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The Good Lord Bird Is The Best Tarantino Show (The Director Didn’t Make)
The Good Lord Bird is the best Quentin Tarantino project that the iconic director never made. Currently airing on Showtime, the western TV miniseries shares many similarities with the work of writer/director Tarantino and viewers would be forgiven for thinking he had a hand in its production.
Based on the 2013 novel of the same name by James McBride, The Good Lord Bird tells the story of Henry Shackleford (Joshua Caleb Johnson), a young slave during the Bleeding Kansas era, who encounters real-world abolitionist John Brown (Ethan Hawke) and becomes embroiled in the famous raid at Harpers Ferry - thus kick-starting the American Civil War. McBride’s novel garnered favorable comparisons to Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained upon release, and the television adaptation goes even further; replicating a lot of the director’s trademark style, on top of McBride’s already-comparable narrative and dark sense of humor.
Just how close is The Good Lord Bird to Tarantino’s Django Unchained? Well, they both utilize a loose chapter structure; both share a similar setting, time period, and characters; both feature anachronistic soundtracks, and both center around race-based revenge plots. They even share a “disguise” motif - with Django (Jamie Foxx) disguised as a slaver in the middle section of Django Unchained, and Henry disguised as a girl for much of The Good Lord Bird.
The characters of King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) and John Brown are also comparable; seemingly “enlightened” White men who nevertheless exploit slaves to aid in their own, violent causes. On one hand, these men are fighting for Black rights; while, on the other, their methods often result in Black deaths. While Django Unchained deals with this dichotomy in its subtext, The Good Lord Bird - crucially - brings its deconstruction of the “white savior” trope front and center, thus presenting a more complex vision of the Antebellum South, befitting the miniseries format.
Curiously, Tarantino actually discussed an idea for his own John Brown project back in 2009 - which he had planned to write, direct, and star in as one of his final movies. Speaking on The Charlie Rose Show, Tarantino said: “My favorite hero in American history is John Brown. He’s my favorite American who ever lived. He basically single-handedly started the road to end slavery and the fact that he killed people to do it. He decided ‘If we start spilling White blood, then they’re going to start getting the idea.’”
After Inglourious Basterds and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it’s not difficult to imagine Tarantino’s take on the John Brown story: complete with a cathartic, fairytale ending wherein the raid at Harpers Ferry is a bloody success - contrary to historical fact. While the idea of Tarantino playing a lead role in one of his films would likely result in eye-rolls from a number of critics, those who remember From Dusk Till Dawn will recall that QT does low-key crazy really well - a crucial element of the John Brown legend.
With the director set to hang up his boots after ten feature films (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood being his ninth if Kill Bill is counted as one, complete feature), only time will tell whether Tarantino’s take on the John Brown story will ever see the light of day. The Good Lord Bird’s existence makes the project increasingly unlikely, and for good reason: it already tells the same story, and - thus far - tells it very well. Rather than feeling derivative of Tarantino’s western epics, The Good Lord Bird sits alongside them - the middle chapter in an unofficial trilogy that begins with Django Unchained and ends with The Hateful Eight. All three projects create a new dialogue about race relations in America (and, indeed, the world) while remaining blissfully unshackled by the subject’s usual, dusty trappings.
