Quentin Tarantino may have backed out of his swan song, but it wasn’t because of stage fright.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker, who was slated to conclude his esteemed directing career with “The Movie Critic,” opened up about the film’s cancellation in an Aug. 15 interview on “The Church of Tarantino” podcast.
“It’s a little crazy to listen to podcasts and hear all these amateur psychiatrists psychoanalyze as if they (expletive) know what they’re talking about,” Tarantino, 62, said. “About what’s going on with me, about how I’m so scared of my 10th film. … ‘Oh my God. I’m so fragile about my legacy.'”
Tarantino, who previously said he planned to retire after his 10th film, told Deadline in 2023 that the film was set in California in 1977 and based on a real-life film critic who wrote “movie reviews for a porno rag.” Brad Pitt, who won an Oscar for his role in Tarantino’s 2019 film “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” was reportedly in talks to star in the film.
Tarantino said the film started as a limited, eight-episode series. While the “Pulp Fiction” director was satisfied with the show’s script, he later decided to adapt it into a film format: “No one’s waiting for this thing, per se. I mean, I can do it whenever I want. I mean, it’s already written. So OK, let me just not start it right now.”
“Let me try writing it as a movie and let me see if it’s better that way. … And I was like, ‘Oh, OK. No, I think this is going to be the movie.’ And then it wasn’t,” Tarantino continued. “I pulled the plug on it. And the reason I pulled the plug is a little crazy.”
Throughout his nearly four-decade career, Tarantino has become an icon of cinema thanks to his colorful neo-noir style, which often includes graphic violence and frequent references to popular culture. Some of his best-known films are “Reservoir Dogs,” “Pulp Fiction” the “Kill Bill” franchise, and “Inglourious Basterds.”
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When it comes to movie magic, Tarantino isn’t one to repeat himself.
The director told “Church of Tarantino” host Reverend Scott K. that he gave himself a “challenge” with the subject of “The Movie Critic,” which fueled much of his creative interest in the film.
“Can I take the most boring profession in the world and make it an interesting movie?” Tarantino said. “Who wants to see a movie called ‘The Movie Critic’? … If I can actually make a movie or a TV show about somebody who watches movies interesting, that is an accomplishment.”
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And while Tarantino felt he met that goal, he said the film’s production process bore too many similarities to “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood,” which is also set in a retro period of Los Angeles.
“I wasn’t really that excited about dramatizing what I wrote when I was in pre-production,” Tarantino said. “There was nothing to figure out ’cause I already kind of knew, more or less, how to turn LA into an older time. So, it was too much like the last one.”
As for what the future holds, Tarantino shared that his upcoming projects include an untitled play and “The Adventures of Cliff Booth,” a sequel to “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” written and co-produced by Tarantino, directed by David Fincher, and starring Pitt as the title character.
“I won’t be on the set every day and everything, but I’ll be around if they need me to do something,” said Tarantino, adding with a laugh: “It’s a little more like I’ve given David a gigantic novel written in screenplay form, and it’s his job.”
Contributing: Brendan Morrow, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Quentin Tarantino explains why he cancelled ‘The Movie Critic’
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