Tarantino's Black List: 5 Directors He Can't Stand
Tarantino is not shy when it comes to talking about other iconic directors.
Quentin Tarantino is known not only as a director and screenwriter, but also as an avid cinephile. His professional background did not come from a film school, but from a video store.
It is not surprising that Tarantino likes to discuss the work of his colleagues – and sometimes in the harshest of words.
John Ford
Ford's westerns are classics of the genre. Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight would be unthinkable without his movies. But that hasn't stopped Tarantino from criticizing Ford.
Quentin admitted that Ford is not his Western hero, and that he even hates him. He believes that Ford's movies show a perverted morality that seems all the more wrong today.
Ford also starred in the infamous movie The Birth of a Nation, where he played a member of the KKK, which also became a factor in Tarantino's dislike for Ford.
David Lynch
Commenting on Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Tarantino said:
"I saw Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me at Cannes, David Lynch has disappeared so far up his own ass that I have no desire to see another David Lynch movie until I hear something different."
Obviously, Tarantino scolds Lynch for the dense and incomprehensible surreal imagery in his movies. Ouch for Lynch fans out there...
Jean-Luc Godard
Even the main director of the French New Wave has not escaped Tarantino's criticism. In many ways they have a similar destiny and it's easy to find a lot of overlaps in their creative methods.
Tarantino even constantly references Godard in his movies. In particular, Pulp Fiction's famous dance is taken from Band of Outsiders.
The director admitted that he was initially inspired by his work, but not a big fan anymore because he had outgrew it.
Wes Craven
With Tarantino's love of blood and violence, he couldn't get past Scream, and he's not a big fan of its director Wes Craven.
In an interview with Vulture, he honestly expressed his opinion about what Craven had filmed:
"I actually didn't care for Wes Craven's direction of it. I thought he was the iron chain attached to its ankle that kept it earthbound and stopped it from going to the moon."
Alfred Hitchcock
It turns out that Tarantino loves the works of Hitchcock's followers more than Hitchcock himself, as the director said that Hitchcock's followers were much deeper and more successful in revealing his ideas.
For example, Quentin admitted that he loves the movies of Brian De Palma from the Hitchcock period. But the suspense king himself?
It's a "nah" from Quentin.