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.
“QT’s explanation to the audience member about how the characters speak through him so it’s not racist didn’t seem to satisfy the man asking the question. Or the audience. The use of the word felt excessive to me and I rarely if ever care about “language” in a film, especially if it’s period appropriate. I know that I saw several African-American walkouts immediately after the movie — i.e. people who decided against participating in the q and a.
Notes: “The cut ran a bit over three hours although I’m not 100 percent on the running time as all phones were taken before entry and I had no watch. Five-act structure. The q & a lasted a little over 30 minutes. The stagecoach section in Act 1 felt like 40 minutes. There was a 12-minute intermission after Act 2. The show started around 7:30pm. I was out the door a little after 11:30 pm.”