‘The Movie Critic’: Quentin Tarantino Reveals First Details, Pre-Production To Start Next Month
We’ve known for a couple of months that Quentin Tarantino has now completed the script for his tenth and final film, titled The Movie Critic. Now, after much speculation on its plot and lead characters, the writer-director behind Pulp Fiction finally opens up about what it’s about.
In a new interview with Deadline, Tarantino explained that the film is indeed about a movie critic in the 1970s, but not, as many had suggested, about The New Yorker‘s Pauline Kael. The original report by The Hollywood Reporter said it would have a female lead, but Tarantino refuted that, saying it will be about a 35-year-old male critic writing film reviews for a porn magazine titled The Popstar Pages.
The story is set in California in 1977, “and is based on a guy who really lived, but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag.” Apparently this was inspired by an experience of his own, as one of his first jobs as a teenager was loading porn magazines into a vending machine and emptying quarters out of the cash dispenser. As Tarantino told Deadline, “All the other stuff was too skanky to read but then there was this porno rag that had a really interesting movie page.”
Director Quentin Tarantino poses on the red carpet for his Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony at the 16th edition of the Rome Film Fest in Rome, Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)
When asked if he was a known movie critic, Tarantino replied with some details about the writers’ life, which inspired the character in his script and whom he did some research on:
“Well, he was known if you read the Popstar Pages!!
He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic. I think he was a very good critic. He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle [Robert DeNiro’s character in Taxi Driver] might be if he were a film critic.
Think about Travis’s diary entries. But the porno rag critic was very, very funny. He was very rude, you know. He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his shit was really funny. He was as rude as hell.
He wrote like he was 55 but he was only in his early to mid-30s. He died in his late thirties. It wasn’t clear for a while but now I’ve done some more research and I think it was it was complications due to alcoholism.”
As far as the cast goes, nobody has joined the ensemble yet. Pre-production is set to begin next month, so it’s possible that within the next few weeks we’ll start hearing about some names attached to it. A rumor from a few weeks ago had Cate Blanchett possibly circling the project, though it’s clear she will not be the lead, if true. Not only because of the character’s gender, but Blanchett is also out of the age range, as are two of his regulars, Brad Pitt and Leo DiCaprio.
In fact, according to Tarantino, The Movie Critic will have a new lead for him, meaning it will be someone he hasn’t worked with before. Of course, we know that he is a writer who likes to picture someone saying the lines when he’s typing away, and when pressed by Deadline, he did confirm that he has someone in mind, though no approach has been made yet. But he will definitely be American, because that is apparently a huge problem in the industry for him today:
“Obviously, nothing against the Brits, but we’re living in a really weird time now. I think when people look back on this era of cinema and it’s just all these British actors pretending to be Americans and all these Australian actors pretending to be Americans, it’s like phantoms. Nobody is acting in their own voice.
By the way, I’m not being xenophobic. The Brits would have a hell of a lot more problems if a bunch of American actors came over there with their Dick Van Dyke [Mary Poppins] accents playing famous Brits. They don’t want to see that shit.”
The Movie Critic is aiming at a fall production start, but of course, and as with everything these days, that will depend on whether SAG-AFTRA goes on strike or not. No studio has been announced to be financing the project, but the script surely was or is going to be the subject of a heated bidding war as executives fight each other to work with the iconic filmmaker one last time.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
