Quentin Tarantino doesn’t mince words or shies away from sharing his opinion. One way to sum up the filmmaker’s attitude (and ego) is that, it’s generally considered déclassé and gauche in Hollywood to shit on another director’s work (Paul Thomas Anderson’s quote on the matter about not bad-mouthing salient). Yet for years, Tarantino used to make a top ten list of his favorite films, make them public and also, in that list, usually take the opportunity to mention his most hated film of the year too and often criticize movies harshly. While he’s since given up on that practice of a public top ten—someone finally got to him there—he’s still pretty vocal about everything.
And so, in a recent appearance on author/screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis’ podcast—a man who also isn’t afraid to talk a lot of smack about fellow artists—to promote his The Video Archives Podcast with “Pulp Fiction” co-writer Roger Avary, Tarantino, Ellis and Avary talked about all kinds of movies. In the conversation, many a project came up that Tarantino said he just had no interest in seeing because he’d seen other versions of them before and well, he’s good.
One of those projects was Denis Villeneuve’s critically acclaimed, “Dune” movies which the filmmaker just said he hasn’t bothered seeing and won’t see.
“I saw [David Lynch’s] “Dune” a couple of times. I don’t need to see that story again. I don’t need to see spice worms. I don’t need to see a movie that says the word ‘spice’ so dramatically,” he explained.
Uhh, ok. As anyone who has seen both these movies know, they are radically different, Villeneuve’s are much richer and have the benefit of much greater VFX and technology. Lynch doesn’t even like his version of “Dune and has all but disavowed it, but that’s not changing Tarantino’s tune.
Tarantino railed on remakes in general and also said he had no interest in seeing the critically-acclaimed FX series “Shōgun” or Steve Zaillian’s mesmerizing take on “Ripley” for Netflix.
“It’s one after another of this remake and that remake,” he said. “People ask, ‘Have you seen Dune?’ ‘Have you seen ‘Ripley?’ ‘Have you seen ‘Shōgun?’ And I’m like “No, no, no.’ There are six or seven ‘Ripley’ books; if you do one again, why are you doing the same one that they’ve done twice already? I’ve seen that story twice before, and I didn’t really like it in either version, so I’m not really interested in seeing it a third time. If you did another story, that would be interesting enough to give it a shot anyway.”
Tarantino also railed a little bit harder into“Shōgun” saying he’d seen the original series in the 1980s, so what would be the point to see this new version?
“I saw ‘Shōgun’ in the ‘80s. I watched all 13 hours. I’m good,” he remarked. “I don’t need to see that story again; I don’t care how they do it. I don’t care if they take me and put me in ancient Japan in a time machine. I don’t care; I’ve seen the story.”
To be fair, the 1980s “Shōgun” was seen almost entirely from the white person’s perspective and this new FX version by creator/writers Justin Marks and Rachel Kondo, was much more nuanced, fair,and offered the Japanese characters a much stronger viewpoint.
Furthermore, remakes are common and creators are always putting a new, more modern and layered spin on material from the past. Still, if you listen to the podcast, you can tell Tarantino is pretty obdurate on his remake opinion and isn’t about to budge. Honestly, it feels like his loss, but some people are just set in their ways.
Regardless, weigh in yourself and the entire podcast can be heard here.
