SHOCK ducked into the NYC press conference for THE HATEFUL 8 and grilled Tarantino, Kurt Russell and more.
Two big Hollywood movies are hitting screens for the holidays, one has a lot of lasers in it, and the other a lot of snow, some horses, some bad men, and some blood-splattered brains. Guess which one has caught ShockTillYouDrops fancy?
Resurrecting a format not witnessed in several decades, Quentin Tarantino gifts his latest film with the 65mm film format, projected as 70mm, in his 8th movie, appropriately enough entitled THE HATEFUL EIGHT. Jennifer Jason Leigh is at her blackest as the dastardly Daisy Domergue, and shes surrounded by a crowd of neer-do-wells in the forms of Kurt Russell, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, along with Bruce Dern, Samuel L. Jackson, the lovely Zoe Bell, and even more gracing the ultrawidescreen format.
Bringing a large portion of the cast to New York (sans Samuel L. Jackson and Channing Tatum), the 8 that arrived for the press conference gave kudos to their temporary lord and master as they opened up about this project thats been under wraps since the script first left Quentins notepad and leaked out into the world.
Fondly displaying the movie program accompanying the roadshow release, having just arrived in the directors hands that very morning, featuring eight different centerfolds of the films characters, Mr. Tarantino immediately jumped into the release plan for the film, and what cinema aficiandos can look forward to as the film rolls out along the tundra of the wasteland of todays digital multiplexes.
Tarantino:
The roadshow opens December 25th. Will go for two weeks but will go longer than two weeks. We open wide on the 31st, but well keep on with the 70mm for awhile. The Weinsteins have done an amazing thing, just to put it in perspective. Warner Bros. threw their entire weight behind INTERSTELLAR but they only played 11 venues in the course of their 70mm run. We are playing in 44 markets in 100 theaters. And not only that they really are some of the biggest and funnest big movie palaces still left. The Music Box in Chicago, the Hollywood Theatre in Portland, the Fox Theater in Detroit, the Cinerama Dome in Los Angeles for two weeks. All the places that have 70mm capabilities we utilized them. Other places we moved the screens in.
We should be like Neil Diamond coming into town, or The Book of Mormon coming into town. Well set up our screens, well set up our projectors. Its a Herculean effort. Were screening in 100 theaters between the US and Canada. Were trying to do this like the old-school roadshows. When we think of movies like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or RYANS DAUGHTER, most people have seen the regular version. Were talking about the roadshow. They had an overture, they had an intermission, and they were even longer. Ours is six minutes longer for the roadshow version.
And we just got these today. We have our own program! They come with their own pinup, ready for your locker. We have t-shirts that say stuff like I saw THE HATEFUL EIGHT in 70mm. Its pretty cool.
When asked about the Western influences in his films, and what appears to be his Western phase, Tarantino responded:
There is a chain that connects DJANGO to this one. I guess I am in a bit of a Western period right now. Doing a movie in a genre that I want to do but I dont know how to do it. Like shooting the martial arts scenes in KILL BILL.
But in this one I learned how to do a Western. I realized I wasnt done with the genre. I wasnt done with what I felt I had to say. And one of the things I think I had to say in this regard was dealing with race in America, which a lot Westerns had avoided for such a long time. But I think I had more to say. Its also something else about DJANGO too that youre dealing with such a big subject, as far as slavery in America, that as fun as DJANGO was, it was this downer sword of Damocles hanging over the whole thing that you always had to deal with. And you had to deal with it in a responsible way.
So, there was actually an aspect of THE HATEFUL EIGHT, even though I deal with similar issues, I can just sort of let it rip and now just do my Western without having this history with a capital H hanging over the whole piece.
Kurt Russell on being chained to Jennifer Jason Leigh during the films shooting:
If youve been chained together for like a week, week and a half, 24/7, youre going to know a lot about that person, and Stockholm Syndrome is going to set up pretty fast. And it did over a five-month period of time, the course of Stockholm set up between Jennifer and I, and it informed everything that we did.
