The one movie Quentin Tarantino wishes he’d directed: “That would have been my Capra”
If Quentin Tarantino wanted to direct a movie that was either written by someone else or set in an established world that he hadn’t created, then he would have done it by now.
The way modern Hollywood’s career path tends to work for the industry’s biggest filmmakers is that they start off on something smaller that wins acclaim and gets their name out there before the studios quickly swoop in to hand them the reins of a big-budget blockbuster or a crowd-pleasing genre film.
Christopher Nolan went from Insomnia to Batman Begins, James Cameron went from The Terminator to Aliens, Jon Favreau went from Zathura to Iron Man, and on it goes. Tarantino has had plenty of those opportunities, and things would have turned out very differently had he shown any interest in the likes of Speed, Men in Black, or a Westworld remake, all of which he turned down.
The two-time Academy Award winner has a specific way of operating, and it’s served him very well. He writes his own scripts, creates his own universes, handpicks his actors, and enjoys a level of creative freedom that few other auteurs possess. One director he’ll never be mentioned in the same breath as is Frank Capra, even if he would have liked the opportunity.
With six Oscars to his name and a laundry list of ‘Golden Age’ classics under his belt, Capra’s name became an adjective used to describe sentimental, optimistic, and hopeful stories defined by determined characters creating a positive influence on those around them. With his penchant for profanity, violence, and subversion, it’s an understatement to say those qualities don’t apply to Tarantino.
However, a 1992 dramedy that starred Dustin Hoffman, Geena Davis, and Andy Garcia that finds a lifelong petty criminal becoming an unsung hero when he saves several passengers from a plane crash and then disappears without a trace was something Tarantino would have loved to direct had he been approached instead of Stephen Frears.
“If I’d been offered Hero, I would have done Hero,” he told The New York Times. “That would have been my Capra movie. It would have been smaller. I would have cast [John] Travolta. The screenwriter, David Peoples, wrote a great script. Stephen Frears, the director, took Hero as a job; I can tell. The movie is hitting its head on the ceiling of its talent, where the script wants to go to the moon.”
Beyond his snide accusation that Frears only helmed the movie for the money, it’s odd to imagine Tarantino daydreaming about directing a whimsical modern fable. Hero doesn’t sound like it would be up his street, and the filmmaker responsible for Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood wishing he’d gotten the chance to make a Capraesque detour is comfortably one of the most fascinating ‘what if’ scenarios of his career.
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