While Quentin Tarantino is spending the fall cementing his love of film over digital with the 70mm release of "The Hateful Eight," and uh, watching VHS tapes over streaming on Netflix, the director has also spent his press time throwing shade. He stated that David Robert Mitchell‘s "It Follows" was good but not great, and that he was bored by the first season of "True Detective," not even making it past the first episode. And while Tarantino is entitled to his opinion, he’s starting to tread a fine line between commenting on the state of American cinema, and kind of being a jerk. And he veers towards the latter in a recent interview with The New York Times Style Magazine.
Chatting it up with Bret Easton Ellis, the duo cover a lot of ground in the piece, but Tarantino’s comments on Ava DuVernay‘s "Selma" are certainly going to raise the most eyebrows. "She did a really good job on ‘Selma’ but ‘Selma’ deserved an Emmy," he said, diminishing the accomplishment of the critically acclaimed film. Tarantino goes on to promote the notion that any talk about race and cinema must involve his own movies, such as the recent "Django Unchained," and the upcoming "The Hateful Eight" which, he has already stated, will resonate deeply on those themes.
"If you’ve made money being a critic in black culture in the last 20 years you have to deal with me," the director said. "You must have an opinion of me. You must deal with what I’m saying and deal with the consequences."
And when he’s not ensuring he’s part of the critical conversation about the big issues in cinema, he’s lamenting the victories he should have had, such as the Best Original Screenplay for "Inglorious Basterds," which he lost to Mark Boal for "The Hurt Locker."
"It bugged me that Mark Boal won Best Screenplay for that movie,’’ Tarantino admits. "The Kathryn Bigelow thing — I got it. Look, it was exciting that a woman had made such a good war film, and it was the first movie about the Iraq War that said something. And it wasn’t like I lost to something dreadful. It’s not like ‘E.T.’ losing to ‘Gandhi.’ "
The entire piece is a worth reading with Tarantino also opining on his fellow filmmakers David Fincher ("Even when I don’t like his movies I walk around thinking about them for a week or so"), Wes Anderson ("The Grand Budapest Hotel" is the first picture by the director he likes) and Judd Apatow (who he thinks is getting "better and better").
However, it’s only a matter of time until some of those very same folks Tarantino calls out start to strike back or, in the case of Cate Blanchett, shrug it off. Earlier this year, Tarantino lamented that contemporary Oscar movies don’t have staying power. "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," he said.
Asked about the comments by Vulture, the actress took it stride. "Well, he’s entitled to his opinion. It’s like horses for courses, not everyone’s gonna like what you do. Was it Louis Malle who said, ‘It takes as much effort to make a bad film as it does to make a good film’? That’s just his opinion. I guess."
"The Hateful Eight" opens on Christmas Day, with surely more condescending statements to come.
Inglorious Basterds losing to Hurt Locker was a complete travesty. It has one of the most brilliant scripts of the past 15 years, for which it won best screenplay, and it was by far the most engrossing experience I had at the movies in 2009. I barely made it through Hurt Locker one time and I have no desire to ever see it again.
You need help. No, really, you do.
hyperbole, Selma is actually one-hundred and ten percent garbage. Now back to Fumblr with ya\’!
While some may think that one hundred percent is
4. "And it\’s One Hundred Percent garbage." There are a lot of different numbers that could have been used here.
3. "But Selma wasn\’t a hack job — it was the best Duvarney could do." Again, the earlier commentator was unclear as to what a "hack job" is. A "hack job" is typically work done, solely for profit, by a talented artist. No one is claiming that DuVarney is talented, therefore, by definition, she cannot be a hack. She did her best. And her best Smells the King\’s Speechs F_rts.
2. You do realize that it\’s possible to recognize that both Selma and The King\’s Speech are POS. This illustrates the logical fact that just because the King\’s Speech is a POS, it doesn\’t preclude Selma from being POS as well. I was brilliantly pointing out the logical flaw in an earlier commenters argument.
1. Selma smells the King\’s Speeches f*rts. This means that Selma, the film, inhales the noxious effluvium of The King\’s Speech.
I\’m sorry that you were confused by my missive. Let me break it down into smaller pieces so as to be more easily digestible by you.
Selma was definitely better than the atrocious King\’s Speech, but that\’s just a back-handed compliment. Not a high bar at all. And Selma WAS nominated for an Oscar, so it fit its role as a boring Oscar-bait movie perfectly.
Writes Playlist.
@SPOOIE, yep so patronizing, especially as Hurt Locker managed to be both exhilarating and something that felt like real life. Tarantino can\’t do real life, he touched it briefly with Jackie Brown, which was great, but his thing is elevated trash and a kind of punk subversion, which is okay by me, but the feeling I get is that Tarantino himself feels deeply insecure and inferior for that lack, hence all the bitching. Speaking of lack @SELMA STINKS LOL, you lack basic skills of expression yet somehow we\’re expected to accept your critique of adult, intelligent material?
@ Dee — You do realize that it\’s possible to recognize that both Selma and The King\’s Speech are POS. But Selma wasn\’t a hack job — it was the best Duvarney could do. And it\’s 100% garbage.
For those labeling Selma as a conventional hack job, you clearly haven\’t seen The King\’s Speech, among other extraordinarily dull Oscar fare.
Ever think he slipped up when he said "Selma deserved an Emmy" and he wasn\’t be an ass?
