying it.
It was the threat of violence that was carrying it.
I feel like Morricone did something completely different too.
It actually reminded me of Bernard Herrmann inPsycho, with the pounding strings.
I didnt expect a soundtrack similar to theThe Five Man ArmyorTwo Mules for Sister Sara.
I expected something very, very different, and I got it.
Well,thatis my movie.
Thats what he was responding to.
He was responding to the claustrophobia and the paranoia of the characters trapped in this situation together.
Youve talked about not wanting to be an old director.
Youve said youll retire after your 10th film.Hateful Eightis No.
Is that still your plan?
Almost to the man, most directors actually think they have more time than they do.
What do you want your last two statements to be?
How do you want to wrap up your persona for future generations?
Im going to ask a personal question, but let me explain why.
Do you want to have kids?
And the reason is because kids change who you are, everything.
And theres part of me that would want to see a Quentin Tarantino Dad movie Im not talking aboutMrs.Doubtfire.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
Im talking about who you would be as a father and how would that impact your filmmaking.
Do you think about having kids?
And I was thinking about it a lot.
And that was very moving.
But that fever has passed.
I had baby fever, and the fever broke.
Do you know what your next movie will be?
Everyone keeps whispering about a third Western.
There are a lot of people writing about that one right now.
I was always interested in the World War II movieabout black soldiers rampaging across Europe,Killer Crow.
Yeah, thats definitely in the old incubator.
That definitely is one of the ones that I could do.
