Jamie Foxx on “the best director out there”
Over the course of his illustrious career, Jamie Foxx has collaborated with some of the most important filmmakers in the contemporary landscape. Ranging from Edgar Wright to Michael Mann, Foxx’s acclaimed filmography is stacked with impressive creative partnerships that have made him a global star. However, there’s only one auteur he considers to be superior to the rest because of his directorial abilities and unique artistic vision.
The director in question is none other than Quentin Tarantino, the man who redefined American cinema during the 1990s with works like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown. Tarantino also gave Foxx one of the greatest roles of his career when he cast him in Django Unchained, his 2012 revisionist western which conceptualised the genre in an interesting way. Full of characteristically stylised violence and explosive sociopolitical commentary, the film is undoubtedly among Tarantino’s best.
Foxx delivered the performance of his life as the titular character, a former slave who embarks on a bloody journey to find his wife after partnering up with a German bounty hunter (played by Christoph Waltz). During a 2019 conversation at TIFF with B. Jordan and festival chief Cameron Bailey, Foxx lavished praise upon Tarantino and described him as “incredible and probably the best director out there because of what he does and how he does it.”
Ever since their wonderful collaboration, Foxx has gushed about Tarantino’s talents on multiple occasions. When asked about it in another interview, Foxx started: “Working with Quentin Tarantino is the best… Because he’s like a jazz musician. He just plays. And he has incredible disciplines. He says, I only shoot with one camera. I’m a director, not a video selector — so everything he shoots is one camera, it’s lean.”
Elaborating on Tarantino’s relationship with the medium, Foxx explained that it is his passion for cinema that elevates his art. The actor added: “He loves cinema. He loves everything about it. And if you’re lucky enough to become part of that family, it’s a wonderful time. Because with the way movies are going now, with the reboots and the superheroes and what we do now, it’s rare when you get to work with someone that original.”
Despite the widespread critical acclaim, Django Unchained also received a lot of criticism for its frequent usage of the N-word. Notable figures like Spike Lee claimed that Tarantino’s incorporation of the word in his screenplay was disrespectful to the Black community, but Foxx defended the Pulp Fiction director and insisted that all the film does is try to capture not just the physical violence of the era but also the linguistic racial violence.
Watch the trailer below.