"The Kathryn Bigelow thing — I got it. Look, it was exciting that a woman had made such a good war film, and it was the first movie about the Iraq War that said something."
Uhhh… this is from the same guy that was bawling tears of JOY for Fahrenheit 9/11 receiving the Palme d\’Or at Cannes… right?
@LULU Yeah, because movies are real important! They\’re not like entertainment or anything.
Of course Tarantino is a jerk according to IW! He didn\’t like Selma and thought it\’s nothing but a well-made TV movie.
Tarantino, even in his worst moments ("I\’m shutting your butt down!") isn\’t being outright rude. He is just a passionate dude when it comes to cinema. Frankly, I enjoy an honest opinion about a film rather than some bullshit PR piece. I understand in the industry you don\’t want to burn any bridges, but I wouldn\’t want to work with anyone sensitive enough to be offended at slight criticism.
@SELMA SELMA BOH BELMA go play with some toys and let the grown ups talk.
There isn\’t enough space in this world for his ego.
Taking small snippets out of a lengthy conversation and omitting any excerpts that might make Tarantino appear less arrogant is just cheap tabloid-ism in order to provoke a strong reaction from readers. I suggest to everyone to actually read the whole interview: I\’m sure after doing that the readers will have a more balanced view on QT than they have after reading the "article" above.
We\’re coming to an age where our young turks are turning into pompous, wining, arrogant old men. Too much time spent having hot air blown up you, ends with nothing less than an old man full of hot air. Of course he has to strongly defend his use of black culture, without it his films are barely there. So far he\’s seemed socially conscious enough to pass, but dissing on any of the very few actual black film makers currently working, makes me worry for him. The guy\’s a soundbite away from being Cinema\’s Miley Cyrus.
Selma stunk, and everyone knows it.
Classic IndieWire. You didn\’t like \’Selma\’? You must be a racist. \’Selma\’ is stuffy, voiceless Oscar bait. Granted, it deserves to sit alongside \’Theory of Everything\’ and \’Imitation Game\’ in the artless Oscar movies category, but it\’s not some masterpiece.
“…he\’s starting to tread a fine line between commenting on the state of American cinema, and kind of being a jerk." Since when is that news? He thinks his own farts smell rich, vibrant and have long shelf-life.
Love his movies, but getting tired of both him and Nolan yapping about the state of cinema (especially film vs digital).
I\’m on the fence with QT, and always have been, but his comments on Selma didn\’t diminish it one bit. Ava did a helluva job bringing that picture to the fore, but my impression is that Quentin is referring to the film\’s conventional technique/craft that relegates it to "TV" more than "cinema." Ironically, DuVernay would probably want to be judged on those merits more than say "race" or "female filmmaker."
This is such a bullshit, clickbait take on that Times piece. Ellis and Tarantino were sitting out by the pool talking about Pauline Kael and film criticism. Then they veered into having actual critical opinions about contemporary movies, as two cinephiles are likely to do- just like this site and a hundred others like it do. Is this writer saying you need to have a press pass to be justified in giving a real, informed critique of movies? And as far as the comment on critics of black culture being unable to ignore him, it didn\’t read like that much of a boast to me. It was more like he\’s aware that he\’s the biggest mainstream director handing race in a direct way that\’s not just some pat-yourself-on-the-back-for-not -siding-with-the-overt-white-racists Oscar bait or a Tyler Perry movie. Tarantino can be insufferable with his self aggrandizing sometimes, but this was just a snippet of a normal conversation the guy had about what he\’d thought of some recent movies.
Also, the hour and a half or so of Selma I caught on HBO had some good performances, but looked like a well made, classy TV movie, and a lot of it was written with the kind of heavy handed edutainment dialogue you\’d expect from the same. I didn\’t see the whole thing so I won\’t say I can judge it all, but I get what Tarantino was saying in the context of the whole conversation he and Ellis were having. It was about the difference in TV and movies, and how Selma was more befitting the TV style, where budget issues force the focus to be on characters imparting information rather than more stylistic cinematic elements. Of course, this article is here to generate clickbait shares and faux outrage traffic by doing nothing but ripping quotes from another publication\’s work out of context.
And here I am feeding the beast.
I don\’t mind his opinions, but his hubris is taking its toll. Basterds, while having a few spectacular scenes (opening and Fassbender scenes, imo) was a rather disjointed screenplay and tonally a bit all over the place. I thought Django was even worse. The only good scenes were with Dicaprio. He spends the entire time creating this super alturistic chatracter that finally works out a way to set get Django his wife, then blows it all away because he doesn\’t want to apologize? Ridiculous.Pulp Fiction is still a masterpiece. And Reservoir Dogs is still fantastic, but Tarantino\’s writing has been hurting ever since her and Roger Avary parted ways.
Why is someone not allowed to voice their unpopular opinions without being labelled and mocked and vilified on the internet?
And yes as Daniel pointed out, on a scale of 1 to 10, The Playlist is 9 when it comes to snarikness, Taranitino might be 4.
So when Tarantino says snarky things like The Playlist does on a daily basis, he\’s a \’jerk,\’ eh?
I KID! What he said, minus the Emmy comment, wasn\’t particularly snarky, just a little impolitely honest — and not inarguable.
@ Dee — You do realize that it’s possible to recognize that both Selma and The King’s Speech are POS. But Selma wasn’t a hack job — it was the best Duvarney could do. And it’s 100% garbage.