Quentin Tarantino has said that he is “ready to quit” making movies following an illustrious 30-year career in the industry.
The director and screenwriter, who has helmed such classics as Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Kill Bill, initially said in 2009 that he planned to retire once he reached the age of 60 – which he did on March 27 this year – to “go and write novels and cinema literature, stuff like that”.
Tarantino reiterated that desire in 2014 while promoting his 2015 movie The Hateful Eight, outlining his plan to “leave a 10-film filmography”. However, he said at the time that this was “not etched in stone”.
Last month, Tarantino announced the title of his 10th film – The Movie Critic – which is likely to be his final big-screen project. He confirmed during a Q&A event in Paris that it would be set in 1977 and that filming was due to begin in LA in the autumn (via Collider).
Speaking to ara for recently, Tarantino was asked whether the late film critic Pauline Kael – who inspired his 2022 book Cinema Speculation – had also influenced The Movie Critic in any way.
“Yes, it is part of the landscape,” he responded. “The story takes place in a world where Pauline Kael exists, and is alluded to, but the film is not about her.”
The interviewer then brought up the fact that director Walter Hill told Tarantino in the book that he “would have loved Steve McQueen” as the latter “knew what the public wanted from him and wanted to give it to them”.
Tarantino was asked whether this had influenced his decision to leave the cinema off the back of The Movie Critic, “in the sense of wanting to leave a perfect filmography”.
He replied: “No, I think not. It’s just that I’ve been making movies for 30 years and I’m ready to quit.”
Despite there being no further movies in the works, Tarantino said he would “very much like” to write more books.
“I want to make a second volume of [Cinema Speculation] that also encompasses the ’70s but with other films, also from my adolescence,” he explained. “And then I will jump to the ’80s and I will also talk about cinema from outside the United States.”
Tarantino’s ninth and most recent film, the Oscar-winning Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, was released in 2019.
Last November, Tarantino said that the Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt-led title was his “best movie” yet.
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