The director Quentin Tarantino wrongly said would be the next Stanley Kubrick: “I think so”
Regardless of whether his style of filmmaking works for you, there is no denying that Quentin Tarantino is a cinema aficionado. Get him going on Stanley Kubrick’s masochism in A Clockwork Orange or Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy, and he could talk for hours on end. He might have imposed an arbitrary limit of ten movies for himself as a director, but it’s safe to assume that he’ll be a leading voice in cinematic discourse long after that as-yet-unrealised tenth feature materialises.
One of the refreshing things about Tarantino is that he doesn’t beat around the bush. He tends to make sweeping proclamations about movies, leaving zero doubt as to his true feelings. He’s more than happy to label Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 disaster Showgirls as “fucking great” or say that Robert Altman’s Brewster McCloud is “the cinematic equivalent of a bird shitting on your head.” He even had the nerve to call Alfred Hitchcock’s masterpiece North by Northwest “a very mediocre movie.”
He’s had some fairly unpopular opinions over the years, but he’s also helped transform the reputations of some filmmakers, most notably Brian De Palma. Before Tarantino came along, De Palma was dismissed by many as a pulpy Hitchcock wannabe, but through decades of hard work, Tarantino has convinced the world that the director of Carrie and Phantom of the Paradise is an auteur.
On at least one occasion, however, Tarantino’s proclamations have been dead wrong. Consider, for example, his particularly bold assertion that a relatively unknown director from the ’80s was destined to follow in the footsteps of one of the greatest filmmakers to ever live. “Kevin Reynolds is going to be the Stanley Kubrick of his decade,” Tarantino told Vanity Fair in 1994. “I think so.” At that point, Reynolds had made a grand total of three films, one of which happened to be a particular favourite of the Pulp Fiction director.
“Fandango is one of the best directorial debuts in the history of cinema,” he said. “I saw Fandango five times at the movie theatre, and it only played for a fucking week, all right? Five times I saw it!” Released in 1985, Reynolds’s directorial debut was a road movie featuring five college students (including Kevin Costner is his feature debut) hoping for one last joyride before adulthood sets in. Without stars or a recognised director, it wasn’t a good bet at the box office, so the studio dragged its feet about releasing it and then let it die a swift death.
Lack of exposure did not turn out to be Reynolds’s biggest issue, though. When Costner became a star, he returned to the director again and again, providing him with the budgets and platform he needed to show his potential. It is safe to say that he has not fulfilled Tarantino’s expectations. Cast your mind back to his next film with Costner, 1991’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. It was a box office success, sure, but take a microscope at it and go frame-by-frame, and you won’t find the faintest trace of Kubrick.
Then, there was Waterworld, the most expensive film ever made at the time, which became a symbol of cinematic excess and production catastrophe. It is difficult (very, very difficult) to imagine Kubrick embarking on such a venture.
To be fair to Tarantino, the next Kubrick will, by definition, be completely different. The whole point of an auteur is that they put their singular mark on things. But here, too, it is hard to see a connection with Reynolds. His movies tend to be big-budget action movies that could be made by anyone. He could have swapped bodies with Zack Snyder at some point, and we’d be none the wiser.
If there is one way in which the Fandango director resembles Kubrick, it’s his output. Since his debut in the ’80s, he’s made only 11 features, including The Count of Monte Cristo, Tristan + Isolde, and the “unofficial sequel” to The Passion of the Christ, Risen. This just barely outdoes Kubrick’s 13, though his oeuvre is unlikely to share a similar legacy.
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