“I have integrity that way”: why Quentin Tarantino didn’t cast himself in ‘Jackie Brown’
After looking at Quentin Tarantino‘s filmography, you might not believe that he exercises any restraint in his desire to cast himself, with an array of cameos in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs that are both entertaining and slightly sad. It feels like the equivalent of photobombing every picture at your own party or joining in to sing yourself happy birthday. It’s slightly cringe but also kind of fun. I somehow doubt that Tarantino finds this embarrassing in any way, but the director surprisingly didn’t cast himself in Jackie Brown and shared his reasons why.
Tarantino hasn’t just acted in his own films, but he also starred in the 1996 film From Dusk Till Dawn alongside George Clooney, directed by Robert Rodriguez. Rodriguez is a long-time friend of Tarantino who rose to fame after the unprecedented success of El Mariachi, which famously only had a budget of $7,000 and earned $5million at the box office, earning him a reputation as the wunderkind of independent filmmaking. He became friends with Tarantino, and the two of them started a production company together. The director also collaborated with Bruce Willis on his 2005 film Sin City after being introduced to Tarantino.
In From Dusk Till Dawn, Tarantino plays Richard Gecko in the action-thriller about two brothers who hide out in a Mexican bar after kidnapping a father and his sons, unaware that the clientele consists of vampires. Tarantino went on to direct Jackie Brown, but the success of Rodriguez’s thriller inadvertently impacted his decision to not take on an acting role.
When asked about the decision not to cast himself in the project, Tarantino said, “I was very proud of the work I did in From Dusk Till Dawn, and I was a little precious about it. I wanted to follow it up with something equally worthy. There wasn’t really a role for me in Jackie Brown – and I have integrity that way, alright? I wasn’t trying to put myself in the movie or put in a fun cameo for the heck of it. People have been taking me for granted a little bit.”
It’s understandable that the director would not want to take on a smaller role after such a meaty part in From Dusk Till Dawn, but the director reprised his cameo appearances in his later films, with a voice cameo at the end of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
While Tarantino insists that he doesn’t make a cameo ‘for the heck of it’, there is a dummy made to look like him in Inglorious Basterds, and if that isn’t ‘for the heck of it’, then I don’t know what it.
But who says this needs to have some deep and intrinsic motivation? If anything, it speaks to his glorious passion for the art form and just wanting to make it the most fun and memorable experience possible. It’s like he wants to live within the medium and exist in every single frame, and hell, if I could make movies, then I’d probably do the same thing.
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