Quentin Tarantino has been making the rounds at Cannes over the last few weeks, giving the kinds of interview you can give if you’re Quentin Tarantino, because, what are they gonna do, not let you make an 11th movie? (Which is to say that the director still seems very committed to his next film, The Movie Critic, being his last, even if, when pressed, he acknowledges that he might make some TV or something at some point.)
Which has led to some pretty good France-based shit talking, including an interview that Tarantino gave to Deadline this week, in which he called out the basic disposability of your average streaming movie. And also talked some (slightly) apologetic merde about Ryan Reynolds by way of example, saying, “I’m not picking on anybody, but apparently for Netflix, Ryan Reynolds has made $50 million on this movie and $50 million on that movie and $50 million on the next movie for them. I don’t know what any of those movies are. I’ve never seen them.”
“I haven’t ever talked to Ryan Reynolds’ agent, but his agent is like, ‘Well, it cost $50 million.’ Well, good for him that he’s making so much money. But those movies don’t exist in the zeitgeist. It’s almost like they don’t even exist.”
Tarantino also threw some love at Sony, the only major studio that isn’t going in hard on the streaming wars, calling them, “the last game in town that is just absolutely, utterly, committed to the theatrical experience.” Stating that the studio is where he’s hoping to have The Movie Critic land, Tarantino said, “It’s not about feeding their streaming network. They are committed to theatrical experience. They judge success by asses on seats. And they judge success by the movies entering the zeitgeist, not just making a big expensive movie and then putting it on your streaming platform. No one even knows it’s there.”
Meanwhile, the buffet of spicy Tarantino Cannes takes is pretty full: He’s also expressed his irritation with British actors playing Americans: “I think when people look back on this era of cinema and it’s just all these British actors pretending to be Americans and all these Australian actors pretending to be Americans, it’s like phantoms. Nobody is acting in their own voice.” And gave a talk in which he gave his viewpoint on violence in film, and threatened to treat his audience to monologues from The Movie Critic. (He ultimately declined, saying, “Maybe if there were fewer cameras.”
