The Movie Critic (Tarantino)

[WorldForgot]

Quentin Tarantino's Final Film Is Coming as Filmmaker Readies 'The Movie Critic' (Exclusive)

Quentin Tarantino is back for the last time.

The filmmaker behind some of the most indelible movies of the last three decades, Pulp Fiction and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood among them, is putting together what sources say is being billed as his final movie.

The Movie Critic is the name of the script that Tarantino wrote and is prepping to direct this fall, according to sources.

Logline details are being kept in a suitcase but sources describe the story as being set in late 1970s Los Angeles with a female lead at its center.

Pauline Kael revisionist flick?


edit: welp

[Find Your Magali]

Jennifer Jason Leigh would be a really cool pick for Kael, if that's the case.

[RudyBlatnoyd]

It ends with Kael convincing Spielberg to leave the prestige fare alone, so he winds up making Jaws V instead of Schindler's List.

[WorldForgot]

Think, Pauline Kael'z QT amalgamation enacts praxis.

Think, a tarantino character that drives filmmakers to madness thru critique stress
Think, a tarantino character that can twist the fabric of words and txt

[wilberfan]

Tarantino Hints That 'The Movie Critic' is Based on William Margold and "Won't Be A Revenge Story"

The Quentin Tarantino "Cinema Speculation" book tour continues on in Europe. Next stop: Barcelona, Spain.

What we do know so far about his next film, "The Movie Critic," is that it will be shot this fall, the story is set in Los Angeles circa 1977, and the lead protagonist is male.

Tarantino gave us some brand new clues in Barcelona last night, insinuating that this isn't going to be a revenge story like all of the films he's made the last 20 years.

"There is a lot of speculation about who it is based on. And yes, he is a real critic, but he is not known [...] it will also not be what you might call a "revenge story".

Let's give you a brief history about why I believe this next film is about William Margold.

Tarantino's writings under the pseudonym of Jim Sheldon on the New Beverly website have gone totally under the radar. This made-up character is said to be a critic for the Hollywood Press (a cheap 70's porno magazine that featured mainstream movie criticism).

Tarantino has, more or less, admitted that Sheldon is based on William Margold — who he brings up in his book "Cinema Speculation" during the chapter on Paul Schrader's "Hardcore".

In the final years of his life, Margold had his own blog where he mentioned how Tarantino was an avid fan of his film criticsm. Margold claimed that Tarantino was obsessed with Hollywood Press and LA Xpress for 30 years, but he himself has admitted to hating Tarantino's movies.

Along with being a film critic, Margold was also the former director of the Free Speech Coalition and a co-founder of X-Rated Critics Organization and Fans of X-Rated Entertainment. He was a self-proclaimed "porn historian."

Remember this post. I am almost certain that this next Tarantino film, supposedly his final one, is going to be based on Margold.

[WorldForgot]

That is fucking fantastic. I know there's fan theories that QT and PTA riff off each other with successive installments (Once Upon -> LP for ex). If we continue that thread we'd note Sam Harpoon and Jim Sheldon's blogosphere web presence relation.

[HACKANUT]

That is fucking fantastic. I know there's fan theories that QT and PTA riff off each other with successive installments (Once Upon -> LP for ex). If we continue that thread we'd note Sam Harpoon and Jim Sheldon's blogosphere web presence relation.

Really nice pull dude! Here's hoping we get some Sam Harpoon tweets about Sheldon in the future

[wilberfan]

https://deadline.com/2023/05/quentin-tarantino-new-movie-cannes-breaking-baz-rolling-thunder-1235379542/

Quentin Tarantino On The Porno Critic Who Inspired His Next Film

EXCLUSIVE: Quentin Tarantino, sitting in the shade on the Carlton Hotel terrace, revealed to this column that his new film will indeed be about a movie critic from the 1970s but he stressed that it won't be about the New Yorker's Pauline Kael. Instead, it will be based on a man who wrote for a porno magazine.

Tarantino was speaking to this columnist ahead of announcing a special screening in Directors' Fortnight this afternoon of John Flynn's 1977 movie Rolling Thunder starring William Devane. Today's event is billed as as a 'Rendezvous-vous with Quentin Tarantino'.

The filmmaker dedicates an entire chapter to Flynn's revenge thriller in his book Cinema Speculation.

