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• "Quentin Tarantino: Imagining Hollywood without him"
• Inglourious Basterds
• Mr. Tarantino on Tavis' radio show
• Mr. Tarantino's bio

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Filmmaker explains what it means to be a storyteller and why it makes his movies unique. (2:30)
 

Full interview. (23:41)
 

Tavis: Pleased to welcome Quentin Tarantino tack to this program. The Oscar-winning screenwriter and acclaimed director should be in a pretty good mood today. As a matter of fact I was teasing him when he walked on the set. He's got all this blue - you got this shot, Jon? - he's got all this blue on today, and I'm like, you cannot be blue today.

Quentin Tarantino: No, I'm not blue today. Not today. (Laughs)

Tavis: You're in a green sort of mood.

Tarantino: I'm in a green mood, yeah.

Tavis: Why is he green? Because this past weekend his latest film, "Inglourious Basterds," opened at number one, almost $40 million this weekend; as I mentioned, his best opening weekend ever. The film, of course, stars some guy named Brad Pitt. Here now, a scene from "Inglourious Basterds."

[Clip]

Tavis: (Laughs) Nice to see you, Quentin.

Tarantino: Hey, good to see you too.

Tavis: So just in the last few days, three things I want to just throw at you, because I'm thinking to myself reading all the stuff about "Inglourious Basterds," there's a whole lot riding on those shoulders because the Weinstein brothers, their backs are against the wall and everybody's saying that Quentin's got to deliver for them to save them, number one - that's a lot of pressure right there.

I read an article about whether or not stars in Hollywood deserve $20 million a picture and if Brad Pitt can't pull it off then we're going to have more conversation about reducing the fee that Brad and Denzel and Will Smith get for $20 million a picture. Can Tarantino save this summer for the movie industry that hasn't had a huge summer?

That's a whole lot of pressure to put on one film, (laughter) and yet you delivered. So do you feel like the savior today?

Tarantino: Yeah, and also - yeah, and it's not even like "Transformers 3." (Laughter) It's my own little quirky, weird little war movie that I do what I do. It's funny; people would ask me questions leading into this, even, like, months ago. They'd ask me questions about well, the Weinsteins are really riding on this, does that put any undue pressure on you? What's that pressure? Even filmmakers, friends of mine, asked me that.

I go, well, not really. The movie is the movie. It's not like I can take it and make it a pretzel and bend it to anything for the commercial whims of that given weekend or for a company. They're all big boys. I wrote the script, they all read it, we all decided to do the movie. So the movie is the movie. The movie can't change. So it's either going to catch on or not, it's either going to be popular or not.

Tavis: That said, though, you feel good that it caught on?

Tarantino: Heck yeah, man. (Laughter) When I was here last time it was for "Grindhouse," which did not catch on.

Tavis: Yeah, I wasn't going to say that, but since you went there, the last - it's funny, I was talking to our producer about that, Holly, and the last time you were here you were here the Monday after it opened.

Tarantino: Yeah. (Laughs)

Tavis: So for some reason I can only get you on Mondays. (Laughter) But I'm glad to have you here anyway on this Monday. For those who haven't seen the film, the storyline - it's not a remake.

Tarantino: No.

Tavis: The storyline is what?

Tarantino: Yeah, it follows a few different storylines, but the basic one -

Tavis: Every Tarantino movie does.

Tarantino: Yeah, it does, actually. You've got a - Brad Pitt plays this hillbilly from the hills of Tennessee who leads a group of Jewish-American soldiers who are basically doing an Apache resistance against the Nazis behind enemy lines, which means that they ambush them, they take their scalps and they desecrate the bodies, and the idea is to leave them there for other Germans to come across, and thus win a psychological battle and get in their heads.

Tavis: And I mean this not to cast any aspersion on you; I'm just trying to get inside your head, speaking of getting inside people's heads, whether or not you think that the audience that comes to see Tarantino films come for the storyline, how important is that to you, or are they coming for all the action, so to speak?

Tarantino: Well, it's funny. With the exception of "Kill Bill Volume I" I've never really done a movie that just has tons and tons of action in it. It's always kind of the same scenario, where there's a lot of dialogue and there's suspense sequences that are built up, they go on for a while, and then something explodes.

