Quentin Tarantino is known mainly to the public for his many acclaimed films and multiple Oscar statues; however, with his successes, there was a time when the filmmaker had some brief lows too. Back in 2007, Tarantino’s take on the drive-in slasher genre with “Death Proof” starring Kurt Russell (“The Hateful Eight“) as a stuntman/killer, was considered one of his worst films as audiences weren’t terribly thrilled with its opening weekend and essentially became a flop. A double-feature entity ended that only earned $25 million globally on a budget of $67 million.
Tarantino is now opening up to Spanish outlet Diari ARA (via Variety) about his career hiccup, saying that the movie tanking at the box office was a “shock” to his confidence. This might explain why he finally took his massive WWII-era revenge script “Inglourious Basterds,” trimming it enough so he could shoot it as a single installment and getting a mega-star like Brad Pitt to lead it, which became a commercially successful film earning a solid $321.4 million.
“I have been lucky enough to write stories that have connected with many people, and this has allowed me to practice my art without the restrictions that most filmmakers have,” Tarantino said. “Now, a funny thing happened: for a while, I was getting a lot of project proposals until the studios ended up assuming that I do my stories, and it wasn’t worth the effort. But after ‘Death Proof,’ which didn’t do well at the box office and was a bit of a shock to my confidence, I started getting proposals again.”
He added, “And there’s nothing wrong with making commissioned movies for Hollywood. They always offered me interesting projects. But I preferred to reinvest in myself and made ‘Inglourious Basterds.’”
If you’re not familiar with the original release rollout for “Death Proof,” it was paired with Robert Rodriguez‘s action-horror film “Planet Terror” as a double-feature event called “Grindhouse.” That combined title likely confused folks as many audiences were said to have left the theater before that second pic was shown. Then again, it wasn’t all bad; a handful of the faux trailers that played ahead of the double-feature ended up getting feature-length incarnations, with “Machete“ nabbing two major theatrical installments starring Danny Trejo (“Heat“) and Eli Roth‘s holiday-themed slasher “Thanksgiving“ is currently shooting in Toronto.
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In that same interview, Tarantino also talked about why sex scenes aren’t a huge priority to him when making his films. Citing how they’re not part of his “vision of cinema” along with the actuality of shooting them are a “pain.”
“It’s true, sex is not part of my vision of cinema,” Tarantino said. “And the truth is that, in real life, it’s a pain to shoot sex scenes; everyone is very tense. And if it was already a bit problematic to do it before, now it is even more so. If there had ever been a sex scene that was essential to the story, I would have, but so far, it hasn’t been necessary.”
Tarantino’s films aren’t entirely without sexuality. The director’s infamous kink for feet is very much present in most of his projects, alongside crude sexualized conversations between characters in nearly every film. It is also worth mentioning he did shoot a brief sex scene in ‘Basterds that featured French actress Julie Dreyfus and Vanessa Ferlito performing a sensual lap dance sequence in “Death Proof.” Not exactly sex-crazed filmmaking, but hardly considered prudish either.
We’re both excited and saddened that Tarantino’s looming tenth and final feature effort is on the horizon, being referred to as “The Movie Critic.” That is expected to be the last theatrical effort as he pivots to making television projects like his “Bounty Law” spinoff and writing various fiction/non-fiction books.