Why Tarantino Will Only Make 10 Movies

MUSIC (via Epidemic Sound)

Experia, “No Gravity, No Certainty”
The Devil’s Sway, “The Shame Is On You”
Terin Ector, “What We Got”
Golden Age Radio, “Caught Up In The Limo”
Howard Harper Barnes, “Life In Pieces”
Arc De Soleil, “Lonely Party”

[itayeldad]

Tarantino is 59, and only recently became a father. He'll be 75 when his son graduates hs. Hes a millionaire who will continue to make money from royalties after his retirement. Hes not only free to do whatever he wants in Hollywood, hes also free to do whatever he wants with his life, and I think he'd rather raise the family he started very late in life than make 10 more movies

[Lanosrep]

Sure he'll end with 10, but he's already voiced his desire to move into writing novels, and working on theatre and Television. Let's not forget that he now has two children who he wants to see grow up, he doesn't want to be doing this for the rest of his life is it means a detriment to his personal life

[benwasserman]

I mean, the idea definitely adds to Tarantino’s exaggerated mystique. His other films are already cultural entities unto themselves, so closing the book early lets him end that legacy on his own terms.

[fritzwalter]

Tarantino will direct Fast and Furious 10 as his finale, you heard it here first.

[crookfordacelington]

The Nerdwriter notification hits different

[thejesuschrist]

love your work. going to get your book.

[joez]

I think also when you make too many movies, even if they're all good, people will still only select a handful to talk about. I've heard that every Ingmar Bergman movie is great, but I can only take peoples word for it because I have only seen 6 of his 27 movies. There is no way I'm gonna watch that many movies from one director, I simply don't have the time. I've seen all of Tarantino's movies and can say for certain that I think they're all great. I think he wants to be remembered like Stanley Kubrick or Tarkovsky. A short but diverse filmography that is worth seeing in its entirety.

[Skillseboy]

I understand Tarantino's careful consideration of leaving a legacy he is proud of, but it makes me wonder what he will do next. For a very passionate and hard-working filmmaker like himself, I wonder if he can enjoy sipping cocktails for the rest of his life and not create anything to bring out to the public. Who knows! Congratulations on the release of your book!

[naheemquattlebaum]

Actually this is perfect timing. The landscape of films is changing and leaving after 10 films gives Tarantino a chance to not be affected by the new changes in Hollywood (ie. Your film turning into a Netflix release)

[mementomori]

Man I love Tarantino I would love to see thousands of movies made by him but retiring at the 10th movie is the smartest move by him not only money wise since he would still earn a lot even during retirement but also artistic wise. An artist has a limited amount of good art he can bring to the world. Once this limited amount ends it doesn’t make sense to keep going. I think Tarantino is close to the limit.

[usmccoop]

Quentin alluded to "Kill Bill" being 2 movies & if we consider "Death Proof" a movie then, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" was his final film. Sorry folks that's 10 movies already... 😢

[morpheusdorpheusorpheus]

Really proud of you for finishing your book man. Been watching your channel for years now. You and Tony Zhao are some of the originators of the Youtube video essay, and you set a great standard that so many have imitated. Congrats on your success and influence. Can't wait to read the book!

[z-beeblebrox]

I sincerely believe he'll never actually hold true to this promise. The promise's value isn't in limiting the chances for overstaying one's welcome, it's in marketing. When he first declared that self-imposed limitation back in the late 90s, it automatically made every subsequent Tarantino trailer intrinsically prestigious. Not "a film by Tarantino", but "The *Xth* film by Tarantino", it's like when brands make special numbered collectors editions, but for movies. That's its value, and it's worked quite well for him. More importantly, people are gonna do what they're gonna do. It's easy to make promises that only future you has to keep, but once movie 10 is in the books and it's a few years later and he's at home with some idea he thinks would make a great film...what's he gonna do, go "Oh well, I promised to never make a movie again, guess I'll just throw it in the vault"? I doubt that. He's already demonstrated his willingness to bend these rules - had he made that Star Trek movie he pitched, he said outright it wasn't going to count. Why? Why not? I mean hell, he treats Kill Bill as one movie despite releasing as two and "The Whole Bloody Affair" still not being made available to the public nearly 20 years later. The rules don't matter, they just make his oeuvre feel special.

[intellectgrime]

Congratulations on publishing your first book! Love your video essays and excited to read more of your writing :)

[liamweber]

Shutter Island a minor? I think it's great

[PrincipiaDeCinema]

While it is certainly an arguable take, many Hitchcock aficionados consider Frenzy to be among his strongest works. I am teaching Hitchcock soon, and my course includes ten films, The 39 Steps, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Vertigo, North By Northwest, Psycho, and Frenzy.