Or something doesn't explode, actually. This is like the first movie I've ever done where I really kind of deliver a big climax. Most of my movies seem like they're heading towards a big climax and then I undercut it in some way, so this is the first one, since I'm kind of doing an adventure movie, and if you're going to do a "Guns of the Navarone" kind of thing you've got to deliver the goods at the end.

But no, I actually think that it is part and parcel. You actually come to see the dialogue, you come to see how I'm going to tell the story, which is different from the way a lot - not better or for worse, but it's different than the way a lot of people tell the story.

Like just to give you an example I remember when "Jackie Brown" opened up. I saw it about, like, nine times at the Magic Johnson Cinema when it came out. And I remember it's playing one cinema here and one cinema there and so I'm like watching it to a key moment, then I go to the next cinema to see how it's playing there.

And so I'm sitting down next to some gal who recognized who I was but was watching the movie, and then there's that whole big section in the movie where you see the money exchange happen from three different points of view, and part of the thing is the audience doesn't quite know what they're watching at the very beginning of it, when Jackie leaves the money there. Oh, what - you're leaving the money. Go back, go back and get it. Then you see two more things and you go, oh, okay, this is why she did that.

So anyway, the sequence was over and I just turned to the gal next to me and I go, "Did you get that? Did you like that?" She goes, "Yeah." I go, "Did you understand it?" And she's like, "Well, it's like a Quentin Tarantino movie. You don't know what the hell's going on till you know what the hell's going on." (Laughter)

Tavis: That about sums it up.

Tarantino: That sums it up.

Tavis: You used the word earlier in this conversation quirky, and I'll take your word. Compare, contrast the quirkiness of this project to the quirkiness of your other projects.

Tarantino: Oh, I think it's pretty much in line, it's pretty much in the same thing. One of the ways that I like to tell my story is I like using a novelistic structure where - and not in everything I've done but for the last few things for sure, where I break it up into, like, chapters. In this case, it's chapters.

And each of those chapters are kind of independent of each other, but they build and they accumulate as opposed to getting behind a certain group of characters and we're just building with them to the end. I keep going back and forth as far as introducing you to different characters, and then there starts becoming slight overlaps, and usually, in this case, by the time of chapter four or chapter five, they start getting together and now you know where you're going all along the way.

And look, I just like telling stories that way because to me one of the things that we lost in America used to be, especially compared to Europe, it was like storytelling was what Hollywood did better than anybody else, and I think we're the worst at it now.

And what I mean by that is most movies that you see at the theaters, they set up with situation within the first 15 to 20 minutes, and that's it. That's what you're going to see, and the rest of the movie is living up to that premise. Well, that's not a story. It can be entertaining. Look at a movie like "Speed." That's a good description of "Speed," and "Speed's" a fun movie, all right? And they live up to their situation.

But a story is actually supposed to be unfolding. You're not supposed to know everything there is to know in the first 15, 20 minutes. We're probably around the same age - you remember when we were kids, you wouldn't even go to the beginning of a movie. Your parents would take you to see a movie, you'd come in whenever, all right?

And you'd watch that movie, (laughter) then you'd see the next movie, and then you would stay to watch up to the point that you came in at. And all the time when we would see the beginning of the film and (unintelligible) how did they get there from here? This is so different from where we came in at. And then eventually it would meet up.

Well, that's not happening at all anymore, and so I'm just committing to telling a story, and that it is unfolding. You don't know everything there is to know until deep, deep into the movie.

Tavis: What's led to the not-so-good storytelling?

Tarantino: Well, I guess it is literally situations of trying to break movies down into one sentence. They use "Die Hard" on a bus. Well, then, once you say that you don't need to say that much more. (Laughter) That's it. They set it up and then like I said, I'm not even being a snob about those movies, because there are movies that they do that well.

They set up an intriguing enough premise and then if you live up to it, well, yeah, you've had a good night at the movies. But that whole storytelling thing that you get when you get a novel, that you get when you watch a particularly good miniseries, say, one of the HBO things that's really good, you get the box set of it. Like for instance, "District 9," did you see that?

Tavis: I haven't seen it yet, no.

Tarantino: It's terrific. And again, you would not - especially that movie actually seems like it for sure is going to be what it is at the beginning, and it unfolds and all of a sudden now it's a different story and now it's a different thing going on.

