Though his latest film, The Hateful Eight, is yet to shoot a single frame of its 70mm stock, Quentin Tarantino still knows how to draw the headlines. He just announced his intention to retire during a lively Q&A for buyers at the American Film Market.
“I don’t believe you should stay on stage until people are begging you to get off,” he said, while on stage. “I like the idea of leaving them wanting a bit more. I do think directing is a young man’s game and I like the idea of an umbilical cord connection from my first to my last movie. I’m not trying to ridicule anyone who thinks differently, but I want to go out while I’m still hard… I like that I will leave a ten-film filmography, and so I’ve got two more to go after this. It’s not etched in stone, but that is the plan.”
Unlike contemporaries such as Kevin Smith who have announced retirement and then returned, Tarantino left the door ajar. “If I get to the tenth, do a good job and don’t screw it up, well that sounds like a good way to end the old career. If, later on, I come across a good movie, I won’t not do it just because I said I wouldn’t. But ten and done, leaving them wanting more, that sounds right.”
Also on the panel were Eight stars Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell, who couldn’t quite believe what QT was saying. “You don’t actually believe that shit, do you?” Russell asked the crowd. Added Jackson, “What’s Quentin going to do with himself if he’s not doing this?” According to the director himself, he'll be “writing plays and books, going gracefully into my tender years.”
For now, though, he has to concentrate on making the new movie, one that he hopes will keep the idea of event cinema alive.
“If we do our jobs right by making this film a 70mm event, we will remind people why this is something you can’t see on television, and how this is an experience you can’t have when you watch movies in your apartment, your man cave or your iPhone or iPad,” Tarantino said. “You’ll see 24 frames per second play out, all these wonderfully painted pictures create the illusion of movement. I’m hoping it’s going to stop the momentum of the digital stuff, and that people will hopefully go, ‘Man, that is going to the movies, and that is worth saving and we need to see more of that.” For more from the chatty director, head to Deadline.
The Hateful Eight will shoot this winter in Colorado and is set to arrive on screens next year.
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