As it happens, his new film The Movie Critic, which goes into "pre-pre production" next month, is also set in the same year that Rolling Thunder was released.

The Movie Critic takes place in California in 1977 "and is based on a guy who really lived, but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag."

One of Tarantino's jobs when he was a teen was loading  porn magazines into a vending machine and emptying quarters out of the cash dispenser. "All the other stuff was too skanky to read but then there was this porno rag that had a really interesting movie page."

The filmmaker did not want to reveal the name of the magazine but for The Movie Critic it'll be called The Popstar Pages.

I ask if the critic in question was "known". Tarantino throws his head back: "Well, he was known if you read the Popstar Pages!!"

He explained: "He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic. I think he was a very good critic. He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle [Robert DeNiro's character in Taxi Driver] might be if he were a film critic."

Sipping his juice, he added, "Think about Travis's diary entries.

"But the porno rag critic was very, very funny. He was very rude, you know. He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his shit was really funny. He was as rude as hell."

Tarantino did research into the reviewer's life. "He wrote like he was 55 but he was only in his early to mid-30s. He died in his late thirties. It wasn't clear for a while but now I've done some more research and I think it was it was complications due to alcoholism."

[I think this rules out Bill Margold as the main inspiration for the critic--Margold lived into his mid-70s. --wilberfan ]

No one has been cast. He acknowledged that there aren't any actors in his repertory company in that age range. Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, he conceded, are too old for the part.

"I haven't decided yet but it's going to be somebody in the 35 year-old ball park. It'll definitely be a new leading man for me."

I pushed him on who it could be but he refused to tell. "I do have an idea of somebody I can imagine doing it really well," but he's unsure whether to give it to that person.

After Cannes he'll return to his wife and two children in Tel Aviv. Then later next month, he'll relocate to Los Angeles for "pre-pre production and then I want to start seeing who else is out there."

I ask if he can't find his leading man in the United States, would he look elsewhere like the UK?

"No," he said empathetically. "The truth of the matter is, yes, obviously, a Brit could pull it off, but I don't want to cast a Brit.

"Obviously, nothing against the Brits, but we're living in a really weird time now. I think when people look back on this era of cinema and it's just all these British actors pretending to be Americans and all these Australian actors pretending to be Americans, it's like phantoms. Nobody is acting in their own voice."

Questioned as to why this has come about, he said: "We just happen to be in an era of really, really good British actors who for the most part can pull it off."

Sure, but what does that say about the American screen actor? "I would say that for the most part the Americans gave up their own ground. I think it's just a case that a bunch of Brits became more famous than the others. The Americans ceded their own ground. When I look at 70's cinema I want to see Robert De Niro, I want to see Al Pacino, I want to see Stacy Keach, you know, I want to see people like that reflecting the culture back to me."

He added: "There are just a lot of good British actors and they're pretty good at it."

I argue that Barbara Broccoli would never consider casting a non British actor to play James Bond.

Tarantino hit back, "But then she considered James Brolin at one point when they cast Roger Moore. There was a consideration for James Brolin."

He sat back then clarified, "By the way, I'm not being xenophobic. The Brits would have a hell of a lot more problems if a bunch of American actors came over there with their Dick Van Dyke [Mary Poppins] accents playing famous Brits. They don't want to see that shit."

Back to Rolling Thunder which has William Devane returning to his Texas home after eight years in a Viet Cong prison camp. "I've always been a champion of this movie," says the filmmaker.

"We'll be screening a 35 mm print of Rolling Thunder. And so the idea being that I'm responsible for bringing Rolling Thunder to Cannes is a very, very cool thing.

"I saw it the weekend it came out with a double feature of Enter the Dragon; I saw it with my mum and her second husband."

Tarantino was 14 or 15 at the time. "I thought: wow, this is like the best combination of character study and action film I've ever seen."

Back then, he noted "movies left theaters and that was it. But it left and all of a sudden it would be playing the bottom half of a double feature with something else and then it would show up again in Long Beach and I'd take the bus and go and see it. I'd see it again and again and then I'd start having little theories about it, and then I'd start having theories about what the William Devane character was going through, the war and things he felt about it, and how the country was falling apart when he came home.

"It was just the first time that I started looking at something other than just the narrative on screen. I started building around the narrative, the movie before the movie starts, what happens before it's over .Then I started going to see the director's other movies."

