Writer/director Quentin Tarantino on the Church of Tarantino podcast is good listening, two hours of unfiltered QT. We’ve covered lots of it; the revelation that “The Movie Critic” began as an eight-part TV mini-series, the fact that the filmmaker’s next project is a play he hopes to mount in London, the reason he canceled “The Movie Critic” film, and the admission that despite a much longer cut of “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” existing somewhere (or once did in the edit), Tarantino has little interest in re-cutting it and re-releasing it, even if it was just for Netflix.
There’s more, obviously. Tarantino’s next project is sequel-ish continuation story, one he wrote, but won’t direct, “The Adventures Of Cliff Booth,” starring Brad Pitt as his “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” character Cliff Booth as helmed by David Fincher.
During the lengthy conversation, Tarantino shared some details about the process of making it and teased a few details.
For one, he won’t be on set for it every day; his family lives abroad, but he will assist here and there as needed.
“I’m one of the producers on the movie and everything. But look, I’m moving back and forth between here and Israel, so I won’t be on the set every day and everything,” he explained. “But yeah, I’ll be around if they need me to do something.”
To a point, of course. In describing the process and Fincher’s role, Tarantino revealed that “The Adventures Of Cliff Booth” is a big, meaty script, describing it as a “gigantic novel,” “unwieldy” and something untamed and wild that Fincher would have to rein in.
“But I mean, it’s a little more like I’ve given David [Fincher] a gigantic novel written in screenplay form, and it’s his job to attack it,” Tarantino said. ‘No, I’m not like [some] Hollywood screenwriter that’s like, ‘Here you go. Here’s your 120 pages. Shoot seven [pages] a day. You should be fine.’ No, no, I’m giving [Fincher] an unwieldy thing, and I’m haven’t tamed myself whatsoever. And it’s his job to shrink it.”
For context, most of Tarantino’s most recent movies hover around two hours and 45 minutes with the 70MM Roadshow version of “The Hateful Eight” running 3 hours and two minutes. “Django Unchained,” regular ‘Hateful Eight’ and ‘Once Upon A Time…’ all sit around the two hour and 45 minute mark with “Pulp Fiction,” “Inglourious Basterds” and “Jackie Brown” are about two and a half hours.
For more context, the first, largely unedited version of “Pulp Fiction” ran 500 pages, “Django Unchained” was 168 pages long, and “Inglourious Basterds” is 176 pages in length (though there’s a 90s version he considered making into a mini-series that was much longer).
So how long is it? That’s for you to speculate.
One of the overarching themes of the conversation was Tarantino’s impending retirement, the reasons he wants to step-away from feature-length theatrical filmmaking (but not shorts, TV series or plays) and in some ways, how that applies to “The Adventures Of Cliff Booth.”
For one, he doesn’t really care if Netflix releases ‘Cliff Booth’ movie in theaters or not, but he suspects they’ll at least give it a small run.
“Well, they might [release it in theaters, but] It’s not their business model,” he said. “I don’t hold it against the company for not following what’s not their business model. It is what it is. I wouldn’t be surprised if they came out with a two-week release of it, at least limited to some degree.”
“As far as like the big cities are concerned, they’ll probably have screenings. They’re probably going to want it to do [well] with the Oscars. So they’ll be screenings for it around town and everything,” he continued.
In the process of describing Netflix’s rollout, Tarantino confirmed our original reporting: “The Adventures of Cliff Booth” will have a $200 million budget, and the filmmaker spoke about the increasing pressures of ensuring your expensive movie is a theatrical hit and suggested, at that budget, ‘The Cliff Booth’ movie could have never been made for a theatrical-only release as the risk would be too high. Additionally, Tarantino said one of the reasons the movie works so well on Netflix is that theatrical recoup pressure is non-existent.
“This movie that I’m doing with Netflix is the biggest budget movie I’ve ever done by $100 million. It’s like a $200 million movie,” he said. “And the box office doesn’t matter. I mean, it doesn’t matter fuck all, not fuck all. Netflix don’t care. They don’t care. So, it’s a little like gambling with the casinos money.”
Tarantino described the it-has-be-a-theatrical-hit burden as a “sword of Damocles” constantly dangling over his head.
The pressure “I have existed, lived under my entire career just doesn’t exist,” he said about the freedom that Netflix allows to just make a movie and not worry about it recouping its cost. “We just make a good movie or we don’t, but that crap table at Vegas, that’s always part of the first step is just completely gone.”
“So that’s kind of fucking cool,” he continued. [“That burden], it’s a tyranny unless you win [at the box office]. When you win, now you got big dick energy… when you don’t beat them [at the box office], it fucking sucks. But the fact that pressure just evaporates, just doesn’t exist—their tickets have already been bought. You bought your [Netflix] subscription.”
In the course of the conversation, Tarantino teased a big fight scene in “The Adventures Of Cliff Booth” movie, suggesting that the former stuntman gets in over his head and gets his ass kicked.
“In [the ‘Cliff Booth’ movie, there’s a couple of fun bits where Cliff gets to do his thing, He’s kind of a Billy Jack character,” Tarantino said, comparing him to the character Tom Laughlin played across four “Billy Jack” movies where he protects the innocent and vulnerable via violent means. “There’s a scene where the bad guys do some violence, and it’s horrific. And that’s not meant to be fun at all. It’s meant to be hard to watch, but also trepidatious [because] Cliff’s going to have to fight those guys, and he doesn’t know they’re that good [fighters]. But we [the audience] do.”
Tarantino scripts used to routinely leak, but ever since “The Hateful Eight” leak—which almost prompted the filmmaker to cancel the film entirely—his scripts have been under lock and key so good luck getting your hands on it. But maybe someone knows a page count? Listen to the full conversation below.
Rodrigo Perez is the founder and editor-in-chief of The Playlist, which he launched in 2008. He has worked in entertainment journalism since 2000, including at MTV, and has written for SPIN, IndieWire, Pitchfork, Complex, Magnet, and various music, film, and entertainment publications over the past two decades.
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