The 1980s movie icon Quentin Tarantino wanted nothing to do with: “It’s a complete lie”
Even before he decided that he’d be calling it a day after ten movies, the last thing Quentin Tarantino wanted to be caught doing was playing with someone else’s toys. To a certain extent, at least.
After all, the writer and director’s bread and butter since Reservoir Dogs has been either imitating, homaging, or blatantly ripping off shot compositions, scenes, songs, and lines of dialogue from other films, making him modern Hollywood’s most famous filmmaking magpie by far.
There’s a difference between a nod and a wink and bowing to the franchise machine, though, and while the two-time Academy Award winner has contemplated everything from Star Trek and The Man from UNCLE to Luke Cage and Casino Royale via Westworld and Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, he’s remained strictly in the realm of the original.
However, in 2005, it was reported that Tarantino would be breaking from tradition and boarding one of the most prolific big-screen sagas of the previous three decades. In a way, it wasn’t the most outlandish thing in the world, because he’s never been shy in admitting that he’s always been a big fan of Friday the 13th.
The Pulp Fiction creator will die on the hill that Jason X is actually a good movie, he posited the bizarre theory that Jason Voorhees is actually Curly of Three Stooges fame, and he has a particular soft spot for Part V: A New Beginning, citing its twist ending and memorable string of kills as his personal highlights.
This was before anybody knew that he’d set his mind on retiring after ten features, so when word began getting around that Tarantino would write and direct a new Friday the 13th film, which had been described as the “ultimate Jason Voorhees movie,” the reaction was more excitement than scepticism.
Unfortunately, when word reached his ears, the truth came out. “What’s happening with Friday the 13th? Nothing at all. It’s a complete lie,” he said a week after the claims were made. “I like Jason and everything, but I’ve no intention of directing a movie. New Line talked to me about it, but it was a complete lie.”
He had no issues enjoying Jason’s hockey mask-wearing and knife-wielding adventures as a viewer, but as an auteur, he wasted little time in calling bullshit. Eventually, Marcus Nispel would helm the first standalone Friday the 13th flick in seven years in 2009, which would turn out to be the last to date.
“I would love to do a horror film,” Tarantino added. “I’m just saying it’s not going to be Friday the 13th.” Unless he surprises everyone and reveals that his long-awaited swansong will be a slasher, which it almost certainly won’t be, then it looks as if he’ll never get the chance to take on a horror of his own.
Never Miss A Take
The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter
All the latest Quentin Tarantino content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.