Luc Besson claims Quentin Tarantino “copied” his idea
When a career lasts a lifetime, it’s not uncommon for the artist to burn out or endure several dry patches. Over the past three decades, Quentin Tarantino has considered this factor, leading to his decision to call it quits after ten movies. However, in a recent development, Luc Besson, the French filmmaker behind Léon: The Professional, claims to have given the American auteur the idea.
Tarantino’s upcoming movie, The Movie Critic, will be one of his most personal and realistic creations and, seemingly, his swan song. For many years, he has maintained that his tenth movie would be his last. During an interview with CNN in 2022, he revealed why. “Well, I’ve been doing it for a long time,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for 30 years, and it’s time to wrap up the show.”
Continuing, the Reservoir Dogs filmmaker discussed the importance of leaving the table in the green dignity intact. “I’m an entertainer,” he asserted. “I want to leave you wanting more, you know, and not just work, and I don’t want to work to diminishing returns.”
Tarantino is 61 years old, which is an average age for retirement in many workforces, but one must remember that Francis Ford Coppola will release Megalopolis at 85 this year, and Ridley Scott has just released Napoleon as an 86-year-old.
Tarantino is convinced that, at his age, his best work is behind him, and it’s time for a new generation to shine. “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,” he said. “And that’s what happens.”
Speaking in a recent episode of the The Discourse Podcast, Besson claimed that the ten-movie rule was his idea. Despite plans to follow a similar rule, the French director released DogMan, his 21st movie, in 2023. “What’s funny is that I said that to Tarantino a long time ago…So, he copied me,” Besson said. “I was honest when I said that. I said that after like six or seven movies.”
The rule was less strict in Besson’s case, a tentative principle to influence his focus. “It was a way for me to concentrate and say, ‘If I have only ten bullets, I have to be careful with the last three.’”
The rule forced him to be more selective when it came to the point where he had cash-out deals invading the picture left, right and centre. “There was lots of sirens coming to me saying, ‘Here’s the script,’ and the projects that they proposed to me were not bad, but it was sequels — it was the Hollywood machine,” Besson explained. “And they propose with a lot of money.”
“I need to find a way to resist the sirens of these mermaids,” he added. “The way I found to do that was to say, ‘I’m going to do ten, so if I have two more films, I can’t do that. I have to do something more like the one I want.’”
Although the 65-year-old admits that retirement could be on the cards in the next few years, he is currently working on Dracula: A Love Tale, a project starring longtime Tarantino collaborator Christoph Waltz and Caleb Landry Jones.
Listen to his appearance on The Discourse podcast below.
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