Quentin Tarantino names the “worst-mixed reel in the history of Hollywood cinema”
There are few people in the world who love cinema quite as much as Quentin Tarantino, with the obsessive cinephile being more than happy to share his opinions during in-depth interviews and red-carpet events. Often homaging the likes of Takashi Miike, Sergio Leone and Martin Scorsese throughout his filmography, Tarantino has never been scared to doff his cap to the greatness of Hollywood history
Yet, this doesn’t mean that Tarantino will blindly praise everything he lays his eyes on; in fact, the director is more than happy to dish out negativity if the film in question deserves such criticism. This goes for acclaimed directors, too, with Tarantino putting Robert Altman in his place by calling out both 1970s’s Brewster McCloud and 1979’s Quintet, even calling the former: “one of the worst movies to ever carry a studio logo”.
Even his own movies aren’t safe from the cold shoulder, once stating in an interview: “To me, it’s all about my filmography, and I want to go out with a terrific filmography…Death Proof has got to be the worst movie I ever made”.
But, while none of these aforementioned films were very well-received in the first place, Tarantino was also somewhat prickly when it came to one of Altman’s most outstanding critical achievements, 1971’s Oscar-nominee McCabe & Mrs. Miller. Despite being praised as one of the greatest revisionist westerns of its time, the Hateful Eight director simply couldn’t get behind it.
“I have an interesting relationship with this movie,” he told the Pure Cinema Podcast with a rather level head, before adding, “because I think the first reel of the movie is the worst-mixed reel in the history of Hollywood cinema”.
Continuing to blast the film, he explains: “There’s a level of incompetence to the mix that Hollywood never really goes below. Hollywood maybe doesn’t reach its heights every single solitary time, but it doesn’t reach the lows. There is a strong level of mediocrity that it never goes that further down. It’s terrible. [Altman] is a fucking pothead who doesn’t know any fucking better. He thinks it sounds good”.
Earning Julie Christie an Oscar nomination for ‘Best Leading Actress’, Altman’s film tells the story of a gambler and a sex worker who become business partners in an old mining tale in the Wild West of America, only for a corporation to destroy the lives they’d built for themselves. Also featuring Warren Beatty, Shelley Duvall and William Devane, McCabe & Mrs. Miller is regularly discussed among the very best of Altman.
Take a look at the trailer for the classic movie, which Tarantino happens to hate, below.
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