The one director who “astounded” Michael Fassbender
Despite removing himself from acting for a few years to try his hand at motor racing, Michael Fassbender has still managed to amass one of the most impressive Hollywood CVs of the 2000s. He has worked with a cavalcade of the industry’s finest directors over the past couple of decades and will likely continue to do just that – between races, of course. Only one director “astounded” him with his encyclopaedic knowledge of film, though, and that passion most definitely rubbed off on the German-Irish star.
Fassbender’s directorial collaborators are a who’s who of true masters of the form. In the early part of his career, he formed a fruitful partnership with Steve McQueen, starring in Hunger, Shame, and 12 Years a Slave. He played villainous android David in two Alien prequels for Ridley Scott, teamed with Steven Soderbergh for Haywire, practised A Dangerous Method for David Cronenberg, and took the title role in David Fincher’s The Killer. It was in 2009, though, that Fassbender bore witness to a love of film, in all its forms, quite unlike anything he’d come across before.
On the set of Inglourious Basterds, Fassbender found out firsthand how much Quentin Tarantino lives for movies. In 2008, he told The Guardian, “You could mention the most obscure Egyptian film from like 19-fucking-33, and he’ll have seen it, and he’ll tell you scenes of the film that he liked or didn’t like. It’s just astounding.”
There isn’t a lot about Tarantino’s fast-talking, uber-confident, uber-nerd persona that would qualify as “heartwarming”, but his ability to foster a comparable level of devotion to cinema from his collaborators would certainly qualify. In fact, his passion for the most obscure films wound up galvanising Fassbender, who found himself poring over Georg Wilhelm Pabst’s pictures from the 1930s and comparing notes with his director.
This calls to mind a 1994 interview Tarantino gave to the BBC, during the height of Pulp Fiction‘s success. At that time, the film industry was just starting to comprehend this former video store clerk who had suddenly become a celebrated auteur. Meanwhile, Tarantino himself was adjusting to his transition from a fan to a professional filmmaker. During this period, he, along with figures like Kevin Smith and Robert Rodriguez, proudly represented the rise of film geeks, and Tarantino took that status very seriously.
“The thing about film geeks is they have an intense love for film,” explained Tarantino. “An incredible love for film; an incredible passion.” To the Reservoir Dogs visionary, his cinematic education as a child and then a young man watching as many VHS tapes as he could get his hands on was a story of devotion to the medium. He knew he wasn’t the only one, though, as he pointed out how all film geeks “devote a lot of time, they devote a lot of money, and they devote a lot of their life to the following of film.”
Fascinatingly, Tarantino explained that he believes a film geek’s ability to think critically is their most valuable commodity. He admitted that most devotees don’t have much to show for their obsession beyond a poster collection, but “one thing that they do have to definitely show for it is…their opinion.”
Hearing Tarantino explain his lifelong love affair with watching and thinking about cinema is actually quite inspiring because it gives insight into a man who is a fan, a professional, and a critic all rolled into one. It shows that Tarantino thinks criticism is just as important as the films themselves – and that people should stand by their opinions, whatever they happen to be. It’s why he wrote Cinema Speculation, his own personal history of cinema fandom and film criticism.
In ’94, he smiled, “I’m a film geek. My opinion is everything, alright. You can all disagree with me. I don’t care, alright? I know I’m right as far as I’m concerned, and I’ll argue anybody down.”
Never Miss A Take
The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter
All the latest Quentin Tarantino content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.