He reckons he's seen it "a bunch of times, probably 15 times over the years."

Tarantino first came to Cannes over three decades ago. Reservoir Dogs played at Sundance in 1992. And it had a special screening at that year's Cannes Film Festival. "It played at the Palais, it was like official selection outside of competition."

"They invented something for our screening that they'd never done before, they put an orange sticker in the ticket that said:T his movie may be too violent for you to watch. And they'd never done that before and they ended up putting the same sticker on Pulp Fiction when it played here in 1994," he laughed.

"And then at some point with Lars von Trier they stopped putting the sticker on."

He "absolutely" knew what Cannes was when he was growing up, he says as he orders an Americana and an orange juice.

"I totally knew what Cannes was. I'd heard about it forever," and he'd seen Michael Ritchie's 1979 movie An Almost Perfect Affair starring Keith Carradine and Monica Vitti," and that whole movie takes place at the Cannes Film Festival and I'd always heard about the Palme d'Or and I'd heard about the Directors' Fortnight and it was literally a dream to come out here."

PART II

https://deadline.com/2023/05/quentin-tarantino-retirement-james-bond-tv-cannes-1235379761/

Quentin Tarantino Says Won't Fully Retire, Talks TV & James Bond Flirtation

EXCLUSIVE: Back in 2009, Quentin Tarantino began dropping hints that he'd be outta the movie-making business by the time he reached 60.

He turned his self-appointed retirement age on March 27. Today, during a conversation on the Carlton Hotel terrace, he reiterated the retirement mantra stating that The Movie Critic will be his "last thing."

I sit up straight, look him in the eye and say this: "I don't think anyone in their right mind believed that Quentin Tarantino is going to retire from making motion pictures at the age of 60.

"I don't f*cking believe it. Forgive my language."

He smiles: "That's OK."

I continue: "Forgive me, the Nigerian side of me does not believe it, OK? The English side of me might believe it. I don't know if the Nigerian side of me believes it for one minute."

Looking askance at my forthrightness, Tarantino laughs: "Well said."

RELATED: Quentin Tarantino Says "Marvel-ization of Hollywood" Made Movie Stars Obsolete: "Captain America Is The Star," Not Chris Evans

And it's your last film?

"Yes. Motion picture, yes," he says.

There's wriggle room here.

"No, I could do a TV show. I didn't say I'm going to go into the night darkly, all right? I could do a TV show. I could do a short film. I could do a play. All kinds of things I could do, but I'll probably just be more of a writer."

OK, OK. So you're not giving up the gig?

"Well, I am ending the filmography."

After I pushed for more, he says: "It's just time. It's just time to go out. I like the idea of going out on top. I like the idea of giving it my all for 30 years and then saying, 'OK, that's enough.' And I don't like working to diminishing returns. And I mean, now is a good time because I mean, what even is a motion picture anyway anymore? Is it just something that they show on Apple? That would be diminishing returns."

From the get-go, he has insisted that movies are for cinematic release.

"Well, I've always thought that. And they eventually get to television. I saw a lot of them that way. I'm probably going to be doing the movie with Sony because they're the last game in town that is just absolutely, utterly, committed to the theatrical experience. It's not about feeding their streaming network. They are committed to theatrical experience. They judge success by asses on seats. And they judge success by the movies entering the zeitgeist, not just making a big expensive movie and then putting it on your streaming platform. No one even knows it's there."

Tarantino continues: "I mean, and I'm not picking on anybody, but apparently for Netflix, Ryan Reynolds has made $50 million on this movie and $50 million on that movie and $50 million on the next movie for them. I don't know what any of those movies are. I've never seen them. Have you?"

I nod my head in the affirmative because I don't want him to lose his thought on this.

"I haven't ever talked to Ryan Reynolds' agent, but his agent is like, 'Well, it cost $50 million.' Well, good for him that he's making so much money. But those movies don't exist in the zeitgeist. It's almost like they don't even exist."

Has the streaming business damaged cinema irrefutably?

"Well, I don't think I'm that negative about it. I think it had been going that way and the pandemic hurried everything along," he says.

But if you're retiring from the motion picture business, as you insist you are, won't you be feeding that beast anyway?

