How the movie Quentin Tarantino called “the best I ever saw” defined his career for the worst
Even the best directors in the business can have the occasional off-day at the office, but one bad movie isn’t enough to impact their legacy. Quentin Tarantino would disagree, though, and he’s potentially landed himself in a bit of a sticky wicket because of it.
Had Martin Scorsese’s offer to direct a hypothetical Flashdance sequel been approved by the studio to secure funding for The Last Temptation of Christ, would he still be a legend? Of course he would, because everyone would remember the litany of classics he directed, and not one dance-happy franchise flick.
Francis Ford Coppola has turned in a few stinkers, but he’ll be canonised in the history books as the mastermind behind the Godfather trilogy, Apocalypse Now, and The Conversation, and not demonised in them as the brains behind Jack, Twixt, or Megalopolis.
David Lynch’s Dune, Steven Spielberg’s Always, the Coen brothers’ remake of The Ladykillers, Spike Lee’s Oldboy, Rob Reiner’s North, and William Friedkin’s Jade are all examples of when high-profile directors shit the bed, but with the continued passage of time, will any of those films take precedence over their multitude of all-timers?
Again, the answer is no, which is why Tarantino has backed himself into a corner. He could write and direct as many pictures as he wanted, but since he’s been saying for so long that he’ll do his tenth feature and ride off into the sunset, each passing year raises the expectations to the point that nothing less than one of the greatest movies ever made will suffice.
He’s become increasingly obsessed with how he’ll be remembered, and trying to ensure that he’s remembered in the way he wants to be has the potential to backfire spectacularly if his swansong is shite. Ironically, he didn’t want to become an “old-man filmmaker,” but since he’s writing a play and has other creative endeavours to take care of first, he’ll be pushing 70, at least, by the time his last film releases.
And to think, there’s one person to blame for that mindset. “Where I’m coming from, it’s all about the filmography,” he once said, in an increasingly ominous prophecy. “I remember how I came across Howard Hawks; I saw His Girl Friday, and I thought that it was the best movie I ever saw.”
“Then I saw To Have and Have Not, and didn’t like it as much, but I could tell it was a Howard Hawks movie,” the two-time Academy Award winner elaborated. “My aim is that some kid in 50 years time has the same experience with me and my films. At the end of a director’s career, you don’t look at just one movie; you look at all of them.”
It’s an admirable sentiment, even if it’s not strictly true, with plenty of examples above to prove it. Tarantino has put a target on his back and a definitive exclamation point on his career before he’s even remotely close to starting production on that mythical tenth movie, and as much as it’s an oversimplification of events, it was Hawks that first planted that idea of legacy in his head.
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