For those who’d prefer to just listen, here’s an mp3 of the whole event and an excerpt in which Quentin talks about the cop thing.

Originally posted on 8.31.15: In a Cowboys & Indians piece called “Quentin Tarantino: Rebel Filmmaker?”, Variety critic Joe Leydon has noted several similarities between the basic plot bones of Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (Weinstein Co., 12.25) and an episode from the Nick Adams western series The Rebel (’59 to ’61) called “Fair Game.” The episode, written by Richard Newman, premiered on 3.27.60 as one of 33 Rebel episodes directed by Irvin (The Empire Strikes Back) Kershner.

I’ve read a draft of the Hateful Eight script and to go by Leydon’s synopsis of “Fair Game”, there are quite a few plot points shared by the two. 

Leydon is quick to say that he’s “not accusing Quentin Tarantino of plagiarism.” He notes that everybody stole from everybody else back in the old TV days, and that Tarantino has already admitted to Deadline‘s Michael Fleming that he drew inspiration for The Hateful Eight “from such fondly remembered series as Bonanza and The Virginian.” QT to Fleming: “What if I did a movie starring no heroes, no Michael Landons? Just a bunch of nefarious guys in a room, all telling backstories that may or may not be true. Trap those guys together in a room with a blizzard outside, give them guns, and see what happens.”

A guy who attended a 9.15 DGA research screening of Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight has told me a few more things. I was particularly pleased to hear that in addition to being projected in old-fashioned Ultra Panavision 70 (2.76 to 1) that The Hateful Eight, which ran just over three hours, will be shown with an overture and an intermission in the film’s “roadshow” engagements, which will number about 100 screens.

I won’t share the guy’s opinion of the film except to say he’s calling it “an Agatha Christie mystery mixed with a western and filtered through QT.” I can also divulge that the sex scene mentioned yesterday doesn’t involve Jennifer Jason Leigh but Samuel L. Jackson. That’s all I’m going to say.

One comment: “During the post-screening q & a Tarantino was confronted by an African-American audience member about [what the questioner felt was an] excessive use of the n-word. I could be wrong but this flick has the most n-bombs of all his movies, and its frequency is used as a source of humor. But in this hyper-sensitive, p.c. flash mob environment we currently live in I could see this as being a real problem for Tarantino this time around.

In a just-posted Cowboys & Indians piece called “Quentin Tarantino: Rebel Filmmaker?”, Variety critic Joe Leydon has noted several similarities between the basic plot bones of Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight (Weinstein Co., 12.25) and an episode from the Nick Adams western series The Rebel (’59 to ’61) called “Fair Game.” The episode, written by Richard Newman, premiered on 3.27.60 as one of 33 Rebel episodes directed by Irvin (The Empire Strikes Back) Kershner.

I’ve read a draft of the Hateful Eight script and to go by Leydon’s synopsis of “Fair Game”, there are quite a few plot points shared by the two. If you’re willing to supply your credit card information (which I’m not — fuck these guys) “Fair Game” is watchable right here.

Leydon is quick to say that he’s “not accusing Quentin Tarantino of plagiarism.” He notes that everybody stole from everybody else back in the old TV days, and that Tarantino has already admitted to Deadline‘s Michael Fleming that he drew inspiration for The Hateful Eight “from such fondly remembered series as Bonanza and The Virginian.” QT to Fleming: “What if I did a movie starring no heroes, no Michael Landons? Just a bunch of nefarious guys in a room, all telling backstories that may or may not be true. Trap those guys together in a room with a blizzard outside, give them guns, and see what happens.”

A couple of weeks ago a demo reel of Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight was screened during CineGear Expo at Paramount Studios — around noon on Saturday, 6.6, to be exact. I missed it but The Hollywood Reporter‘s Carolyn Giordina didn’t. She filed a story that afternoon, explaining that The Hateful Eight is “believed to be the first production since 1966’s Khartoum to use Ultra Panavision 70 anamorphic lenses.” But she didn’t say what 70mm anamorphic actually means or what Tarantino’s film will actually look like when it’s projected so allow me.

Ultra Panavision 70 image from 1962 Mutiny on the Bounty.

In a phrase, the aspect ratio of The Hateful Eight will be ultra-Scopey, super-duper, triple-ass wide.

If you own either the Ben-Hur or Mutiny on the Bounty Blurays you know what this looks like. Like those blockbusters of yore, the width-to-height ratio will be 2.76 to 1. We’re talking considerably wider than standard CinemaScope or Panavision aspect ratio of 2.39. to 1. The posters for The Hateful Eight are calling the process Super-CinemaScope. I don’t know if that’s a patented process but back in the Pleistocene Era of the early to mid ’60s it was called (and probably should still be called) Ultra Panavision 70.