When asked about making a third Western, Quentin let out:
The third Western could actually be a TV thing. Ive owned the rights for a whileI get them and I lose them, and I get them and I lose thembut theres something about the piece that really demands that I make it. Theres an Elmore Leonard book called Forty Lashes Less One, and I actually think if you want to call yourself a Western director today you need to do at least three Westerns. Back in the 50s it would be like twelve! But today, its three, if you really want to put your Westerns up on the shelf with people like Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann and Peckinpah.
I would really like to do Forty Lashes Less One as kind of a miniseries, like an hour an episode. Id write it all and direct it all, but maybe its four hours or five hours, something like that. And itd fit right along the lines, if youve ever read the book, itd fit right along the lines of THE HATEFUL EIGHT and DJANGO. It deals with race, it all takes place in Yuma Territorial Prison, and its a really good book, and Ive always wanted to tell the story. So, well see, Im hoping Ill do that eventually.
And will he shoot it on film?
Ill never shoot on digital.
And on the decision to shoot an ultra widescreen film for a confined, one-room story:
To me it helps everything out. Especially in this situation where youre wanting to keep track of where all the characters are, like setting up a chessboard to one degree or another. I love the compositions. That part wasnt hard at all. The only difficulty was I had gotten used to using a zoom but we couldnt get a zoom for it, but maybe Ive been relying on that too much. I definitely couldnt use a Steadicam, so we used the crane like a Steadicam.
How did you develop the tension and anger and nastiness among your actors?
I think it’s just part and parcel to the material. This was the case for RESERVOIR DOGS, too, and there’s a similarity to this film and RESERVOIR DOGS to some degree. I don’t think I even understood the dramatic structure of why RESERVOIR DOGS worked so well when I wrote it, and when I did it, but after hearing people talk about it I figured it out.
Since then I’ve kind of worked on that same principle, particularly in the basement scene of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, so now its something I do. I believe that suspense, it can be like a rubber band, and you just keep stretching that rubber band. Just like using the basement scene as an example. Yeah, that scene could be a five-minute scene. It could be a six-minute scene, or a seven-minute scene, and that would be good.
If I can stretch that rubber band to twenty-five minutes, and it still holds, and it doesn’t snap, then it should be better. I’m taking that very idea to its nth conclusion by making a movie this long. If that rubber band doesn’t stretch, maybe it’s kind of a boring movie. I think part of what’s going on is part of that rubber band is the threat of violence that is just hanging over the movie, and hanging over the characters.
Violence doesn’t even need to happen but you’re prepared for it to happen. You don’t know where it’s going to come, and you know it’s going to be horrible whenever it does, but exactly when and how, and who, you’re not so sure. Frankly, if I don’t pull that off, and if these guys don’t pull that off, then maybe the movie’s not so good. Maybe it’s going to be dull. So I’m betting that we’re pulling that off.
Kurt Russell added:
John Ruth carries that ball, because he’s the only one that carries that ball. The rest of them are pretending what they’re pretending to be, whoever that is. I think the most extreme example of it, actor to actor, in all honesty, is when I am going to walk over and talk to Michael Madsen I mean, he’s Mr. Blonde, and I’m Snake Plissken there’s going to be some fucking problems. Michael is a fantastic energy. He’s a force as a human being. I’m more of just an actor. I’m not the same person. I’m just a nice guy.
I didn’t want to let Mike down, and certainly not Quentin, but you’re going to carry that with everybody. That was challenging for me. That wasn’t easy with my personality to go over and just be so bombastic and seriously confident. It was my first experience in a long, long time to relish working with actors that all I had to do was talk to them. I don’t have to do anything for them. Didn’t have to pull for them as an actor. You guys know what I’m talking about when you start pulling for other actors? Come on, man, come on, bring it. That wasnt a problem when you’re talking to Michael Madsen. You got to just go hold your own. You just got to go do your thing. That was exciting as hell. That was awesome to do that with every character and every actor in this.