"Exactly," he says. "But I've got no ax to grind against television, per se, all right? I've got no axe to grind against television, but everyone watches all these shows, and they're all just soap operas. It can be very entertaining while you're watching it, but at the end of the day, it's all a soap opera. You learn about a bunch of characters, kind of know all their backstories, and then you watch them fight or hook up or this or that and the other. And it's just a soap opera.

"It's very engaging while you're watching it. But when it's over with, three weeks after I watch the last episode, I usually don't have the same feelings that I have after I watch a good movie."

He adds: "Yet, when I'm watching it, it's compelling."

Back in the day, there was a heck of a lot of talk about Tarantino getting into the 007 game and making a James Bond movie.

I probably wrote some of those stories, but it was a long time ago.

I ask Tarantino if he ever sat down with Barbara Broccoli. 

"No, we never actually had a sit-down. What happened was I tried to do something, and it didn't work out. All right?"

He told me that there was a long period of time where Eon didn't own the rights to Casino Royale.

"Because Howard Hawks' partner, Harry Saltzman, owned it," Tarantino says. "That was why that was not one of the ones that they could do when Sean Connery was doing them. And that's why they did that ridiculous Casino Royale movie in 1967 with Woody Allen, Peter Sellers and David Niven and everything.

"And at one point, Howard Hawks was going to direct it with Cary Grant playing James Bond. That would've been a thing. But that didn't happen."

Tarantino says that when was working with Miramax, "We reached out to the Ian Fleming people, and they had suggested that they still own the rights to Casino Royale. And that's what I wanted to do after Pulp Fiction was do my version of Casino Royale, and it would've taken place in the '60s and wasn't about a series of Bond movies. We would have cast an actor and be one and done. So I thought we could do this.

"But then it turned out that the Broccolis three years earlier figured out somebody was going to try to do what I did. And so what they did is they just made a blanket deal with the Fleming estate and said that: 'We have the movie rights to everything he's ever written. We're going to just give you a bunch of money. This is for every single thing he's ever written. If anybody wants to make a movie out of it, they got to come to us.'"

He waves his arms for emphasis: "Like every short story, every travel book. If I want to make a movie of Thrilling Cities, I need to go to the Broccolis.

"That's for everything he wrote. To stop somebody from being a wise guy and trying to do what I did."

Did he ever seek a meeting with Broccoli at Eon?

"No, but I had people who knew them and everything. I was always told very flattering versions of like, '"'Look, we love Quentin, but we make a certain kind of movies, and unless we f*ck it up, we make a billion dollars every time we make that type of movie, OK? We don't want him to do it. Doesn't matter that it will still do good. It could f*ck up our billion-dollar thing."

With Daniel Craig gone, what's his sense of the Bond franchise?

"What are they going to do?" I ask. "I mean, what's your sense of Bond now? Because they had a good run, didn't they?"

Rubbing his hands, he goes into full Bond mode: "I mean, they always start from scratch when it comes to somebody new, because that's saying somebody couldn't have been going through the stuff that happened in Thunderball, all right? I'll tell you, I actually have a thought process about this. What I think they should do, and I've been thinking they should do this for a long time, is so many of the books have these really classic names and really classic adventures. And for the most part, a lot of them, they never did the book. They never did the stories.

"They took the plot line and maybe the Bond girl or maybe the villain and then just went their own way. Tom Mankiewicz just goes his own way. He did the writing for a lot of them. I think they should not remake the movies but actually just do the books, but do them the way they were written. And those would all be brand new."

I note that the Fleming novels are full-on tough.

"They're very, very tough," he agrees. "No, no, there's definitely a Mickey Spillane aspect of Bond, all right, in those first five or six books."

Would he ever consider pushing back retirement to make one?

"No, because The Movie Critic is my last motion picture, OK?!"

OK, both sides of my personality believe you.

But, wow, wouldn't that have been something to watch on a giant cinema screen: The new James Bond directed by Quentin Tarantino.

[Heisenberg]

Apparently QT had offered the lead role to Paul Walter Hauser before the strike. I am 100% ok with this. Hopefully the film is able to shoot sometime in 2024.

[Scrooby]

"Quentin Tarantino Scraps The Movie Critic as His Final Film "

https://variety.com/

[wilberfan]

How Quentin Tarantino's 'The Movie Critic' Fell Apart

[Reel]

They neglected the most interesting nugget about it though- that he was going to remake the ending of Rolling Thunder being completely loyal to the script