Tavis: We live in a world where we're told that not just kids, but a lot of us, our attention span is shorter, and you're telling me that you don't want to -

Tarantino: I don't buy that.

Tavis: You don't buy that? Because you're telling me you don't want to tell me the storyline until I'm deep in the film, which means you've got to hold my attention for a long time on a Tarantino project.

Tarantino: Yeah, well, that all falls on me. Now it falls on execution.

Tavis: But how do you do that, though?

Tarantino: Well, I've got to like my story enough. I've got to write it well enough, I've got to cast it well enough. If I'm going to do a big sequence that is basically - will amount to 20 minutes of dialogue, well, that dialogue's got to be sharp, it's got to be bang-on, it's got to be razor sharp.

The performance has got to be terrific, and the casting has to completely work. It's not just stunt casting. It's got to really know these actors can now play my characters.

So if I'm going to do stuff like that, now it's really up to me to pull it off, and that falls into my taste. And where I'm coming from is when I come to an audience, I'm the audience. I know what I want to see in a movie, I know where I want to go in a movie, so if I please myself I'm just (unintelligible) that there is more people like me out there.

I'm not trying to get it to everybody, I'm just trying to make it for me and just hoping that there's more people like me.

Tavis: Tell me, then - and I'm serious about this question - what it is about the way you see movies that makes you think that other people see movies or would want to see movies in the same way you see them. Does that make sense?

Tarantino: Yeah, it does make sense.

Tavis: Why are you so on-point about that?

Tarantino: Well, just because I'm a movie lover. All right, so I'm somebody who goes to the movies a lot, and one thing that gives me maybe an edge over other audience members as far as being able to I guess kind of work my knowledge a little bit is the fact that I'm conscious about a lot of the things that are subconscious to an audience member.

See, we've seen so many different movies and we kind of know what's going to happen before it happens, many times. And it's not even an intellectual thought. Oftentimes you've just seen a lot of movies, you just feel something is going to happen. You just kind of feel the clichés are going to happen this way or this guy's really not going to die because they wouldn't do that at this point of the movie.

Something's going to happen to make them - it doesn't always have to be a negative, like the movie's going to wimp out or something, but it usually is a thing we've seen a lot of movies, we know the clichés, we know the standards. And even if it's not an intellectual thought it's a subconscious thought and one of the things that I like to do is break that, actually use that subconscious information you as an audience member have against you, all right?

I will lay the breadcrumbs down to take you down the road that you think you're going to go that every movie has gone before, and then I do a left turn, and you weren't expecting that. I was leading you down the road you thought you were going to go, and then I go left.

Tavis: Give me an example - I don't want to give away the storyline for "Inglourious Basterds," but I'll give you 30 seconds to think about this. One of your past projects, give me an example of a scene that we know where you laid the breadcrumbs out and flipped it on us.

Tarantino: Okay, let me use a different movie from mine. I'll give you a good exactly that will be played in this, like in a "Basterds" scenario. There's a movie like "Guns of the Navarone," say. Now in that movie, you've got a group of guys and in that, say David Niven is the demolitions expert.

Now without him, there's no mission - absolutely no mission whatsoever. It doesn't work without him. Yet they're escaping gunfights and then finally they get to the guns of the Navarone and they have to climb up this big mountain which is a rock-face sheer drop, and it's a storm going on.

At any moment David Niven could fall off that mountain and thus there is no blowing up of the guns of the Navarone. But that doesn't happen because you know there'd be no movie without him.

Tavis: Exactly.

Tarantino: He needs to blow up the guns. Well, my David Niven could die. My David Niven, there's no bill of health that any of my characters get; nor have they ever gotten a bill of health. Anything could happen to them at any time, and then now the characters have to deal. If the one guy dies that you need to pull off the mission, what do we do? Do we go home, or?

Tavis: That makes the movie more interesting.

Tarantino: I think so, and it actually duplicates - not that that's necessarily my job in this movie, but it actually really duplicates war more than anything else. You don't know who's going to live and who's going to die, and anybody could die at a moment and now you're dealing with that.

Tavis: You said earlier that you - and we know this about you, of course; you're known for going to movie theaters, sneaking in, and watching your movies with everyday people. Did you do that this past weekend?

