Quentin Tarantino names “the most torturous thing” about being a director
Throughout his career, Quentin Tarantino has proven himself to be many things. For starters, he has shown that he possesses all the knowledge required to earn the title of cinephile, having expressed his admiration for the history of the cinematic medium and many of his favourite movies.
Then, there’s Tarantino the writer. Time and time again, the director has doused his movies in such detail that he has almost become akin to a novelist. In addition, Tarantino has provided a number of stories for other directors, mostly notably his early efforts for Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and Tony Scott’s True Romance.
However, if there is one profession that we know and love Tarantino for, then it’s through his work as a movie director. After all, Tarantino’s catalogue is comprised of many works that he’s had (mostly) total control over, leading to some of the greatest movies in the history of modern cinema.
A truly masterful director, Tarantino handles his movies with supreme care. Early efforts like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, along with acclaimed projects such as Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, have cemented his status as one of American cinema’s ultimate heroes.
It might seem like Tarantino has breezed through his career with ease, but the truth is that he has worked mightily hard to earn his now-cemented position in the culture eye. In fact, Tarantino once told Roger Ebert of one of the most difficult things about being a movie director, giving clues as to his process of creativity.
Tarantino told Ebert that when he sets out making a film, he can “hear the laughter” that he expects an audience to deliver upon their watching the final product. However, at least in Tarantino’s early movies, there had been a focus on their violent content, leaving him to wonder, “What about the comedy?”
According to the director, there is an “obviously comic spirit” that runs through his 1994 movie Pulp Fiction, “even with all the weird things that are happening”. But by focusing solely on the violence of the film, which there is admittedly a lot of, Tarantino feels that the audience misses its overall comic intentions.
“To me, the most torturous thing in the world, and this counts for Dogs just as much as Pulp, is to watch it with an audience who doesn’t know they’re supposed to laugh,” the director had noted. “Because that’s a death.” In writing and directing a movie, Tarantino knows that there will be points at which he expects an audience to laugh but finds it difficult when its violence overshadows the comedy.
He added, “I’m hearing the laughs in my mind, and there’s this dead silence of crickets sounding in the audience, you know?” Indeed, as Tarantino notes, there have often been elements of comedy in many of his movies, but perhaps they are missed, particularly during his most intense efforts like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs.
However, later in his career, say in Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the comic elements shine through much clearer and undoubtedly make an audience laugh. So perhaps those films serve as proof that Tarantino wanted to prevent being tortured by the crickets and made his later works undeniably funny and unavoidably laughable.
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