After shooting down reports that his next film is inspired by famed film critic Pauline Kael, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has now opened up a little more about what his tenth and supposedly final directorial effort will actually be about.
Titled “The Movie Critic,” the script has already been written, and the “Pulp Fiction” filmmaker is prepping to direct it this Fall. Earlier reports suggest it is set in Los Angeles in 1977 and is inspired by an actual critic.
Now, in a new interview with Baz Bamigboye for Deadline, Tarantino confirms that the film is inspired by the life of an unspecified man who wrote for a very specific kind of outlet at that time.
Tarantino himself reportedly became aware of these film reviews when he was a teenager and had a job that involved loading smut magazines into vending machines – outlets that took the guy’s movie reviews:
“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 [Robert DeNiro’s character in Taxi Driver] 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 s— 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.”
Tarantino is reportedly looking to cast an actor who is around 35 years old as the lead character. It has to be an actual American actor (not a Brit or Aussie playing an American), and it’s going to be a “new leading man” in terms of Tarantino movies.
He also indicated that the magazine the character writes for in the film is to be called The Popstar Pages. Finally, he confirmed “pre-pre-production” on the film begins next month in Los Angeles.
