The Death Proof press conference is going to happen at 12:30 pm — 45 minutes from now — and I’m thinking of blowing it off. What’s Quentin Tarantino going to say? “Sorry, but self-referential masturbatory cinema is what I do, and who I am. Every guilty, lowdown cinema-watching impulse that you, the audience, harbor within yourselves, I epitomize and celebrate and in fact have made a wild, rollicking career out of.

The press guide listing for Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof press conference…

“My movies are about nothing from my own personal, deep-down self because I have no personal, deep-down self except for a love of ’70s and ’80s exploitation fringe cinema, exploitation-level actors and adrenalized Hong Kong action aesthetics, which makes me happy but obviously eludes people who aren’t on my elitist, beyond-hip wavelength. But I’m Mr. King Shit so what do I care?
“I am not about absorbing and translating and reconstituting real-life experience, but resuscitating stylistic imitations of life made by genre filmmakers of two and three decades ago. But hey, nobody does stylistic wank-offs better than me. No one has revived more moribund acting careers, and nobody writes trash- talk dialogue with quite the same zing. And I’m pretty damn good at shooting car chases.” (Which is true.)

…and the press conference listing in today’s daily bulletin. Notice the festival’s willingness to go along with Tarantino’s little joke and announce that director Andrei Zviaguintsev will be in attendance, and not himself.