Three other articles besides Giardina’s have attempted to explain the gist — AV Club, Ain’t It Cool News and Cinematography.com.

Last night’s reading of an early draft of Quentin Tarantino‘s Hateful Eight script was partly a gas and partly a downer. Was it worth the $200 bucks I paid to attend? Yeah, I think so. It was quite the novel theatrical event given the loose experimental vibe and the amusing spectacle of watching several top-dog actors having fun with a vulgar, rambunctious script. The “Tarantino superstars” (including Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Amber Tamblyn, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins and James Remar) had a good time and did themselves proud. And yes, Tarantino made it clear (as others have noted) that he’s currently revising the script and is therefore almost certainly interested in making a film version. He also stated that the finale performed last night is being scrapped and will never be heard from again.

But pretty much every account of last night’s performance has failed to say whether The Hateful Eight sounded good enough to be a decent movie. Let me state very clearly and without a shred of a doubt that it didn’t. It’s a fairly minor and almost dismissable thing — a colorful but basically mediocre Tarantino gabfest that mostly happens on a single interior set (i.e., Minnie’s Haberdashery, located somewhere near the Wyoming town of Red Rock during a fierce blizzard) and is basically about a gatherin’ of several tough, mangy hombres sitting around talkin’ and yappin’ and talkin’ and yappin’. And then, just to break up the monotony, doing a little more talkin’ and yappin’. Along with a little shootin’ and poison-coffee drinkin’ and brutally punchin’ out a female prisoner and a few dozen uses of the word “nigger” (par for the QT course) and swearin’ and fellatin’ and whatever else.

Real-Deal Development Announced Today by Film Independent: “Due to last-minute date and venue changes, tickets to the World Premiere of a Staged Reading by Quentin Tarantino of The Hateful Eight will now go on sale to Film Independent Members this Friday, April 11 at 12:00 noon Pacific. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this change may cause.

“Quentin Tarantino is currently assembling his dream cast for this once-in-a-lifetime event, but due to unforeseen scheduling issues the event will now take place on Saturday, April 19th. Due to venue availability on this date, the location will now be the Theatre at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

“The Hateful Eight is the unproduced Tarantino script that made headlines when he decided to [abandon the project] after the script was leaked [by Gawker and other sites] without his approval. The event will not be recorded or live streamed.”

WHEN: Saturday, April 19, 8:00 pm

WHERE: Theatre at Ace Hotel, 929 South Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90015 

PRICE: $200 orchestra / $150 lower-balcony / $125 upper balcony – limit two tickets per Member



I’ve put quotes around the above headline because it came from Variety critic Owen Gleiberman during a back-and-forth we had this morning about Quentin Tarantino‘s Manson Family movie. The subject was Gleiberman’s 7.15 essay about same — “Quentin Tarantino Does Manson? That’s News That Should Thrill Cinema Lovers.”

The 12th paragraph gets to the nub of it: “Tarantino wants to tell a story about how the age of free love morphed into something horrific — a transformation that still has disturbing implications today. Will he play it straight or Tarantino-ize it? My instinct (or maybe it’s just a hope) is that Tarantino can’t reduce the Manson story to another of his concoctions. I mean, he can, of course, but it wouldn’t feel right, and it wouldn’t be inspiring cinema.”

HE opinion: As intriguing as this project sounds, Tarantino is incapable of playing it even semi-straight. He’s not a docu-dramatist — he’s a creator of alternate Quentinworld fantasies. His last three films have mined the past — Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight — and each time he’s reimagined and re-dialogued history in order to transform his tales into his own brand of ’70s exploitation cinema. Why should QT play his cards any differently with the Manson family?

Gleiberman said this morning that location-wise he wants Tarantino to deliver an exact duplicate of everything we know about the Manson geography (Spahn ranch, Haight-Ashbury, etc.) but “make it feel new.”

“Alas, Tarantino is not a realist,” I replied. “Never has been, never will be. His Paris neighborhood set in Inglorious Basterds looked exactly like that — a phony sound stage realm. And remember that he reimagined an anti-Semitic, Jew-hunting Nazi Colonel as a witty talk-show showoff who loved to giggle at his own jokes. Remember also that in the same film Tarantino gave a French country farmer the name of ‘Bob.'”

Nothing specific is revealed here but spoiler whiners will bitch anyway…just saying: Until this morning the review-embargo date for Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight was 12.21 — i.e., next Monday. But this morning Weinstein Co. reps called or mass-texted a bunch of trades and gave them the green light. Screen International‘s Tim Grierson ran first with a review, followed by Indiewire‘s Eric Kohn. And then all of them Rotten Tomatoes wordslingers jumped in. In my book that means HE is good to go also, right? Except I’ve been taken by surprise. I got nothin’, ma. Haven’t written a damn thing. 12.21 isn’t for another five and a half days.

