Who is this guy?
Nobody questions Tarantino’s staying power anymore. His patented formula: reinventing established genres, mining his encyclopedic knowledge of film, writing dialogue that attracts big stars and injecting his unique sensibility and skewed worldview into otherwise predictable events. The result is an original blend that, along with his outsize personality, has transformed him into one of the few directors whose name means something at the box office. With a deal that gives him final cut, a large percentage of gross and the kind of autonomy most directors can only dream of, Tarantino writes his own rules.
Does violence in movies influence movies in reality?
PLAYBOY: The tragedy in Aurora, Colorado, where a gunman massacred moviegoers at a Dark Knight Rises midnight screening, led some filmmakers to do some soul-searching about how they depict on-screen violence. Did you?
TARANTINO: No, because I think that guy was a nut. He went in there to kill a bunch of people because he knew there would be a lot of people there and he’d make a tremendous amount of news doing it. That’s no different from a guy going into a McDonald’s and shooting up people at lunchtime because he knows a lot of people will be there.
Do drugs inspire creativity?
PLAYBOY: Do drugs have a positive impact on your creative process while you’re writing or directing?
TARANTINO: Well, no. I wouldn’t do anything impaired while making a movie. I don’t so much write high, but say you’re thinking about a musical sequence. You smoke a joint, you put on some music, you listen to it and you come up with some good ideas. Or maybe you’re chilling out at the end of the day and you smoke some pot, and all of a sudden you’re spinning a web about what you’ve just done. Maybe you come up with a good idea. Maybe it just seems like a good idea because you’re stoned, but you write it down and look at it the next day. Sometimes it’s fucking awesome. I don’t need pot to write, but it’s kind of cool.
