If there’s one movie in Quentin Tarantino‘s career that messed with his mojo, well, then that would be his Monte Hellman homage, Death Proof, which was the second title in the filmmaker’s 2007 double feature, Grindhouse, with Robert Rodriguez.
With a running time of 191 minutes, Grindhouse, was meant to be a celebration of the exploitation cinema the two renegade directors grew up on. Rodriguez’s Planet Terror ran first in Grindhouse, followed by a series of faux trailers (one of them, Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving actually got made in 2023), before Death Proof played. The $67 million Weinstein Co. cinematic stunt didn’t work, opening to No. 4 at the Easter weekend box office to $11.5 million.
In a sit down tonight with Hollywood Reporter’s Scott Feinberg at the Burbank International Film Festival, Tarantino confessed that bomb “shook my confidence on the opening weekend.” Tarantino was onstage at the Burbank Marriot Convention Center where he was receiving the fest’s career Vanguard Award.
“You work really hard on a movie and the opening weekend happens; people either go see it or they don’t. At the time, they didn’t,” said the 2x Oscar winner. Because of their successes, Tarantino with Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill movies, and Rodriguez with the Spy Kids films and Sin City, “we thought people would follow us anywhere, but they didn’t follow us there.”
“At the time, it felt like the moviegoing audience was my girlfriend and my girlfriend broke up with me,” Tarantino exclaimed.
He sought out the sage advice of his filmmaking mentors, Tony Scott and Steven Spielberg, who’ve had their fair share of box office mishaps. Tarantino said that both essentially consoled him: “Did you make the movie you wanted to make? Yes. Are you happy with the movie you made? Yes. Well, there’s a lot of people who can’t say that. Just think about how lucky you are to work in the business that you work in, and you’re able to make the movies you want to; sometimes the public gets them, sometimes they don’t.”
However, Spielberg had some extra wisdom: “‘Quentin, you’re been pretty lucky. But the next film that’s a hit, you’re going to enjoy that more than all your other hits put together, because you’ve been here now. You know what it’s like to have a flop. The next time you have a hit, it’s going to be easy.”
Asked tonight whether his tenth directorial would still be his last, Tarantino answered, “That’s the plan, we’ll see.”
The director provided no indication what his next big screen project would be after scrapping The Critic back in April 2024. In a conversation with Elvis Mitchell at Sundance, Tarantino teased he was writing a play.
“If it’s a fiasco I probably won’t turn it into a movie. But if it’s a smash hit? It might be my last movie,” he said back in January.
Tonight’s conversation canvassed Tarantino’s career from his days watching movies in Westchester, CA to Harvey Keitel throwing his support behind Reservoir Dogs, to Bruce Willis’ lobbying for the role of Vinny Vega.
At the end of the chat, the mayor of El Segundo, Chris Pimental, declared that today, Sept. 28, will be known as “Quentin Tarantino Day.” The filmmaker spent part of his childhood in El Segundo soon after moving from his Knoxville, Tennessee birthplace.
The post How Quentin Tarantino Bounced Back After ‘Death Proof’ Tanked At The Box Office; Filmmaker Honored By Burbank Int’l Film Fest appeared first on Deadline.
