Quentin Tarantino Remaking ’70s Classic Movies
Quentin Tarantino has gone on record countless times, stating that his upcoming film, The Movie Critic, will be his last. Though we don’t know much about the plot of his tenth and final film, we do know that it will be set in 1977 Los Angeles, and center on an unnamed movie critic who writes reviews for a porno magazine. One new development, however, comes straight from the mouth of writer, Paul Schrader, saying that the iconic director will re-shoot the ending of the 1977 film Rolling Thunder, and incorporate it into The Movie Critic.
The Movie Critic’s primary antagonist will be a loner and an outcast, which is very much in line with the story told in Rolling Thunder. Schrader has in the past described Rolling Thunder as being in the same spirit of Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, which he also wrote. Whether Quentin Tarantino will borrow elements from the Robert De Niro film as well remains to be seen, but its clear that Schrader’s characters have inspired Tarantino’s own filmmaking throughout his legendary career.
But the version of Rolling Thunder that we’ll see in Quentin Tarantino’s The Movie Critic won’t necessarily be a frame-for-frame recreation of the film’s theatrical cut. Schrader mentioned that the reworked version will be inspired by his original screenplay before it was rewritten by the studio, and presented as the watered-down version that we’re familiar with. In other words, we will see a more unfiltered version of whatever scenes Tarantino decides to recreate.
Sources speculate that Quentin Tarantino will be borrowing heavily from other iconic films from the same era. Given Tarantino’s outspoken affinity for 1970s filmmaking, it’s only fitting that his final film will be a retrospective of sorts.
And when you look at some of the lists that Quentin Tarantino compiled over the years, it’s clear that there are a number of films from the 1970s that he holds in high regard. Among the titles that Tarantino has celebrated are films like Sisters, Lady Snowblood, Dark Star, Switchblade Sisters, Smokey and the Bandit, and, of course, Rolling Thunder.
In a very telling 2016 interview at the Lumière Festival, Quentin Tarantino stated that he loved the artistic freedom that filmmakers from the 1970s had. By now, we’re all familiar with Tarantino’s willingness to push the envelope with his own filmmaking, so it makes sense that he’d look decades back to a time that he believes to be the pinnacle of artistic expression.
In addition to past interviews, Quentin Tarantino talks about his love for 1970s filmmaking in his 2022 book, Cinema Speculation. His 400-page book is a collection of essays that take a deep dive into American films from his favorite decade and highlights the wealth of knowledge he possesses in the form of film criticism, film theory, and personal anecdotes from his own life as they relate to the content he’s dissecting.
The Movie Critic will begin production sometime next year. As of this writing, the only acting talent attached to the upcoming movie is Paul Walter Hauser, who is most well-known for his portrayal of the titular character in Clint Eastwood’s Richard Jewell.
Source: Le Monde