Tarantino: Yeah, uh-huh.

Tavis: Tell me what happened on the weekend.

Tarantino: I went to - I was in Los Angeles so I went to - I watched it at the Cinerama Dome, which I love watching my movies at the Dome. I saw it at the Bridge, I saw it at the Village in Westwood, I went down to the South Bay where I grew up to watch it, and a couple theaters down there. I saw it at the Magic Johnson, the 11:15 show.

And actually one of the things that was funny, actually, was a crack-up about (laughs) when you go actually see the movie, there used to be - I feel kind of bad about the Magic Johnson because it's really kind of fallen on hard times compared to what it was. It used to be it was this showcase to show that we don't just have to have ghetto theaters in the hood, and now it's a ghetto theater. Now it is that, it is that. It is a grindhouse now.

But it actually is a very humbling experience to go and watch your movie there, because people are texting and talking, a lunatic walks in the theater in the middle of it, has some episode, then walks out; goes to another theater to haunt. Entire families are having to read subtitles in front of me like oh, they weren't asking for this.

But one thing that was really funny in the case of "Grindhouse" is I grew up going to Black theaters and watching exploitation movies and Blaxploitation movies and kung-fu movies, and so when we were selling "Grindhouse" I'm talking about it and it's with this real love and nostalgia and oh, isn't it a shame that this doesn't exist anymore, oh, pity that. Glad that I lived through it.

So then I go to the Magic Johnson to see "Grindhouse," and then all of a sudden it hit me exactly what it was like back then and there was no nostalgia going on. It was bored apathy. That's what you always had in these grindhouse cinemas - bored apathy. (Laughter) People kind of miserable being there, but they're there. And they're not yelling and screaming and talking back to the audience.

It was if the theater was full. If the theater was full, you got that. You might get a running conversation, but it's not necessarily in the direction of the movie. (Laughs)

Tavis: So on a weekend like this one where your movie has just opened and you're going to all these theaters, you were funny about it but I know there's a serious point to be made, I think - at least I think there is - that you're learning something going to these various theaters. You're learning something seeing it in different cultural settings.

What do you learn, number one, and number two, what do you take from the learning, whatever it is, when it's already opening. It's in the theaters now, this isn't research anymore.

Tarantino: Yeah, well, no, it's not research about I'm going to tweak my movie this way or tweak my movie that way, but it is okay, here's the reality. Just take that in. Put this in your brain now. Put this in your brain and -

Tavis: For the next project?

Tarantino: Well, just to know that this is how it plays, this is reality. And now one of the reasons that I make myself do - I do this in Los Angeles is because I'm from Los Angeles. I wouldn't have the authority in any other state or any other big city to be able to do this.

I can run around all over Los Angeles county because I know the places, I know the areas, I know where to go. Oh, I am seeing it with people who make this amount of money. I'm seeing it in this social strata here. Okay, these people are I think more sophisticated over here. What did they get out of it? Okay, now do these people over here get more than the sophisticated people?

And so it's very easy if you're in a certain situation in Hollywood that you go see it at the premiere, you see it at a couple of special screenings and say okay, well, everyone loves it, I'm great. But no, no, you've got to see it with the audience and people who are actually paying money to see it. They can do anything they want that day and they decided to pay money to see your movie.

Tavis: You have become known for I don't want to say bringing folk back from the dead, but let me just say reintroducing (laughter) certain stars.

Tarantino: Rasputin, apparently I am. (Laughter) I don't want to say bringing them back from the dead. They seemed pretty dead. (Laughter)

Tavis: I mean reintroducing stars to a new generation. You did it for John Travolta, you did it for Pam Grier, you know what I'm talking about.

Tarantino: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tavis: So you reintroduced these stars. In light of that, tell me what your casting process is, because you said earlier that when you're writing this stuff you've got to make sure that X person can play this - any filmmaker feels that way. Tell me about the casting for this project particularly. Why Brad Pitt for this?

Tarantino: Well, like for instance, this one is a little different than most because it'd been in my mind for a long, long time. So since it was in my mind these characters, a lot of the main characters -

Tavis: What's a long time, first of all?

Tarantino: This one, I came up with the idea about 10 years ago.

Tavis: Okay, I'm sorry.

