The Jean-Luc Godard movie Quentin Tarantino lied about starring in: “Nobody would ever see the film”
As a lifelong cinephile, it stands to reason that Quentin Tarantino would go out of his way to befriend the filmmakers he grew up idolising. Instead, his relationship with Jean-Luc Godard only became more fractured over time.
When somebody spends their youth idolising a certain auteur and devouring as many of their films as possible, and becomes so inspired that they even name their production company after one of them, it would make sense for Tarantino to go full fanboy once he and Godard were both established as must-see filmmakers at the same time.
And yet, they ended up turning on each other. Tarantino called Godard a revolutionary who pushed the medium of cinema forward and was the industry’s equivalent of Bob Dylan, only for the ‘French New Wave’ pioneer to say “his work is null” and off-handedly dismiss the tribute paid by A Band Apart by saying, “He chose the title of one of my worst films to name his production company. That doesn’t surprise me at all.”
Understandably, Tarantino’s opinion of Godard diminished as their feud continued to simmer, suggesting that as he broadened his knowledge and appreciation of the art form, he “grew out” of thinking he was hot shit. Still, it can’t have been the best feeling for the Reservoir Dogs creator to finally become part of the same conversation as one of his heroes, only to take a verbal kicking.
Before his feature-length debut, though, Tarantino’s fandom remained in full swing. He initially wanted to be an actor, but virtually every single cameo he’s made in his own movies indicates that he’d never make it as a thespian. Despite that, playing an Elvis Presley impersonator in The Golden Girls wasn’t exactly going to have casting agents kicking down his door to offer plum parts.
Tarantino decided the best approach was to lie through his teeth to combat the dearth of credits in his on-camera filmography. Godard’s 1987 adaptation of William Shakespeare’s King Lear featured several recognisable names and faces, including Burgess Meredith, Molly Ringwald, Julie Delpy, and Woody Allen.
Even though Tarantino absolutely wasn’t part of the sprawling ensemble, he decided to tell people that he was anyway, listing Godard’s King Lear as one of his previous acting roles when he was trying to get his name out there. It remained part of his mythology even when Reservoir Dogs was released, and he had no choice but to come clean when asked about it.
“It’s a lie,” he confessed when it was noted that the Shakespearean drama was in his publicity bio before his debut movie’s release. “I put it on my résumé as an actor, and said I was in that, because nobody would ever see the film.”
He had a point, with Godard’s Lear barely crossing $60,000 at the box office in the United States. This was back before the internet, too, so it’s not like people were queuing up to call him out for lying, either.
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