Quentin Tarantino has made no secret of his intention to retire after making ten films. He’s technically directed ten already, but he’s not counting one segment of Four Rooms and he counts Kill Bill as one complete Film. This means QT has only directed eight films, leaving two left before he retires.
I won’t get into the unlikelihood of his retirement, but I will say that he loves making movies and he’s only 53, so I very much doubt he’ll stop when he hits ten. He’s even hinted at this himself, but he’s still very precious about “the ten.” He said, “I might do a TV thing in between, and that wouldn’t be part of the ten.” And it’s not just TV.
He might even do more films, reasoning that his first ten will exist as one unit as his career, and any after that will simply be, in his own words, “the one he did when he was an old f***ing man, that geriatric one exists completely on its own in the old folks’ home and is never put in the same shelf next to the other ten. So it doesn’t contaminate the other ten.”
So, it sounds like he will be directing more than ten films, but I don’t think he understands how IMDb pages work. They won’t give him two separate filmographies, the real one and the “geriatric” one. Then again, he is one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers working today, so they might make an exception in his case.
The legacy Tarantino leaves behind is very important to him, more important than what he’s actually been doing in life.
According to Tim Roth, he forfeited marriage and kids (i.e. a life) in order to focus on the masterpieces he’d be remembered for. So, legacy is everything to him.
Whether or not there’ll be more remains to be seen, but we do know Tarantino has made eight films and will definitely make two more. He also offered up ideas about what those two might be.
He wants to make a film set in Hollywood, based in some time period besides this one. The idea of a period-set film about the film industry might sound a bit Hail, Caesar!-y and make you go, “Ugh,” but believe me, it’s for the best. His last three films were historical, and he hasn’t set a film in the present in over a decade.
With Tarantino’s ‘90s sensibility, a laptop or iPhone would just feel out of place in one of his films. His Hollywood movie needs chalk-smudged clapperboards and scripts being written on typewriters and films being shot on film. That’s much more Tarantino than the film industry today.
He also wants to make a ‘30s-set gangster movie, which he describes as “like Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde kind of stuff. That’d be kind of cool.” Yes, Quentin, it would. Problem is, this idea has no substance. I’m sure he has a plot in mind he’s not telling us about, but if not, he could take the Untouchables motifs he’s thinking about with the hats and the tommy-guns and combine it with the Hollywood idea. He already has a period in mind for this one, so that takes care of that ambiguity.
The film industry alone is boring, but combining it with gang violence could be the key to giving it that signature Tarantino flair.
Combining the ideas would clear a slot for one more film in his career, making room for a horror film. “I would love to make a really, really scary horror film, like The Exorcist,” he says. As amazing as this sounds, don’t get your hopes up because he didn’t seem too keen on the idea. He believes that in order to “hit a tone of dread from beginning to end,” his sense of humour would have to take a backseat, and he doesn’t think that’s worth his talents or time. To be fair, it’s not. Audiences love his humour, so it’d be a waste for him to make a humourless film.
One thing’s for sure, he won’t be making a film for Disney. He’s sworn off working with them after they “forced” the staff of the only Cinema he really wanted The Hateful Eight to be shown at to switch it for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It’s okay. His brand of gratuitous violence and dialogue ridden with racial slurs isn’t the Mouse House’s cup of tea anyway.
