Quentin Tarantino On Oliver Stone’s ‘Natural Born Killers’: Why Didn’t He Do Half Of What Was On Page?

You know the story; before he made a name for himself as a director, Quentin Tarantino was a screenwriter trying to get his foot in the door. Before he directed “Reservoir Dogs,” he sold his “True Romance” script to Ridley Scott and sold his “Natural Born Killers” script to Regency/Warner Bros. who eventually hired Oliver Stone to direct it. Tarantino famously loves the former, the latter now so much.

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“Natural Born Killers,” unless you were living under a rock in the ’90s, starred Woody Harrelson, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, and Robert Downey Jr. and is the story of two psychopathic lovers and serial murderers irresponsibly glorified by the mass media, obviously inspired by the height of MTV‘s popularity in the 1990s and taking a lot of stylistic cues from various music videos of that era.

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Anyhow, while speaking with screenwriter/director/podcaster Brian Koppelman (“Rounders,” “Billions“) on his podcast The Moment, he and Tarantino bonded over the fact that they both disliked the movie and how Stone missed the mark and really didn’t understand his characters.

For one, Tarantino says he still hasn’t seen the whole film front to back (but probably went to see it because of his friendship with Juliette Lewis, who co-starred with him in “From Dusk Til Dawn.”). Koppelman does a lot of the talking, but he says Stone, who he is a big fan of, “fundamentally misread” the screenplay to “Natural Born Killers,” and Tarantino vehemently agrees.

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“One of the things about that script, in particular, was that I was trying to make it on the page. So when you read it, you saw the movie. And it’s like why didn’t [Oliver Stone] do at least half of that! It was done for him!” Tarantino laughed.

Pointing out the frustrating scene where Mickey (Harrelson) and Mallory (Lewis) cheat on each other. Quentin Tarantino says that would “never!” happen and missed the entire point of these characters and their reason for living, as they were willing to kill their own abusive family members to be together.

“The point of the thing is that they unnaturally live for each other at the expense of everyone else on the planet earth,” Tarantino told Koppelman about how Stone seemed to miss the entire point of the two killers relationship. Koppelman, explaining the movie while talking, says their “killing spree is the sacrament of their love,” and Tarantino totally agrees. “Absolutely.”

Interestingly, last year, Tarantino had revealed a scrapped connection of “True Romance” to “Natural Born Killers” while on Amy Schumer‘s podcast 3 Girls, 1 Keith. Stating that a massive 500-page script Clarence (Christian Slater) worked on would have been “Natural Born Killers.”

While it is extremely unlikely, we’ll ever see Tarantino revisit “Natural Born Killers” (even in novel form). Still, his original screenplay is out there, and it certainly feels like an old project that could deserve a remake from another filmmaker maybe one day down the road. Take a listen below.