It is often true that the wrong films fail and the very wrong ones succeed. But how exactly do we measure said success? Box office numbers? Critical acclaim? Awards? Memes or pop culture references?
READ MORE: Quentin Tarantino Shares An Interview He Had With John Milius Over 35 Years Ago
If we go by box office numbers, then Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez‘s 2007 double-feature throwback extravaganza, “Grindhouse” was a huge flop. Tarantino and Rodriguez were big indie movie legends at that point and to see them team-up to pay tribute to the long-standing tradition of grindhouse cinema seemed like a dream come true for film-loving fans on paper. Sadly, neither the promise of two movies for the price of one, Tarantino’s “Death Proof” and Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror,” nor the faux trailers by the likes of Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Edgar Wright could save this movie from grossing only $25 million from a budget of at least $53.
Answering questions from fans for Empire magazine (the comments were originally published in July of 2019, but Empire Online only published the entire Q&A this week), Tarantino recounted what happened with “Grindhouse” and whether he overestimated the audience’s fondness for grindhouse cinema. “With Grindhouse, I think me and Robert just felt that people had a little more of a concept of the history of double features and exploitation movies,” Tarantino said. “No, they didn’t. At all. They had no idea what the fuck they were watching. It meant nothing to them, alright, what we were doing. So that was a case of being a little too cool for school.”
As John Squires from Bloody Disgusting points out, though not commercially successful, the film did become massively influential, spawning 3 feature spin-offs, “Machete,” “Machete Kills,” and “Hobo with a Shotgun.” Likewise, the film inspired more throwback-style films and a poster style that is still being used in low-budget horror movies today.
Tarantino also told Empire of the time he went to a screening of the film on opening night with Edgar Wright. “I’m in London doing press on the film before opening weekend. And I go to Edgar Wright, ‘Hey, let’s you and me and your friends go see it on Friday night in Piccadilly,’” Tarantino said. “So Nira [Park], his producer, and Joe Cornish and the whole Edgar group, we head into the heart of Piccadilly Circus to go see ‘Death Proof’ on opening day. And we walk in the theater and there’s about 13 people in there. On the opening 8:30 show, alright? That was a rather humbling experience. But we sat down and watched it and had a good time. Edgar was like, ‘That was very impressive. I think I would have turned around and walked out of there. The fact you said, ‘Fuck it,’ and sat down, I admired that.’”
