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Quentin Tarantino's 8 Best Put Downs from His Insightful 'NY Magazine' Interview

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | August 24, 2015 |

By Dustin Rowles | Celebrity | August 24, 2015 |


Quentin Tarantino gave a phenomenal interview this weekend to New York Magazine, and it’s clear that Tarantino is fully into the “fuck you” stage of his career. He does not try to be diplomatic. He doesn’t care if he pisses anyone off. He is not humble. He is also not interested in questions that are beneath him. He doesn’t think twice about calling someone else out, either.

The entire interview from Lane Brown is terrific, but here are the best disses.

On Oscar bait films:

The movies that used to be treated as independent movies, like the Sundance movies of the ’90s — those are the movies that are up for Oscars now. Stuff like The Kids Are All Right and The Fighter. They’re the mid-budget movies now, they just have bigger stars and bigger budgets. They’re good, but I don’t know if they have the staying power that some of the movies of the ’90s and the ’70s did. I don’t know if we’re going to be talking about The Town or The Kids Are All Right or An Education 20 or 30 years from now. Notes on a Scandal is another one. Philomena. Half of these Cate Blanchett movies — they’re all just like these arty things. I’m not saying they’re bad movies, but I don’t think most of them have a shelf life

Here, what started out as what sounded like a compliment of Ben Affleck’s The Town before it took a nasty turn toward insult:

I really liked The Town … It was a good crime film. However, next to The Fighter, it just couldn’t hold up, because everybody in The Town is beyond gorgeous. Ben Affleck is the one who gets away with it, because his Boston accent is so good. But the crook is absolutely gorgeous. The bank teller is absolutely gorgeous. The FBI guy is absolutely gorgeous. The town whore, Blake Lively, is absolutely gorgeous. Jeremy Renner is the least gorgeous guy, and he’s pretty fucking good-looking. Then, if you look at The Fighter, and you look at those sisters, they’re just so magnificent. When you see David O. Russell cast those sisters, and you see Ben Affleck cast Blake Lively, you can’t compare the two movies. One just shows how phony the other is.

Ouch.

Here’s a semi insult of It Follows, which is also an accurate review of it:

It was the best premise I’ve seen in a horror film in a long, long, long time. It’s one of those movies that’s so good you get mad at it for not being great. … He could have kept his mythology straight. He broke his mythology left, right, and center.

Here’s a straight-up putdown of The Matrix Reloaded:

The last time that I felt competitive was when I was doing Kill Bill and my competition was The Matrix Reloaded. That was the sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. I saw Matrix Reloaded at the Chinese Theatre the day it opened, and I walked out of the cinema singing that Jay Z song … S-dot-Carter / Y’all must try harder / Competition is nada.” I was like, Bring it the fuck on. I was worried about that? Ho-ly shit.

Asked if there was ever a franchise he’d have like to have directed, Tarantino manages to slight Wes Craven:

I could have imagined doing the first Scream. The Weinsteins were trying to get Robert Rodriguez to do it. I don’t even think they thought I would be interested. I actually didn’t care for Wes Craven’s direction of it. I thought he was the iron chain attached to its ankle that kept it earthbound and stopped it from going to the moon.

Asked about how he decided to cast Walton Goggins in Hateful Eight, he may or may not have delivered a slight to he writing of The Shield and Justified, depending on how you want to read it:

I already knew him from The Shield. You know, literally watching him for six years do faux-Quentin dialogue let me know that he’s got the right kind of tongue.

On True Detective:

I tried to watch the first episode of season one, and I didn’t get into it at all. I thought it was really boring. And season two looks awful. Just the trailer — all these handsome actors trying to not be handsome and walking around looking like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. It’s so serious, and they’re so tortured, trying to look miserable with their mustaches and grungy clothes.

If Pizzolatto reads that, he’s going to feel about one inch tall.

Strangely, my favorite put down is actually a compliment to Aaron Sorkin, but a sideswiping of TV critics and The Newsroom naysayers:

Now, the HBO show I loved was Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom. That was the only show that I literally watched three times. I would watch it at seven o’clock on Sunday, when the new one would come on. Then after it was over, I’d watch it all over again. Then I would usually end up watching it once during the week, just so I could listen to the dialogue one more time.

I think people will be surprised to hear that. The Newsroom’s reviews were all over the place. Sorkin even apologized for some of it.

Who the fuck reads TV reviews? Jesus fucking Christ. TV critics review the pilot. Pilots of shows suck. Why would it be surprising that I like the best dialogue writer in the business?

Read the rest of the interview at NYMagazine; much of it is Tarantino being impressed with Tarantino, although I suppose that, when you’re as consistently good as he is, you can be that impressed with yourself.