Quentin Tarantino is soooo many things. Director, screenwriter, budding novelist (if he ever delivers that longform version of ‘Basterds’, actor, pretentious movie critic, and now penpal and “way to go!” encourager of fellow filmmakers who appeared alongside him at this year’s Cannes film festival.
We’ve already well-documented his love for Jane Campion’s “Bright Star” (smart move, it’s one of the years best) and now two separate sources have revealed two different letters he penned: one to Campion about how much he loved her 19th century romance picture and one to Brillante Mendoza the director of the divisive documentative murder-picture “Kinatay” (not a great move, we walked out of this one during Cannes, granted we were tired and it was dull as fuck).
“My favorite film of yours,” Tarantino wrote to Campion. “I don’t like period pieces like that. I loved this!!! Never has heartache been so realistically and movingly portrayed as Abbie taking to her bed … The lovers kisses … Abbie and Ben … touching … Brilliant. I loved it!!!” The note is signed, “Love – Your fan – Quentin Tarantino.”
“Bravo on your diffcult troubling work,” Quentin scrawled to Mendoza complete with brutal spelling which even rivals our own. “Your decission to never dramatize the murder, never indulge in movie suspense…. was bold, daring, and to me, the whole point of making the movie in the first place. I felt it was completely a eyewitness acount of a horroble murder. I believed everything I saw. Your point wasnt to dramatize it. It was to capture it.”
“Kinatay” won the Best Director prize at Cannes which is still sort of ridiculous considering no one is ever going to put that film out. Now if only someone can dig up the letters Tarantino wrote to Lars Von Trier and Michael Haneke those up n’ comers could surely use some QT encouragement.