“I thought it was a stupid show”: the classic TV series Quentin Tarantino hates
Quentin Tarantino has always had opinions. Lots of opinions. Brilliantly, he’s also never afraid to share them with the world. These views could be about the finest Blaxploitation film of the 1970s, the true gems of Italian Giallo cinema, or which Christopher Nolan movie is actually his masterpiece. Amusingly, though, Tarantino’s opinions can sometimes be pretty contrarian. He doesn’t care one little bit about upsetting the most sacred cows of cinema – and at one point, he even took shots at TV’s favourite panicky pooch.
As one of Hollywood’s most celebrated directors of the last four decades, you’d be forgiven for thinking Tarantino would always tow the party line by praising his peers and the legends who came before him. You’d be wrong, though. While Tarantino is effusive in his praise for directors he is a true fan of, he has been known to throw shade at the kind of foundational voices who rarely have a critical word said about them.
For instance, Tarantino called Stanley Kubrick a hypocrite for making a violent movie like A Clockwork Orange while simultaneously claiming it was a treatise against violence in cinema. He flatly stated that he likes the movies of those inspired by Alfred Hitchcock, such as Brian De Palma and Curtis Hanson, more than he likes the genuine article. Oh, and he rejected Jean-Luc Godard after years of being a devotee, saying he’d outgrown him – but that may have had more to do with Godard lobbing a few unkind words Tarantino’s way when Pulp Fiction was released.
Similarly, if Tarantino doesn’t enjoy a widely beloved movie, he’ll tell anyone who will listen. He once said on the ReelBlend podcast with a straight face that he liked Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull more than The Last Crusade, which sounds mildly insane to most fans of the franchise. Still, he insisted, “I don’t like the Sean Connery one at all. That’s such a boring one.” He also claimed Wes Craven was “the iron chain” attached to Scream’s ankle “that kept it earthbound and stopped it from going to the moon.”
It brings us nicely onto Tarantino’s most cutting—nay, most eviscerating—piece of cultural criticism to date. It’s an opinion so controversial and hard to comprehend for an entire generation that it’s a wonder the maverick auteur was ever able to utter it.
Quentin Tarantino has never liked Scooby-Doo.
In fact, he always thought the adventures of the perpetually scared crime-solving dog were “stupid”.
During an interview with Yesterdayland, Tarantino dismissed the iconic cartoon by saying, “I actually remember watching the first episode ever shown of Scooby-Doo, like the season it started. I go, ‘What the heck is this thing?’ I never thought the mysteries were good. I always thought it was stupid.”
On top of pouring scorn upon the “whodunnit” setup of the show, Tarantino revealed that he was also rankled by how the show was scheduled back when he was a kid. To him, it seemed like there were only ever around six episodes of Scooby-Doo made per year, and they would simply be repeated ad nauseam every Saturday morning. So, not only was young QT eating his Cheerios while watching an inferior cartoon, but he was also watching an inferior cartoon that he’d seen before. A bunch of times.
Perhaps it’s no wonder that he chuckled, “My dislike of Scooby-Doo was a big thing.”
Never Miss A Take
The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter
All the latest Quentin Tarantino content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.