Tarantino: And so a lot of the big characters in this movie, like Brad Pitt's character Aldo Raine and the girl's character, Shosanna, they've been bumping around in my head for about 10 years now and there was nobody attached to them. I wasn't thinking about any actor to play this one or that one.

So they really became the character, like the way novelists would write them. I wasn't held back by any actor's limitations that I was writing for or anything, so they literally just became the character. Even the character of the head Nazi guy in the movie, Colonel Landa, part of the reason that he speaks so many languages in the movie is just because he could. I wasn't basing it on a certain actor and now I have to find somebody who can do that.

So like in the case of Brad, about halfway through the script like in 2008 when I was writing it, I started to have to think okay, now who could possibly play this guy? And then when I came up with Brad I couldn't think of anybody else. And I actually pride myself on my second choices and my third choices, and second choice isn't just the next guy on the list. Usually it's a whole other movie I'm making.

It's like if well, Warren Beatty doesn't work now as Bill in "Kill Bill," then David Carradine. Well, that's not the next guy on the list, that's a different movie I am now making, and I'm usually down with that.

But to me, Brad just seemed like he could fit this character so well that he would literally be the guy on the page, and anything else would be a more artistic interpretation that would not be the guy.

Tavis: This is inside baseball - why did you think, though, that Brad could do what you said he could do?

Tarantino: Well, where I'm coming from with him was I think it was a combination of two things. I just think - like for instance I'm working with Brad at one of the best times to work with him. I just think - he's been around now as long as I've been around in the business, so about 17 years he's been making movies, and I think he's really grown into his iconic stature as a star. He's really - he's not the pretty boy anymore.

He's still ridiculously handsome but he's a man now, and he's even grown into that almost western iconic stature that he has. He's from Missouri and he doesn't walk around talking in a southern accent, but if you give him a southern accent, you buy it. He's not some New York actor that's putting on a twang. You can buy him as a hillbilly; you can buy him from the hills of Tennessee, like you buy him as Jesse James.

And those kind of parts are kind of hard for people to pull off. So he could become this folk-loric mountain man character, I thought, but he also had the star quality to lead the movie, to lead it on his shoulders and lead these guys.

Tavis: You mentioned the last time you were here, you were here for "Grindhouse," which didn't do what "Inglourious Basterds" has done and will do, I suspect, in the coming weeks. How do you get through those periods when you put all your heart and soul in - because you didn't have any less energy for "Grindhouse" that you had for "Inglourious."

Tarantino: Yeah, no, no, no, not at all.

Tavis: How do you get to the period when it doesn't go the way you want it to go?

Tarantino: Well, that was my first time that I'd ever had, like, a flop, what you would call an F-L-O-P. (Laughter) And Monday morning was a very hard Monday morning. I took it personal. I took it really personal. I felt like I was - like my girlfriend broke up with me or something like that, and I didn't see it coming at all. She had to talk, and I didn't know the talk was coming.

And everyone else knew it; I didn't know it, all right? And then again, in retrospect, oh my God, how could I not see it? So I took it very, very personally, and one of the things that I ended up doing - I'm not really much of a pity party guy. I felt sorry for myself so I gave myself a week and then I tried to snap out of it.

But one of the things I did is I called up a couple of friends of mine that were filmmakers to just talk to them about it, get their take on how to get through this, and I called up Steven Spielberg and I called up Tony Scott. And they both gave me really good advice.

One of the things that they both said is, like, “Well, look, here's the thing. You did the movie you wanted to make, you're happy with the movie, and just think, even though it didn't work out that well commercially, how lucky you are to be able to be in the situation that you get to make the movies you want to make regardless of commercial success or commercial failure. You're very fortunate, so you need to look at that.”

But the thing that Steven Spielberg added to it, and what I've been feeling this weekend, is now there's going to be a good side to this. The next success you have is going to be sweeter than all the other ones because you went through this.

Now at that time, the idea of having another success seemed so far off, like that could never, ever happen again. (Laughter) But I was thinking about his words, all right, last Sunday and today.

Tavis: Well, it has happened again, the success, that is, and it's called, as if you didn't know, "Inglourious Basterds," starring Brad Pitt, directed by, written by one Quentin Tarantino. Quentin, good to see you, man.

Tarantino: Always good, mate.

Tavis: Glad to have you on the program.