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The director Quentin Tarantino called the best filmmaker of “my generation”

Thu 8 June 2023 17:30, UK

Since making his directorial debut with Reservoir Dogs in 1992, master auteur Quentin Tarantino has shaped an illustrious, unparalleled career. Renowned for his distinctive scriptwriting style and consummate directional command, Tarantino has consistently delivered captivating stories through a familiar lens.

To date, his filmography of nine movies follows a unique trajectory, characterised by a blend of dark comedy, exaggerated violence, and a revolving ensemble of top-flight actors who help bring his scripts to life. From revenge tales set in the 1800s to satirical explorations of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Tarantino’s films offer a distinctive and compelling cinematic experience.

While Tarantino’s filmmaking approach is undeniably original, he acknowledges the influences of revered directors who came before him. Born in 1963, Tarantino had the privilege of growing up during the early rise of legendary filmmakers such as Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg. These cinematic luminaries played a significant role in shaping Tarantino’s artistic sensibilities, and he proudly stands on their shoulders as he continues to make his mark in the industry.

Sadly, Tarantino still plans on collapsing his director’s chair after his forthcoming tenth film, The Movie Critic. During a 2022 interview with CNN, Tarantino revealed why he intends to stop at the ten-movie mark. “Well, I’ve been doing it for a long time,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for 30 years, and it’s, it’s time to wrap up the show”.

The director added: “Like I said, I’m an entertainer. I want to leave you wanting more, you know, and not just work, and I don’t want to work to diminishing returns. I don’t want to be… one, I don’t want to become this old man who’s out of touch when already I’m feeling a bit like an old man out of touch when it comes to the current movies that are out right now. And that’s what happens.”

It also transpires that being both a writer and a director is a rather mentally and physically taxing process. In an interview recently shared by Outstanding Screenplays, Tarantino likened the blank-page writing and directing process to conquering Mt. Everest.

“One of the most talented filmmakers of my generation is David Fincher,” he asserted. “But he’s not in the same category as me because I’m a writer-director, and that makes it different. That makes it a different thing.”

“One of the things that I’ve been focussed on is there’s a lot of writer-directors that come out, and they write and direct one movie, a second movie, a third movie. And there’s a real voice there; there’s a real voice. But, you know what? It’s hard work to go to that blank piece of paper and start from square one. Start from scratch every single solitary time,” Tarantino continued.

“You are at the bottom of Mt. Everest every single solitary time, and everything you’ve done before not only does not help you, it could even like hang over your head, and that is a tough row to hoe, and you make less movies that way. And it’s a lot easier to go and look at the scripts that are out here and available, and you can maybe work with the writer, do a little rewrite or do that kind of thing, and you get more movies made.”

“But, you know, cut to six years down the line, and where’s that voice? It’s gone away,” he concluded.

Recognising his distinctive and evidently popular voice, Tarantino plans on wrapping his run as a director and writer up at the ten-movie mark. This, however, infers that he might embark on further collaborative or directional roles in his later years, proudly admiring his ten-movie oeuvre as a vital epoch in cinema history that ended with its dignity intact.

Sadly, the same can’t be said of other classic contributions to cinema that have been butchered with endless sequels, prequels and remakes.