Quentin Tarantino’s complicated feelings on John Wayne
In an alternate timeline in some alternate world, Quentin Tarantino has never made a movie. He never became a director because he was busy doing this instead: my job, being a critic. Except realistically, Tarantino would be far nastier than I am because even now, in this timeline, the man is rarely one to keep his opinion to himself. Sometimes they’re sharp and cutting, other times they’re complimentary, but when it comes to John Wayne, they’re actually surprisingly nuanced.
That’s something rare to say about Tarantino’s approach to opinion sharing.
There’s a lengthy list of films, actors, genres and more he’d taken down in less than kind words. He called the French New Wave idol François Truffaut simply a “passionate, bumbling amateur”. He branded the movie Brewster McCloud “the cinematic equivalent of a bird shitting on your head”. He even dared to go after David Lynch, stating after seeing Fire Walk With Me, “David Lynch has disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different.”
Tarantino likes what he likes, he hates what he hates, and he’s not one to keep that to himself. Various actors have taken issue with him because of it, musicians too, if you think back to the infamous story of a night spent hearing the director talk being enough to put Fiona Apple off cocaine forever. But we’ll give him this: his thoughts on Wayne are surprisingly balanced and raise a genuinely interesting point.
“There are movie stars and there are terrific actors and part of their thing is to play different characterizations, different interpretations, and from time to time a combination of the both,” Tarantino began, and everyone braced themselves for a harsh takedown of actors who only play one thing. “John Wayne is a good example because John Wayne had a persona, and he never played 180 degrees different from his persona,” he continued, and everyone braced themselves even more for a takedown of one of America’s best-known talents.
But actually, Tarantino’s point isn’t a critique as such. Even though he’s stating that Wayne really did only ever play shades of the same sort of figure, always playing the hero in a usually patriotic flick, perhaps that’s not all that much of an issue.
“He played his persona. But in the course of his career, the number of films that he did that tested and twisted and stretched that persona as far as it can go in different directions,” Tarantino explained, actually being impressed by Wayne’s ability to find variety amongst that same typecast and create a whole spectrum of characters from the same foundational one. To him, that’s a sign of skill, as he said, “That’s an actor that actually is very conscious about being an actor and stretching his persona.”
Obviously, though, it’s a very different skill from an actor who’s a true chameleon, which is potentially more impressive. But despite Tarantino’s complex considerations of whether playing the same role over and over is a sign of greatness, he sees Wayne’s ability to do it but do it well as a testament to the man.
“The character that’s in Big Jake is not the character from Red River, the character in Red River is not the character from The Searchers, and the character from The Searchers is not the guy in High and the Mighty. But they’re all John Wayne,” he said, praising the brand in perhaps his most nuanced consideration yet, like a perfect could-have-been film journalist.
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