So I’ll just say this: The Hateful Eight is, as Kohn says, more or less Reservoir Dogs meets Django Unchained but it’s mainly about archetypal flavor and macho swagger, archetypal flavor and macho swagger and more archetypal flavor and macho swagger. Which is what you always get from Tarantino, and why his films have continued to be popular. Because people like that shit. They revel in QT’s patented, talky, menacing-fellows-doing-a-slow-boil thing.

And with the exception of what struck me as needlessly repetitive sadistic beatings of Jennifer Jason Leigh‘s outlaw character, The Hateful Eight delivers a relatively engaging (and sometimes more than relatively) first two-thirds. If you have a place in your head for this kind of thing, I mean. Which I do to some extent. I was a big fan during Tarantino’s ’90s heyday, I mean, and I can still find ways of succumbing to his material as long as I use a filter, although I started to tune out bigtime with the Kill Bill films and came back in only briefly with Death Proof.

The Hateful Eight serves a nice warm bowl of Tarantino soup. A sense of place and mood and attitude that feels relatively well developed and whole. You get beautiful-as-far-it-goes Ultra Panavision 70 photography. You get tasty, savory performances from Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell and Walton Goggins in particular. You get about 45 minutes of snowblindy outdoor footage followed by two-plus hours inside a large, shadowy one-room cabin (i.e., Minnie’s haberdashery). You get a “Lincoln letter” that delivers a sense of morality and decency in the world beyond and a suggestion that lingering Civil War-era hate and prejudices are likely to erode. And a lotta boom boom boom.

You’re sitting there watching this Tarantino thing and you’re also saying to yourself “Yup, this is definitely a Tarantino thing.” You know what it’s more or less gonna be (including a fair amount of violence and blood), and it more or less does that.

The word around the campfire is that the Weinstein Co. gradually began to realize that The Hateful Eight is being processed by screening invitees as a kind of black comedy. I’m told the Weinsteiners wanted the Golden Globers to re-classify it as a comedy/musical but the effort didn’t succeed. The Hateful Eight isn’t my idea of a comedy. There isn’t much difference in Hateful‘s tone and attitude and that of Reservoir Dogs, Inglorious Basterds and Death Proof, and I’ve never heard them described as comedic. Hateful delivers the same old par-for-the-course Tarantino verbal swagger, loquacious and arch and yaddah-yaddah. Yes, a certain meta-humorous attitude is part of that but you can’t hoist up your britches and announce a re-definition of the term “comedy” because it suits your purpose to do so. Well, you can but not if people don’t go along with it.

Hateful Eight stirrup or handcuff swag, or misidentified as same?

By the way: Given that The Hateful Eight and The Revenant are a pair of high-style, ultra-violent wintry westerns opening against each on 12.25, you’d think that either 20th Century Fox or the Weinstein Co. would shift the release date of one or the other. But it won’t happen. The general presumption seems to be that the Tarantino will perform better than the Inarritu. The Tarantino brand is widely known and accepted as a swaggering, colloquial people-friendly thing and that the Inarritu brand is about ravishing images and solemn heavy-osity, which never has been and never will be a Joe Popcorn-type deal.

After last night’s Hateful Eight screening I posted some virulent Twitter disputes after noticing that a few Tarantino fans (David Erlich, Kris Tapley, Mike Ryan, Erik Davis) were creaming all over it. Then I beat a hasty retreat in lieu of the 12.21 embargo. Sorry but my emotions got hold of me. I was all but spitting on my Oriental rug. Angie Han’s 12.2 Slashfilm piece about last night’s embargo breaking indicates that reactions were fairly orgasmic all around. They were within a certain perverse community, okay, but not “all around,” trust me.

How much farther can Quentin Tarantino crawl up his own ass in search of material for his latest cinematic swagger dance? “Pretty much every account of last night’s performance has failed to say whether The Hateful Eight sounded good enough to be a decent movie,” I wrote after the 4.19.14 live reading of an early draft of Tarantino’s latest. “Let me state very clearly and without a shred of a doubt that it didn’t. It’s a fairly minor and almost dismissable thing — a colorful but basically mediocre Tarantino gabfest that mostly happens on a single interior set (i.e., Minnie’s Haberdashery, located somewhere near the Wyoming town of Red Rock during a fierce blizzard), and which unfolds in the vein of The Petrified Forest.

The Hateful Eight “is about a gatherin’ of several tough, mangy hombres sitting around talkin’ and yappin’ and talkin’ and yappin’. And then, just to break up the monotony, a little more talkin’ and yappin’. Along with a little shootin’ and poison-coffee drinkin’ and brutally punchin’ out a female prisoner and a few dozen uses of the word ‘nigger’ (par for the QT course) and swearin’ and talkin’ about fellatin’ and whatever else.