The Oscar-winning movie that “bugged the shit” out of Quentin Tarantino: “Really, really pissed me off”
Unless he changes his mind and reverses his decision to retire from directing feature films after his next, tenth, and supposedly final effort, Quentin Tarantino only has one chance left to achieve what he called his ultimate goal as a filmmaker.
Ever the shy and retiring type, the auteur has two Academy Award wins to his name for ‘Best Original Screenplay’. Obviously, that’s not enough to satisfy him, and his dream was to take to the podium twice more to become the most decorated Oscar-winning screenwriter in the ceremony’s history.
That’s not going to happen if he’s only got one more left in him, but at the very least, he wants three to tie with Woody Allen for the most ‘Original Screenplay’ wins. Ever the modest sort, Tarantino declared that he wanted “to have more original screenplay Oscars than anybody who’s ever lived,” so that when he retires, “they rename the original screenplay Oscar ‘The Quentin.'”
While there’s a hint of the Pulp Fiction creator planting his tongue in cheek, knowing how obsessed he is with his legacy and how he’ll be remembered by future generations of cinephiles, there’s enough evidence of him tooting his own horn over the years to suggest that he wasn’t entirely joking.
Winning two Oscars would be enough for most people, but not Tarantino. He called himself one of the two best directors in the business, and while plenty of his fans would agree, his return of two Oscars from eight nominations isn’t the best return. Pulp Fiction may have fared much better if it hadn’t gone head-to-head with Forrest Gump in every major category, but there was another winner he called entirely undeserving.
“It bugged the shit out of me that Marc Boal won for ‘Best Screenplay,'” he told Bret Easton Ellis after The Hurt Locker had claimed six Oscars. “It really, really pissed me off.” However, he was at pains to explain that he didn’t have anything against the movie in particular; he just didn’t think the script was Oscar-worthy.
“The Kathryn Bigelow thing? I got it. Look, it was exciting that a woman had made such a good war film, and it was the first movie about the Iraq War that said something,” he continued. “I had been following her for a long time, and I’m not saying she won something because she was a woman; there was this wonderful Obama-like thing with her coming home with the Oscar, and I couldn’t begrudge that. It was a good movie.”
What scripts did Boal defeat to take home the Oscar? Alessandro Camon and Oren Moverman’s The Messenger, Joel and Ethan Coen’s A Serious Man, Bob Peterson, Pete Doctor, and Tom McCarthy’s Up, and… Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. All of a sudden, his indignation makes a lot more sense.
The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds went head-to-head in seven categories, with Bigelow winning six to Tarantino’s zero, after his revisionist World War II adventure also fell short in ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’, ‘Best Sound Editing’, ‘Best Sound Mixing’, and ‘Best Editing’, with Mauro Fiore’s ‘Best Cinematography’ gong for Avatar the only award they were both nominated for that neither won. He can claim it’s not sour grapes, but it sounds an awful lot like it is.
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