Quentin Tarantino showed up at last night's showing of The Hateful Eight and did a Q&A

WARNING: SOME SPOILERS

Quentin Tarantino showed up at Intermission in a green toque and an Inglourious Basterds bomber jacket, sat in the back of the theater, watched the second half of Hateful Eight in the back row of the theater, and then gave a 25 or so minute Q&A with the audience afterward. Quite the surprise.

Below are the questions audience members asked, some Hateful Eight SPOILERS, and Quentin’s answers.

So what was it like getting Ennio Morricone out of retirement to do the score for the film?

Well, he isn’t really in retirement, he mostly works with his friend on Italian films, but he isn’t really retired. I asked him about it, he said yes, and that was pretty much that. So when I went to meet with him, he thought I had not started shooting yet, but actually I had already shot the movie, and he thought he wouldn’t be able to do the score, just because of the time, I was like, well I need it in a month (haha). He said he could do the theme, and maybe some little variations on the theme. So, for this, he just worked right from the script, we had it translated into Italian for him, he didn’t see any of what I had shot, and he came up with the theme from the script. He said that he liked the script, but that his wife LOVED it, and I think that his wife loving it so much helped haha. So he called me after he sat down to write the theme, and he said “I think I am going to be able to give you more music than I expected,” and he gave the theme and all this other stuff he wrote based on the script that I was then able to use throughout, he knows that I like being able to do that, finding little bits to use here and there, rather than it being like “okay this is for this scene and this is for that scene”.

How do you deal with adversity?
Well, you have to have hope, right, because otherwise what’s the point? But mostly, it’s been a long time since I have really dealt with adversity, so you should probably ask someone else that question. I am one of the truly lucky ones!

A quick Zack note: The above is my favorite answer that he gave. It cracked me up that someone asked him about adversity, because he is QT and he basically gets to do what he wants now, making the films that he wants, and has been largely able to do that for like twenty years.

How much did you borrow from John Ford? Was this an homage to him?
Obviously anyone whose movie starts out with 30 minutes in a stagecoach probably owes something to John Ford (haha), but this wasn’t really an homage to him, it was just a part of what I was trying to do.

What advice do you have for young filmmakers?
Watch a lot of movies. Figure out what you like and what you don’t. Then try and figure out what you have to add to this, whether it’s a point of view, it’s a way of telling the story, whatever. Then go out and do it.

How was the way you intended to use the violence to tell your story different in Kill Bill vs. Hateful?
Well, in Kill Bill that was more of a straight homage to a genre, things like Sasori and Lady Snowblood, in KB the story is told through that violence, that is how we learn about the characters, through the set pieces. In Hateful, I wanted to play with the expectation about that violence, the audience knows it is coming but doesn’t know when or how. So the violence is these shorter bursts, but I think they have a good impact.

Was blood a line item in the budget? If so, how much was it?
Yes, it definitely was. Any time I am working with Jake Garber from the Walking Dead, you can be sure that is a line item in his budget. And it’s not just regular fake blood either, it’s that Quentin Tarantino fake blood! Extra dark and gooey. (laughs)

Was it difficult in the conditions to shoot the 70mm? Were you worried about that in the cold?
Well, I thought that going in, but our first camera guy, Gregor Tavenner, was just amazing. Gregor kept everything rolling so smoothly, we never had a problem because of the weather or elements or anything. He was also responsible for us feeling like we could just make the decision to use those focus pulls in the wide format. We thought we would have problems with the film in the cold weather, but that didn’t turn out to be the case.

You have said you have a cap on the films you want to make, what do you think you want to say with these last few?
Well, I want them to be good. haha. I don’t want to make bad ones. I want to end up making films that are just right, and then step away from it. But it will take a while. It takes about 3 or so years for each film, about a year to write, about a year to shoot, and about a year to go around selling it. So it’s going to be a while before I reach that cap.

Did you consider doing this as a play? Or writing plays in general?
I considered doing that, actually, for this film. I thought it would be fun to maybe do something different and taking it to Broadway, make it this Broadway production, and then maybe turn it into a film afterwards. There is some interesting stuff to use there for a play. If I were to show it now as a play, I would start with Chapter 5, so we see the bad guys come and blow everyone away, and then the rest of the characters would show up two at a time. Because you only get that mystery once, and now everyone knows what the mystery is because of the film, so it would make sense to tweak it like that. So now you know how that might look if I do it on Broadway!

So there were also some very film-like elements to this story that I just thought would work. I think of the tension in these scenes like a rubber band, and in this case the “mystery” is what causes that tension. I know that rubber band is going to snap, and the audience does, and then it becomes a question of how and when it snaps. I wanted to bring that mystery back to the movies, because I hadn’t seen something like that done in a while, I thought it would be fun to have the tension be like a classic Agatha Christie “Okay so who poisoned the coffee pot?” thing.

