“No, no, I can’t”: the one thing Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino refuse to do during shooting
It would be foolish for any director to start work on their latest feature brimming with confidence that they’ve just called ‘action’ on a soon-to-be classic. Then again, Quentin Tarantino has always been resolutely assured in his own abilities as a filmmaker, so maybe he’s one of the exceptions to the rule.
On the other hand, it doesn’t matter how much any given auteur believes in the material they’re working with; an audience of one isn’t going to be the barometer of how the finished film is received. Tarantino is one of the most self-confident – some might even say arrogant – talents in cinema, but he does share a notably self-conscious superstition with Martin Scorsese.
As one of the greatest directors in history who’s still going strong and turning out great work into his 80s, nobody would begrudge Scorsese if he were to operate under the impression that his latest film will be the latest in a long line of masterpieces. He might well believe it, but one thing he’ll never do is watch somebody else’s masterpiece because all it’ll do is fill him with existential dread.
Tarantino is famed for his own knowledge of the medium that borders on the encyclopaedic, but don’t expect him to spend his downtime between shooting days revisiting the finest motion pictures to come out of Hollywood, either. He and Scorsese will definitely watch movies when they’re making one of their own, but they both draw the line at a certain level of quality.
“It’s funny, the first time I met Scorsese, we talked about this,” Tarantino explained to Empire. “I was in Vegas when he was doing Casino, and I got invited to the set on a Thursday. They mentioned at the production office that they were having an Anthony Mann double-feature on 16mm that Saturday. And I go to Scorsese, ‘Oh wow, you going?’ ‘No, no, I can’t.’ ‘Why not?’ He said, ‘I can’t watch anything that good.'”
According to Tarantino, Scorsese “can watch Antonio Margheriti all day” when he’s in the midst of production, but he “can’t watch an Anthony Mann movie.” The legend would gladly sit down and dive into one of Margheriti’s many genre films, which ranged from sci-fi and Giallo to spaghetti westerns and action-packed thrillers, but he could never bring himself to watch the best work of a director he admired so much.
“And that’s where I’ve kind of found myself too,” Tarantino admitted of the unlikely superstition that watching a great movie when trying to make one could have a detrimental effect. Instead, he prefers to focus on “stuff that I didn’t have to pay much attention to but still enjoyed” that exists as entertaining escapism but still lingers at least “one step back” from unqualified greatness.
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.