-Our first guest tonight is an Academy Award-winning
writer and director whose films include
"Inglourious Basterds," "Kill Bill," and "Pulp Fiction."
His book, "Cinema Speculation," is on sale now.
Please welcome back to the show Quentin Tarantino, everybody.
[ Cheers and applause ] ♪♪
Welcome back. -Good to be back.
-This is a wonderful book because it is both
a collection of film criticism about movies
that are important to you, but it also has this
great personal element about you falling in love
with movies as a kid.
And a lot of the movies were introduced to you
at an age-inappropriate time.
-Well, "inappropriate" is a fluid term,
depending on who they're talking about.
But the movies were not intended for children, alright?
-Yes, I guess that's a good way to say it, yeah.
-They were not intended for children.
And the thing is, they were also -- It's the very --
It's the very beginning of the '70s,
so movies have exploded because of the ratings board.
Movies have -- Just actually so the audience knows,
part of the thing is, before the ratings board came out,
there was -- One, there was the Hays Code,
but the other thing about before the ratings code is,
if you made a touchy movie, be it sexuality or violence
or any kind of thing like that, you could be sued
by any sheriff in a jerk-water county
who said you broke their county's obscenity laws.
-Right.
-So the ratings board, you know, once they came about --
that became the law of the land.
So, consequently, movies just kind of exploded
when it came to graphic subject matter,
like I say, either sexuality, violence, or disturbing stories.
-Do you remember the first disturbing thing
you saw that made an impact on you?
-I saw -- There was a movie about Isadora Duncan
that was directed, the British director, Karel Reisz
called "Isadora,"
and it starred Vanessa Redgrave playing Isadora Duncan.
So, the ending is -- she's in the back of a roadster
and she's wearing this long, flowing scarf
that's just hanging down.
And -- "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!"
They're driving around.
I think she even has a champagne glass in her hand.
"Ha, ha, ha!"
And then the scarf gets caught in the wheel of the roadster
and...
strangles her to death.
-And this was not a movie where there was any sense
that this was going to be the ending.
-No. -Not a horror film at all.
-No, no, no, not at all.
In fact, I'm sure that one of the reasons
it made such an impression is I was so thoroughly bored
by the movie up until that moment,
until that happened, alright?
I'm like...
You know, and so, on the ride home,
my parents were driving me home.
So I'm just full of questions about dying by your scarf
getting caught in the wheels of a car.
-Yeah.
-And it's like this major concern.
All of a sudden, I'm so afraid of this.
And my mom says, "Quentin, you have nothing to worry about.
I would never, ever, under any circumstances,
let you wear a long, flowing scarf
in a convertible roadster."
Whew!
-Now, I feel like less with movies, more with comedies,
my parents introduced me to things
that my peers had not been introduced to.
-Yeah, yeah. But that makes sense, actually.
-And then the teachers, though,
maybe they catch onto this, right?
Were you sort of the person that disseminated these adult films
and their plots to your classmates?
-No. There was this aspect -- Usually, one other kid
that was allowed to see the contraband stuff.
-Yeah.
-There was this thing where I'd go see a movie,
and then I'd go back to school and, like,
spill the goods on this wild contraband stuff.
And, usually, the kids --
Not always, because I saw a lot of stuff,
but, oftentimes, they even knew what the movie was
because they showed TV spots.
-Yeah, so they'd know the trailer, right.
-One of the better times as far as that was concerned was
my mother -- Again, this is like, ah, the '70s.
They used to have things like this.
All of a sudden, out of the blue,
they would have -- United Artists --
not just like one theater.
United Artists would, citywide,
do a big release of three Woody Allen movies.
-Uh-huh.
-And, so, it was "Bananas" and "Everything You Always
Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)"
and "Sleeper."
And, so -- And my mom wasn't even a Woody Allen fan.
And, so, I asked her, could we go,
like, on a "school night," no less,
and she goes, "Yeah."
I cuoldn't believe she said yes, but she said yes.
And, like, the three Woody Allen movies,
and she doesn't like Woody Allen, alright?
That was really nice of her. -She's very -- Sounds lovely.
-She's really cool, alright?
And, so, we go to the movie, and then there's everything --
Again, imagining a child watching this.
You're watching "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex
(But Were Afraid to Ask),"
and there's the monster-movie parody about the giant boob
that's, you know, going across the countryside.