What went into the decision to shoot on 70mm, even though much of the film is inside in one room?
Well, first, I loved the outdoor snow shots. I also don’t think that 70mm and large format has to be just like used to film the pyramids or travelogues, I think there is some benefit to being able to see so much on the screen, particularly in a set piece where you are kind of keeping track of the different characters and where they are, even if you aren’t quite sure that you are supposed to be doing that at first. And the format allows for that. I think it can make “smaller” scenes much more intimate. It also makes for an interesting audience experience, where the people in the first few rows are like IN the movie, but then in the back few rows, it’s more of like a “ok this is framed differently than I am used to seeing” and it’s more of an artistic feeling, like watching it from afar.

What was your favorite shot in the film?
Tough call, but probably the last shot, where Samuel and Walt were making the decision to hang Daisy, and we are kind of switching between them, and they have these empty Peckinpah like laughs. It just felt right. I was watching it as we shot it, and just knew that this was the end of the film, like I was watching the end of the film as it was happening.

Did you know you wanted to end on the Lincoln Letter all along?
The way it was written in the script, Mannix was supposed to read it just like John did earlier in the film, kind of nodding his way through, but not reading aloud, and then he gets to the end, says “yep, Mary Todd, that’s a nice touch,” just like John, and then the cat from earlier in the story jumps on the bed. So the cat had been like in hiding all along, and then it’s just this reminder that we saw the cat earlier. After having seen everything and filmed almost everything, though, my gut was to have Walt read it aloud. I had him do that, and it just worked, and, as I was watching it, I just knew that it was the end. That is probably also my favorite ending of any of my movies. It’s early, and I have to sit with it for a bit, but that is how I feel about it right now.

How did you come to pick Jennifer Jason Leigh for the Daisy role?
I actually went on this little mini film festival of watching Jennifer Jason Leigh films, from the 90’s, like Georgia, and Single White Female, and Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, and I just thought she was so great in everything, I thought she would be able to really get the character of Daisy, and be able to play the whole thing, leading up to that last scene. It wasn’t like I could have actors just come in and read for that last scene, because there was so much that led up to it, where she is kind of hiding in plain sight throughout the film, where we think she is kind of crazy, like a Manson girl before there were Manson girls, but then we find out that she was crazy like a fox, and she is the leader of this gang, and is really nasty, and has been playing this part all along. So there is this whole buildup and the actor needed to be able to play all the parts along for that buildup, and then also get the scene at the end where we see who she really is.

Was Jennifer Lawrence really considered for the Daisy role?
Yep, I talked with her, very very early on about the part, and thought she would have been good for it, but she was busy, and that was pretty much that. I’d love to work with her though, she is like a young Bette Davis, I think anyone that gets to work with her is just lucky.

Did you write the script with specific actors in mind for all the characters or was it cast afterwards?
Well, in this case, I had a lot of these actors in mind for the characters. I knew it would be this sort of single setting thing and I wanted to work with actors I had worked in the past which I knew would work. So I talked with Robert Rodriguez and he said I had to work with Damian Bechir, and I wanted to do that, so that’s how that happened. Channing and Jennifer’s were more open in my mind when I was writing, they just worked out to fill those roles. Sometimes that’s not the way it works, like with Hans Landa, Cristophe Waltz’ character in IB, as I started writing the character I didn’t have anyone in mind, and I didn’t realize he was a linguistic genius until I put him in all these different situations and he was able to converse fluently and flawlessly, which just seemed so right, and then I had to go about trying to find an actor that could do that!

This was obviously an extraordinary experience. I had this weird passing jokey thought about QT showing up just because the 70mm thing made it seem like a special event, but I certainly didn’t expect it to actually happen.

When we walked up to the Hollywood Theater, about 30 or so minutes early to the showing, there was already a long line outside the theater in the chilly December Portland drizzle (tm), and I was surprised by the line (but not the drizzle), and also that the showing was sold out. 6pm on a Tuesday is usually when I go see movies so the theater is relatively empty and I don’t have to deal with a full house, and it was day 4 of the round-the-clock 70mm showings.

When he showed up at the Intermission, I heard this loud cheer in the lobby, and someone said “Whoa, he is here. He’s here. Crazy.” And then I walked out to the lobby, and there he was, kind of stuffed into his Inglourious Basterds bomber and a green toque. He then took a seat in the furthest row back in the theater, and the film started rolling again. There was definitely a palpable buzz in the theater for the second half, as people know “he” was there, and I think it caused the audience to up their game on the laughing/cheering/responding part of the experience.

The Q&A was, as I look back on it, pretty great. I was hoping someone would ask him about some of the controversial decisions in the film, but it wasn’t really that type of vibe, the questions were softer in nature, and that probably fit the situation. There were only a few weirdo questions (The last question was: I like it when you make cameos in your movies, are you going to make cameos in your movies again? QT’s answer was basically “Yes, when there are more than 9 total characters in the film I make.”) I thought it was interesting to hear him explain some of the thinking that went into his decisions on this specific film, and to glean a little about the combination of technical decisions and gut feelings which he uses create the end result we see on the screen.

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I loved reading this. I thought it was a great movie, although I may be biased because I love almost all of Tarantino's movies.