Tarantino: “I don’t believe you should stay on stage until people are begging you to get off. I like the idea of leaving them wanting a bit more. I do think directing is a young man’s game and I like the idea of an umbilical cord connection from my first to my last movie. I’m not trying to ridicule anyone who thinks differently, but I want to go out while I’m still hard…I like that I will leave a ten-film filmography, and so I’ve got two more to go after this. It’s not etched in stone, but that is the plan. If I get to the tenth, do a good job and don’t screw it up, well that sounds like a good way to end the old career. If, later on, I come across a good movie, I won’t not do it just because I said I wouldn’t. But ten and done, leaving them wanting more, that sounds right.”
After some chiding from Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell, Tarantino held strong to his desire to call it quits. And it's not as if he'll be sitting around twiddling his thumbs. He's got a number of book deals lined up, and he's long since expressed a desire to keep writing, probably stageplays and other special projects. But before all of that he's still got The Hateful Eight, which is gearing up to shoot soon in 70mm. One of the things Tarantino hopes to accomplish before hanging it up is to secure the future of 70mm against the growing might of digital...
Tarantino: “If we do our jobs right by making this film a 70 mm event, we will remind people why this is something you can’t see on television and how this is an experience you can’t have when you watch movies in your apartment, your man cave or your iPhone or iPad. You’ll see 24 frames per second play out, all these wonderfully painted pictures create the illusion of movement. I’m hoping it’s going to stop the momentum of the digital stuff, and that people will hopefully go, ‘Man, that is going to the movies, and that is worth saving, and we need to see more of that.”
He continued...
Tarantino: “I know this business has gone digital, even more in foreign countries than in America where it’s 90%. Digital presentation is just television in public, we’re all just getting together and watching TV without pointing the remote control at the screen. I have worked 20 years, too long to accept the diminishing results of having it come into theaters with the quality of a f*cking DVD, shot with the same shit they shoot soap operas with. It’s just not good enough for me."
Those are some pretty big ambitions for what sounds like a simple film, but Tarantino has come up with a plan to make it happen. Sounding very similar to the expanded rollout for Interstellar that saw 70mm showings arriving early, Tarantino is going to turn The Hateful Eight into a major happening.
Tarantino: “We’re doing this 70 mm, and we are trying to create an event. I need to know from all of you if this can last a month in your territory in that format, or two weeks. Then we roll it out in 35 and eventually digital. We’re not doing the usual 70 mm, where you shoot 35 mm and blow it up. We’re shooting 65 mm which, when you turn it into a print, is 70 mm. Panavision is not only behind this movie, they look at it as a legacy. They are inventing a lot of the stuff we need, and this is being supervised by my three-time Oscar-winning cinematographer Bob Richardson, who’s back with me after Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. I couldn’t do this if he wasn’t in my corner. He went to Panavision to check out lenses for this big Sherman Tank of a camera he’ll use. He goes into the warehouse room and sees all these big crazy lenses. He asks, ‘What are those?’ It was the ultra-Panavision lenses that haven’t been used since How The West Was Won, Mutiny On The Bounty, Battle Of The Bulge and It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad World, which were all bigger than the normal 70 mm."
So what were some of the influences that inspired him to want to go and make a second Western in a row? Turns out they're very different than the ones that influenced Django Unchained...
Tarantino: "It’s less inspired by one Western movie than by Bonanza, The Virginian, High Chaparral,” “Twice per season, those shows would have an episode where a bunch of outlaws would take the lead characters hostage. They would come to the Ponderosa and hold everybody hostage, or to go Judge Garth’s place — Lee J. Cobb played him — in The Virginian and take hostages. There would be a guest star like David Carradine, Darren McGavin, Claude Akins, Robert Culp, Charles Bronson or James Coburn. I don’t like that storyline in a modern context, but I love it in a Western, where you would pass halfway through the show to find out if they were good or bad guys, and they all had a past that was revealed. “I thought, ‘What if I did a movie starring nothing but those characters? No heroes, no Michael Landons. Just a bunch of nefarious guys in a room, all telling backstories that may or may not be true. Trap those guys together in a room with a blizzard outside, give them guns, and see what happens.’ ”
My personal feeling is that Tarantino is fighting a losing battle against digital as it just makes sound financial sense for theaters. But at the same time I'm happy he and a few other filmmakers are out there fighting the good fight to keep 70mm relevant. Unfortunately, if he retires he may be dealing the movement the most crushing blow yet as it's his big event films that keep the format in the public eye. Whatever happens, there are now even more reasons to check out The Hateful Eight when it opens later in 2015.
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