When Quentin Tarantino confronted Roger Ebert for lambasting his acting
If there’s one thing Quentin Tarantino knows how to do, it’s direct a movie. He’s been one of the most popular filmmakers of the past three decades, and his work has seeped into popular culture with ease. With that, he’s established himself as something of a critical darling — only two of his films, Death Proof and The Hateful Eight, have found it harder going with the review scores.
One thing that isn’t so universally beloved, however, is the director’s ability in front of the camera. Tarantino has Hitchcocked himself into several of his own films, most notably as Mr Brown in Reservoir Dogs. He’s also appeared in other people’s movies, famously starring as George Clooney’s brother in Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk till Dawn, which he also wrote the screenplay for. No offence, Quentin, but there is no universe where you two could be related…even one you created yourself.
It’s clear that his acting skills aren’t quite up to scratch. His cameo in Django Unchained is widely heralded as a confusing mistake, particularly given Tarantino’s bizarre choice of accent. It isn’t just the layfolk who have taken issue with the auteur stepping in front of the camera, though. Roger Ebert, the most esteemed of esteemed film critics, wasn’t afraid to make his feelings known either.
Tarantino has a brief cameo in Alexandre Rockwell’s Somebody to Love, playing a bartender. Despite contributing to less than one per cent of the film’s runtime, Ebert took it upon himself to chastise Tarantino in his review of the film. “You will see Quentin Tarantino on another stop in his inexhaustible world tour of other directors’ movies,” he said. “Playing a bartender with a theory about comedy.” He was also less than complimentary of his work in From Dusk till Dawn.
The bloodthirsty filmmaker didn’t take too kindly to being told to stay in his lane. He apparently confronted the Pulitzer Prize winner over his comments, accusing him of setting a double standard. Tarantino cited Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi, two of his regular collaborators, as actors-turned-directors who made films Ebert liked. He also failed to criticise directors Richard Attenborough and Sydney Pollack for their attempts to act, something that Tarantino took to heart. Perhaps that’s because Ebert had previously been an unrelenting champion of his work, once calling him “too gifted a filmmaker to make a boring movie.”
While Tarantino is bang on the money about actors-turned-directors – Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Greta Gerwig – it very rarely goes the other way. Werner Herzog, David Lynch, and Spike Jonze have all had memorable on-screen roles, but nobody would describe them as ‘actors’. The same goes for Tarantino. There isn’t a single one of his acting gigs that couldn’t have been as well or even better by somebody else. That’s just not where his talents lie.
It should be pointed out that Ebert wasn’t always so disapproving of Tarantino cropping up in movies. In his review of Sleep with Me, he remarked, “The writer-director Quentin Tarantino turns up, for example, as a guest at a party, and launches into a long, detailed, manic explanation of why Top Gun is really ‘the story of a man’s struggle against his own homosexuality’. The more he talks, the more plausible his theory sounds.”
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