Quentin added:
That was one of those things, before we did the script reading. We did a three-day rehearsal before we did that script reading and I wrote John Ruth for Kurt and I wrote Joe Gage for Mike. The first time they got to that scene and we read that scene there was just like,Oh whoa! Snake Plissken is challenging Mr. Blonde. Holy shit!
How difficult was it for you to get Ennio Morricone to score this film?
We had made overtures towards working with each other during the last couple of movies, in particularly BASTERDS and DJANGO. And they never quite worked out per se, because of the timing and schedules. And also thats not really how Ive ever done it before. So maybe Ive always had a little trepidation to do it. Even though I would explore it, it just didnt happen.
With this movie, I had a little voice in my ear that said this movie deserves its own score. I take nothing away from the other movies that Ive done using other scores. I think that was right for them, I didnt hear that voice then. Whoever used it best gets it, as far as Im concerned. This material deserves its own theme that is its own piece of music, that is its own personality. And he was very interested, and so I took the first step, which was translating the script into Italian and sending it to him. And we sent it to him and he read it, and his wife read it, and his son read it, and they all really liked it. His wife really liked it. I think that went a long way.
And then we got together. I went to his lovely, beautiful apartment in Rome. I mean, maybe the greatest apartment Ive seen in my life. And were there talking about it, and I go, So what is it you kind of see, or hear? And he goes, Well, I have this idea for a theme. He didnt hum it or makes sounds. I just see it driving forward, driving forward. Its like the stagecoach moving through the snow. Moving forward, moving forward. But it also is ominous-sounding and suggests the violence that will come.
And at first, because he didnt think he had time, he was going to write only just the theme and that was it. And I ended up seeing him the very next day at the Donatello Awards. And he goes, Im going to write you more, Im going to write more. So, literally seven minutes of music became 12 minutes of music, became 22 minutes of music, became 32 minutes of music. He just sat down and got inspired.
But the way it worked, he actually didnt see the movie until he saw it at the premiere in London. He didnt score to scenes. He just scored to the script. He wrote a couple of pieces of music that he thought could be really good for the material itself. But not scene-specific. And some other music he thought would be good for emotions. And then he let me take it and put it in the movie the way Ive always done. So, it ended up being a very lovely encounter, and now Im looking forward to having him do the score before I even shoot the movie, so we actually can really get down to it. But its become a lovely relationship and I cherish it.
Were you influenced by other westerns?
I dont think this is influenced by that many other Westerns, but one movie its definitely influenced by is John Carpenters version of THE THING, which also had Kurt Russell and also had a score by Ennio Morricone, he said. But now that actually makes sense, because this movie is very influenced by RESERVOIR DOGS and that was very influenced by THE THING. The characters trapped in one room and they cant trust anybody, and theres a horrible blizzard going on outside.
But the biggest influence when it came to that was the effect that THE THING had on me in a movie theater on opening night. And I think it was the first time I was able to break down in a more critical way the effect of a film, i.e. the paranoia was so strong between those characters, and it was trapped in such an enclosed space, that the paranoia just started bouncing off the walls until it had nowhere else to go but through the fourth wall and into the audience.
So that was the effect I was going for, was to have that kind of feeling. I didnt expect Ennio to give me a Western score. He had always said that a movie with Terrence Hill called A GENIUS, TWO FRIENDS AND AN IDIT from 1975 was his last official Western score. He always said he didnt want to do Westerns anymore. So, even though this was a Western, I wasnt expecting a score similar to like TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARAH or anything like that. I was figuring it was going to be dark, the way he described it. But he gave me a horror film score. And sometimes even a giallo score, but theres even elements of giallo in this. Giallos are usually mysteries. Theres even a black glove killer in my movie! When you see the killer with the black gloves, you think I cant wait to see the rest of the cast to see whos wearing black gloves, then you see this and its Oh shit everyones wearing black gloves!
THE HATEFUL EIGHT opens Christmas Day in its 70mm special roadshow version, and opens wide December 31st.
