Quentin Tarantino explains why he doesn’t like original scores: “It’s too much power”
Bursting on the scene in 1992 with his debut feature, Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino instantly made waves in the industry, establishing himself with a distinctive style that has gone on to define his subsequent movies. Using witty dialogue, often loaded with expletives, stylised violence and a finely crafted soundtrack, the director carved himself out as an auteur filmmaker.
From Pulp Fiction to Kill Bill, Django Unchained and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, Tarantino’s oeuvre has spanned various genres, including westerns, martial arts and crime. Tarantino often pays homage to his favourite movies, whether that be through the use of certain actors, dialogue choices or music.
For Tarantino, music is vital to bringing his movies to life, even helping to popularise certain songs after using them in his films. For example, after Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’ was used in Kill Bill, the singer credited Tarantino for giving her a “new start”.
She told Uncut: “It caused a resurgence for me”. Elsewhere, many people can’t hear Dick Dale’s ‘Miserlou’ without thinking of the beginning of Tarantino’s classic 1994 movie Pulp Fiction.
Tarantino typically uses older pieces of popular music in his work, yet when it comes to instrumental scores, he is particularly fond of Ennio Morricone. The composer soundtracked many classic westerns and horrors during the ‘60s, such as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, of which Tarantino is a huge fan. However, Tarantino typically used pre-existing pieces of Morricone’s work until 2015’s The Hateful Eight, for which he allowed the iconic composer to create original pieces.
The fact that Tarantino was on board with Morricone to create original compositions for his films came as a surprise to many fans of the director, who have adamantly spoken out against original scores in the past. Tarantino told The Wrap in 2015, “I didn’t know if it was going to work out, but I felt I owed it to myself, and I owed it to [Morricone] to investigate it.” As a result, the composer bagged his first Academy Award for The Hateful Eight, winning ‘Best Film Score’.
However, Tarantino once discussed his uncertainty towards using original scores in his movies, believing that they give “too much power” to someone who isn’t him. “I’ve always just used existing tracks. And the basic reason is… that’s just too much power to give someone who’s not me over my movie. I just assume that I’m not gonna like it,” he explained.
Tarantino discussed the importance of already having pre-existing music for the editing process. “I need to edit to my music anyway to make it work so it has that thing about it,” he said. “We edit to the beat, we’re shooting to the beat, I need to know what that music is. But I need to choose it.”
He also explained that he doesn’t want to wait until the end of production to hear someone’s original score, which he will feel forced to “accept”, despite likely thinking “that it sucks” because “it didn’t come from me.”
He concluded: “Basically, anything in my movies that I didn’t choose myself is unsatisfactory by its nature. I have to choose it.”
Listen to Tarantino discuss his use of pre-existing music below.
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