The career decision Quentin Tarantino called a “horrible mistake”
It’s fair to say that Quentin Tarantino has enjoyed a career success quite unlike most of his contemporary filmmakers. Even as far back as Tarantino’s directorial debut, Reservoir Dogs, it was clear that the Los Angeles native was destined for a life in the limelight, although he certainly had to work his ass off to get where he has.
Pretty much every time Tarantino releases a movie, he’s met with critical admiration – as well as a healthy dose of criticism. From his martial arts homage Kill Bill to his love letter for the western movie of yore in Django Unchained, Tarantino has received accolade after accolade.
However, even despite all the triumphant moments of Tarantino’s career, there are still a few pieces of his professional output that he looks back on with regret. The director’s legacy is more than assured, but when it came to his 2007 double feature Grindhouse, made with fellow filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino made a “horrible mistake”.
Comprised of Rodriguez’s Planet Terror, a horror comedy about a battle against zombie-like creatures, and Tarantino’s action thriller Death Proof, which focuses on a group of young women trying to survive a deranged stuntman who kills his victims with a modified stunt car.
Grindhouse was released as a double feature in Tarantino’s native United States but was on the receiving end of a pretty disastrous box office, bringing in just $25million from a $53-67m budget. In response, the two films were released separately in the international markets rather than as one double feature movie.
Discussing his impression of the separate release abroad, Tarantino once told the BFI, “I don’t mind it being split in Japan, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, any of those other countries. It was a horrible mistake to split it in the UK. It was bad. A bad, bad idea.” The director explained that the decision had been “made out of panic” after the film’s poor domestic performance.
As a result of such a panicked choice, things did not go well for the international release. Tarantino was keen to point out that the United Kingdom has a history and cultural understanding of the double feature, so not marketing Grindhouse in such a way in the modern age was missing a trick. It’s not like we were trying to sell it to a country that didn’t understand that as a tradition,” he said. “England had that.”
Domestically, Tarantino had high hopes for Grindhouse and pointed out the fact that the opening weekend for the film in the United States “was as successful a movie as I’ve ever made.” However, few people went to see the film after the opening weekend, and the box office soon “went right in the toilet after that. “
It was all the “true believers” of Tarantino and Rodriguez, as well as the fans of the exploitation films of the 1970s that turned up on opening day. Discussing the initial reception, the director noted, “The audience was standing up and cheering at the end, so it was effective for what it was.”
However, the international release was something that Tarantino clearly regrets, and success abroad might have meant that the overall box office hit might have been appeased somewhat and the damage lessened. Grindhouse is certainly not Tarantino’s best work, and it, in fact, serves as one of his biggest career regrets.
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