Quentin Tarantino: "I have a gun and I kept the swords from 'Kill Bill'"

2023-04-10T17:35:02.658Z

The director of 'Pulp Fiction' talks about the debate on weapons in the US, stresses his esteem for Spanish cinema, denies platforms and affirms that he has a natural talent for creating tension on the screen

In the short distance, Quentin Tarantino does not smell of gunpowder.

If he had to smell something, he would smell triumph: the one he had on Sunday in Barcelona when he spoke to 1,500 enthusiastic people about his book

Cinema Meditations

(Reservoir Books and Columna, in Catalan), in the course of a tour he is carrying out around Europe and which will now end in Berlin.

After celebrating how well the evening went at the Coliseum theater, ending it in a bar until late at night, the filmmaker, who has changed the appointment of the interview from the La Central bookstore where he was scheduled to go to his hotel, appears somewhat tired but satisfied.

His presence, with that strong face with iconic features, is imposing: after all, Tarantino (Knoxville, USA, 60 years old) is the man who has filmed some of the most impressive scenes in recent cinema and has directed many of the actors More popular.

More information

Tarantino before more than 1,500 people in Barcelona: "Bambi' has screwed children for decades"

Ask.

How about yesterday's experience?

Answer.

Very funny!

were you?

Yeah?

You like me?

I'm very happy to hear it.

It was great.

I loved!

You have us all very concerned with the fact that you are going to stop making movies.

After the film you are preparing about a film critic, isn't there going to be more?

That is the intention.

Won't we have a science fiction movie of his?

He lacks that genre that he likes so much.

Possibly not.

But let's let a little time pass.

Do you have a good katana?

I mean, a samurai sword.

I have, yes, I have kept the

Kill Bill ones.

So, he has Hattori Hanzo swords!

Wow!

Hahaha, yes.

The thing about the swords comes from the fact that when in your book you talk about Steve McQueen, whom you praise a lot, especially for

Bullitt

and

The Escape

, you explain that you only read car magazines and cut, but that you worried a lot about the weapon they should have bring your characters

Yes, he was a weapons expert.

Choosing the right weapon is very important in an action movie.

What do you prefer: katana, 44 Magnum, sawed-off shotgun under desk, Gatlin machine gun wielded by Warren Oates, flamethrower?

In general, in modern cinema when I have to choose a weapon I use a 9 mm, because it looks like a 45 automatic pistol but it doesn't jam.

What do you think of Alec Baldwin's accident on the set of

Rust

that cost Halyna Hutchins her life?

A tragedy.

I don't know how it could happen.

On filming there are many security measures.

We are very careful.

What is your position on the debate on gun ownership in the US?

There are always both sides.

We certainly don't need as many automatic weapons as there are.

There should be more precise laws.

I have a gun at home.

A gun?

Yes, to protect.

Speaking a few years ago with the father of Uma Thurman, a promoter of Tibetan Buddhism in the US, a friend of the Dalai Lama and a former monk, he defended his cinema and told me that we must distinguish between real violence and that on the screen.

Robert, yes;

I can't say it better.

There is no real violence in the movies.

We are playing.

Are you tired of the debate on violence in your cinema?

Yes, a lot;

In fact, I hope you stop asking, hahaha.

Q. But you talk about

Bambi

's unbearable violence

in your book, how it disturbed him, and yesterday you made big headlines about it.

Bambi

… horrible.

And when I said it, the public reacted by showing that they knew exactly what she was talking about.

Much of my generation was very traumatized by the film.

Everyone remembers it.

Let me make the joke that you should identify more with Tambor, because of the barrel of a revolver.

You are emphasizing that.

You talk a lot in your

film Meditations

about

Deliverance,

John Boorman's shocking film, with the savage rape of one of the leading men.

The analysis of that film is one of my favorite parts of the book.

Your summary, “what happens in the forest stays in the forest”, is great.

Some of us who saw the film were also too young, although not as young as you, we were introduced to archery by the character of Burt Reynolds.

How curious, maybe you got over it like that.

Tarantino fans at the entrance to the Coliseum theater in Barcelona before the filmmaker's talk on Sunday.

MASSIMILIANO MINOCRI

How did you come up with the idea of killing Hitler in

Inglourious Basterds

Good question.

I was writing the script and I got stuck.

He was thinking: "Okay, it looks like the bastards and the resistance are going to get their goal, now what?"

I didn't know how to go on and no idea came to me.

So I thought: “What if I just screw Hitler and I kill him?”

I said to myself: "Can I do it?"

And I answered myself: “Sure, it's my movie, I can do whatever I want”.

So I wrote the idea down on a piece of paper, and seeing it the next morning, I decided, "Here I go."

Apart from the fact that you rewrite the history of Hitler by making him die in a French cinema instead of the Führerbunker in Berlin in the middle of a massacre of Nazis that surpasses that of the Dirty Dozen

by a landslide

, you had a very good actor playing you, Martin Wuttke.

Without a doubt it is, a great Hitler, even with a cape.

How do you achieve the climate of tension in those scenes of yours that are so characteristic, like the one at the La Louisiane tavern in

Inglourious Basterds

that ends in shot salad?

I don't know how to explain it.

I have a talent for it.

It's easy for me to create those situations where the characters start talking and things fall into place and there's a climax.

You throw a ball to the actors and they catch it.

What is your favorite tense moment?

In the movies?

The one with the farm at the beginning of

Inglourious Basterds

With the Nazi officer Hans Landa talking to the owner of the farm that hides Jews under the ground.

And the tense scene of the strudel and whipped cream from the same film?

Hahaha, that one too.

Humor plays an important role in your creation.

An unforgettable scene in that regard is that of the pathetic Klu Klux Klan horsemen in

Django Unchained

By the way, have you seen any procession with hoods these days?

No, but I know that they have nothing to do with the KKK.

Was the scene with the riders improvised?

Not at all, it is written in the script, the entire dialogue, from beginning to end.

The goal was to make it look that fresh.

In your films there are two anthological moments of dance.

The one with the twist from

Pulp Fiction,

and the one with the dance of Mr. Rubio by Michael Madsen in

Reservoir Dogs
.

Do you have a special interest in dance?

A dance sequence can work very well in a movie, but the two cases you mention are very different.

The one with

Reservoir Dogs

is strange, a torture dance, the one with John and Uma is real dance.

And then there was John Travolta!

In the book you confirm your esteem for Spanish cinema.

His assessment of Matador

is somewhat surprising ,

since here it has never been considered the best of Almodóvar.

I'm not saying it's the best movie, but I like it a lot.

Last night at the bar talking we remembered that

Orson Welles also liked

Matador , who also highly valued Antonio Isasi's films.

What is very relevant is what surprised us in the eighties in the US, when the cinema was so timorous, scenes as brave as that of Almodóvar's extorero masturbating with slasher movies [of murderous psychopaths

]

De Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi quotes in his book

A summer to kill

I am a fan of Isasi.

And that movie is a revenge-themed genre, which I talk about a lot.

A great Christopher Mitchum was coming out.

I was riding an Ossa enduro, a very popular all-terrain motorcycle at the time.

Did you become famous for the movie?

It was before, a legendary motorcycle.

What relationship does it have with the platforms?

I don't watch Netflix.

At home I prefer to watch movies on DVD than on platforms.