It’s hard to imagine a time when director Quentin Tarantino wasn’t putting together favorite lists or telling folks why he loves certain films in various interviews, some well-known and others being obscure gems. The cinephile recently put that love of filmmaking to paper with a new nonfiction novel “Cinema Speculation” that focuses on the films of the 1970s that Tarantino watched as a young moviegoer and had a lasting impact as he eventually tried his own hand at creating his own movies.
Tarantino is back on a promotional tour for “Cinema Speculation” which was released earlier this month and spoke with late-night host Jimmy Kimmel on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to promote the book when he was pressed to share more “perfect films” beyond Tobe Hooper‘s gritty slasher classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (had a big influence on the Spahn Ranch/Squeaky Fromme scene in “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood“) as he dropped another six titles to form a list of seven perfect films.
“Well, there’s not many of them – that just bemoans that the film art form is hard,” Tarantino told Kimmel, “Look, when you say perfect movies you’re talking about any individual person’s aesthetic but even trying to account for all aesthetics…perfect movies kind of crosses all aesthetics to one degree or another.”
Those other films aren’t terribly surprising titles as they include “Jaws,” “The Exorcist,” “Annie Hall,” the Mel Brooks Universal Monsters parody “Young Frankenstein,” “Back to The Future,” and lastly mentioned Sam Peckinpah‘s “The Wild Bunch,” but added the caveat he couldn’t leave out the notoriously violent western but doesn’t see it as an example of perfection.
We’ll see if the director ever adds or subtracts that list over the next couple of years or provides other lists as he continues to promote projects. I don’t think it would be wild speculation to consider more books on the horizon as Tarantino tries to get his “Bounty Law” series, a spinoff of “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood,” made and his tenth feature film, expected to be his last, eventually is put together.
You can watch the full appearance on “Kimmel” below.