Quentin Tarantino spills some interesting new details about The Movie Critic. Over his illustrious career, the auteur has written and directed nine feature films, by his own count, the latest of which was Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and he plans to retire from directing after his tenth. Tarantino‘s tenth and final film, titled The Movie Critic, was revealed this past March and since it’s set in 1977, it was initially speculated its subject would be the legendary reviewer Pauline Kael. Tarantino debunked that theory about The Movie Critic, saying it’s instead based on a real but unknown male critic.
Now, in a new interview with Deadline, Tarantino is continuing to reveal details about The Movie Critic. The writer-director reiterated it won’t be about Kael, but based on a man who wrote for an unnamed pornography magazine in 1977 California. One of Tarantino‘s first jobs as a teenager was loading magazines into a vending machine, and he discovered one of them “had a really interesting movie page.” Read what Tarantino shared about his movie’s subject below:
[The Movie Critic] is based on a guy who really lived, but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag. All the other stuff was too skanky to read but then there was this porno rag that had a really interesting movie page. He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic. I think he was a very good critic. He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic. Think about Travis’s diary entries.
But the porno rag critic was very, very funny. He was very rude, you know. He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his shit was really funny. He was as rude as hell. He wrote like he was 55 but he was only in his early to mid-30s. He died in his late thirties. It wasn’t clear for a while but now I’ve done some more research and I think it was it was complications due to alcoholism.
Everything Tarantino Just Revealed About The Movie Critic
Tarantino didn’t reveal the name of the unknown critic or the pornography magazine he wrote for, but in The Movie Critic, the fictional magazine will be called “The Popstar Pages.” It sounds like the movie could be quite risqué, and based on the fact the critic died in his late thirties from complications due to alcoholism, this could also give Tarantino‘s tenth and final film a tragic tinge. Not much is known about its actual story, though Tarantino revealed it won’t be a revenge story, breaking a long-standing tradition for the filmmaker for the first time since 1997’s Jackie Brown.
No one has been cast in The Movie Critic yet, though Tarantino did acknowledge that a few of his frequent collaborators, Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, are too old to play the lead part, which is around 35 years old. Instead, he plans to cast a new leading man he’s never worked with before, and he already has someone in mind who he thinks would do a great job, but he’s still undecided. Tarantino also reluctantly ruled out the possibility of casting a British actor for the part.
Tarantino, who primarily lives in Tel Aviv, plans to relocate to Los Angeles in June to start “pre-pre production” on The Movie Critic, which includes continuing the casting search. This seems to line up with the initial report that he is planning to shoot the film this coming fall. Since The Movie Critic seems to be Tarantino‘s final film, there will be a ton of talented thespians lining up for their last chance to work with the inimitable auteur.