-Like "The Blob." Yeah, yeah, yeah.
-But it's just a big -- It's a big boob, a big tit, alright?
You know? And it squirts milk, no less.
-Yep.
-Well, you can imagine how I'm regaling the kids at school
the next -- "I saw a movie that had a giant boob.
And it drowned people with milk."
In fact, I think the line was, "The cream slowed him down,
and the milk killed him."
-You -- One of the great things is,
you write about movies, and not only do you write about
"This is my take on the movie, this is what I loved about it,"
but you also sometimes have a lot of knowledge
of how the movie was made, choices that were --
casting and who the director was and who the script was.
Did you find it was difficult to figure out how to
combine those two things, both your personal taste
and your personal experience of knowing about the backstory?
-Well, that was actually one of the fun things
about writing the book.
It was as thing that made it similar to me writing fiction,
where the thing about it is, with fiction,
I have a really good idea about where I'm going to go
with some of this stuff, but at some point,
I want the characters to take it from me, you know,
and start writing some of the stuff itself
so I'm actually almost, like, dictating it.
And, to some degree, when I got into
my own arguments with myself on the page,
that started happening.
But then one of the things was, I hadn't thought that
I would be have -- I wouldn't call what I do journalism,
but I didn't think I was going to have that much
backing up, other than my own general knowledge
of how a movie was made.
But then, like, I'm doing "The Getaway" chapter,
and I go, "Well, I'm actually friends with Walter Hill,
and he wrote the script.
He was there for everything. Let me give him a call."
And I give him a call, and he just --
he's a wealth of information.
Not only is -- You know, he's a terrific writer.
He's proud of the movie, but he's a great raconteur.
And he was there.
He was there for every moment of it.
And, so, he tells me this amazing story
that I didn't even really know.
And then I was able to back that up with this,
and he's the one that said, "Why don't you give
Steve McQueen's ex-wife, Neile McQueen, a call?
You don't really know how important she was
to McQueen's success."
You know, and, so, I give her a call,
and she's this amazing raconteur and has a fantastic memory,
you know, and tells me all this stuff.
And so it was one of those situations
where if I didn't just have a point,
i.e. my own relationship with a movie,
or if I didn't want to just do analysis,
I knew that was another way to get in
was to just go through like, a verbal history,
an oral history of how the movie was made.
-It's really -- Every sort of section of the book
has this really nice dimension to it because of that.
I'm wondering, as you write film criticism,
what is your relationship to the way
people write about your films?
Like, even when people don't like things I've done,
I always do appreciate when they take the time to
sort of drill down.
Is that how you feel about critics?
Like, what is your -- Do you like reading reviews
of your work?
-Oh, yeah, no, I read them all. I read them all.
Look, I really know my movie really well, alright, you know?
So were there were a case that somebody could shine a light on
me that I couldn't see on my own --
They might not like it.
They might not appreciate what I'm doing.
But at the end of the day -- And this is
an easy thing to say, but, truly, most of the time,
well, I didn't really make the movie for those people.
You know, I made it for somebody else.
-Yeah.
-And -- But, also, I've made movies where
I've had fans that give good reviews of my movies,
and they don't like this one.
Well, that doesn't mean they're right either.
But, also, it can just also not be for you.
But I'm actually -- It's less of a situation of,
"Oh, hey, they're going to tell me something about myself
I don't know."
That can happen, and that has happened.
But it's more, "Oh, this is the conversation
that's happening about the movie."
And that's kind of important, because there really only is
a conversation about the movie when it comes out.
-Yep.
-After that, it -- You know, all those newspapers
are in birdcages, and no one remembers anything.
And the perception of the industry, of the fans,
of everybody is kind of set.
Now, it can change, usually, over the course of time,
but the conversation about the movie,
good, bad, or indifferent, is what's important.
-I think it's really special that you wrote this book that,
for the people who are going to take the time to read this,
it's going to start conversations about these movies
that I think, otherwise, for this generation,
would forget.
And so that's a cool thing you did that,
and it's great to see you, as always.
Thanks so much for being here. -Oh, my pleasure, man.
My pleasure. -Quentin Tarantino.
"Cinema Speculation" is out now.
We'll be right back with Emily Ratajkowski.