We asked Quentin Tarantino if he would talk a little about his writing process. And, boy did he ever! Here's an excerpt:
Writing movies can be hard. I made a movie called Kill Bill, I’m sure you know, and it was tricky because you know you’re gonna kill Bill, but how do you do it. With a machete? With a gun?
If a movie gets talky, you have to change it up a little. Somebody get shot. You think that’s so easy, but where do you put it? There’s rhythms, and if you stop the flow, then it’s no good. Two people are talking and all of a sudden somebody’s head blows up, that’s kind of cool, but it can be confusing for the audience. But if the rhythm is right, and the head blows up at the right time, then it has savoir faire. It would be hard to do that on stage, because something could go wrong with the special effects. If a head doesn’t blow up then the audience is sitting there wondering what’s going on and then your play is bad So I’m glad I’m not a playwright.
I did a play once. It was Wait Until Dark. Alan Arkin had done that role and he was really great. I wanted to jazz it up though. Let’s pull a little more Soul Train on that bitch! Know what I’m sayin’ homies? Heh heh heh. Like, if the killer is like, Let’s kill some people, let’s go get some heroin, then I’m gonna be like Yo, we gonna kill some motherfuckers, let’s bust some shit up! Huh huh huh. Know what I’m sayin’? Flava. You know, I totally have a posse. Like, Jamie Foxx comes over to my crib, and we all watch movies and it’s totally cool.
Somebody’ll be like Can we watch Howard’s End? And I’ll be like, Whoa, whoa, let’s watch some badass mofo shit, like Cleopatra Jones, you know? Like, what was the one with Santa Claus, and Paul Williams played an elf, the songs were really wack, you know? The Night They Fucked Up Christmas. But think, like, if they had a black Santa, how cool that would be. Like, if Jim Brown played Santa, whoa. And if Ernesto Gastaldi directed and he blew off Paul Williams’ head. Take that, you elf! The Night Santa Claus Totally Fucked Shit Up. Or Kill Santa Claus. That’d be a good one.
I made Django to give black people a hero of their own. So I’m like a gift to black people. We had great black actors back in the day. Fred Williamson was great. Today we have Samuel Jackson, and he’s great but in a different way. You know what I mean?
It’s really cool being famous because I can be all dope and shit, with my homies, but I still go to these big meetings with you know, Harvey Weinstein…well, not Harvey Weinstein, but you know, some Hollywood executive. And then I have brunch with Brad Pitt and we have, you know avocado and mineral water. But then I go to my pad and I’m all yo, yo, yo. So it’s great bein’ rich, I’m not gonna lie to you. You can have it both ways.
Like, I’m from Tennessee. You can tell, right? I’m totally from Tennessee. I totally get hillbillies.