Frenzy is also one of Hitchcock's four "doubles films, " the others being Shadow of a Doubt, Strangers on a Train and Psycho, and one of my professors showed us those four films for discussion in a film theory class when I was young. He thought showing us all four films was important. You could argue that Frenzy is the least of those four films, and it might be, but not by much.

A better example of a director who you could cut their late works off would be Billy Wilder. I show ten Wilder films in my Wilder course, and I stop with The Apartment, even though Wilder made nine films after 1960. Part of this has to do with the limitations of ten-week quarters where I teach, but I find Wilder's body of work more impressive before 1960 than after by a good margin.

The good thing about Tarantino having ten films means if I ever teach a Tarantino course I could show all of his films. However, I find his body of work as a whole to be very uninteresting, despite my admiration, and lack thereof, of certain individual films. Tarantino' career resembled Kubrick's, in that he carefully chose his projects based in the perception he wanted to create of himself as an artist.

However, the differences between Tarantino and Kubrick are more telling than the similarities. Kubrick's films as a whole have a very specific voice, coupled with an interesting intellectual obsession with dehumanization, war, and man's capacity for evil against his fellow man. It is present from his first film to his last film, even though his first two films are weak, and Lolita is a bit of a misfire. Kubrick also disowned Spartacus, which was work for hire, something Tarantino never had to do in his career.

While Tarantino has made nine films, ten if you count Kill Bill as two movies, his body of work is not as intellectually compelling as Kubrick's. The most persistent theme is revenge, but all of his movies approach the subject in a different way. I don't mean how Hitchcock's movies approach guilt in a different way. While Hitchcock used that single theme to craft 53 very different films, the worldview of the director is obvious. The only variation is in how he manipulates the audience to question their own view of guilt.

Tarantino by contrast doesn't have very complex ideas about revenge. The theme is incidental in his first three films, because they are all crime films, and that theme is going to be there if you really look for it. Pulp Fiction will always be remembered as the most important film of the 90s, but it is very atypical of Tarantino's work as a whole. The rest of his movies have revenge as the main theme, but in most cases, he placates his audiences' views toward revenge, and never challenges them. Only the endings of Kill Bill and The Hateful Eight deliver something challenging when it comes to revenge, and the views expressed about revenge in Tarantino's movies are so inconsistent that I am sometimes tempted to consider anything intellectually meaningful I get out of his films as unintentional.

Tarantino is a great writer of dialogue, and good at creating memorable scenes and characters. He also has a good eye, though many of his most striking visuals in his movies are lifted from other directors. My overall opinion though is that his films are usually fun but often intellectually vacuous, and he lacks discipline as a storyteller, which is why most of his films are so episodic. I think Django Unchained is his best constructed screenplay, but I'm of the contrarian opinion that Inglorious Basterds is a muddled mess of a movie, with three brilliant scenes and some great performances. I meet many Tarantino fans and enthusiasts, but few who can articulate what makes a Tarantino film uniquely interesting other than its "coolness." I find Tarantino's obsession with his body of work as one connected canon to be ironic, because while he has had many successes as a filmmaker, providing an interesting body of work to present as a single artistic statement is not one of them. In fact, I would say he fails more than almost any writer-director in particular.

The director I can think of who has a body of work where each movie is a piece of a greater statement is David Cronenberg. I have never taught a Cronenberg course, though I've thought about it many times, because I can't reduce his body of work to ten films, and now he has twenty. Even the "duds" like M. Butterfly and Map to the Stars are fascinating failures that could have only been made by Cronenberg. Even the "works for hire" like Fast Company, The Dead Zone, and A History of Violence feel like films that could have been made by nobody else.

The irony is the reason Cronenberg succeeds at being a singular auteur with a body of work more important than any single work is he doesn't give a shit about posterity. While Cronenberg is obviously influenced by Antonioni and Bergman, he feels no need to set his career in some kind of cinematic tradition. While he makes films with an audience in mind, he is not there to entertain or earn the admiration of the audience, but to challenge and transform them. In fact, if Cronenberg read this YouTube comment he would probably not even find it interesting, let alone care about it. Tarantino though, would likely go on a half hour rant about how I don't understand his genius.

[ewan]

shutter island stays underrated to this day. incredible, arguably perfect thriller

[totoroutes]

He is currently directing a romantic comedy Christmas story set in present day Manhattan. He stars in it as a data scientist youtuber who falls in Love with someone who he later discovers is his social media rival. Scenes of the two characters ice skating, picnic in park, sunset at Brooklyn bridge etc, heated passionate scenes. tears heartbreak.

[BananaJoe]

If shutter island is minor Scorsese, then Death Proof is minor Tarantino.

[procrastinator]

While I'm not asserting he'll do it, I have a tiny hope that, after the tenth, Tarantino will come out with an 11th, very late in life; kind of an "epilogue"-film, I guess? Admittedly this IS wishful thinking on my part. I just love his films and also never want him to stop.