Interview by Deadline in Cannes, where he is presenting a screening of John Flynn ‘s Rolling Thunder , Quentin Tarantino shed some light on the plot of his next and quite possibly last film, The Movie Critic .
At the time of the announcement, he was rumored to be talking about famed critic Pauline Kael, but it won’t be like this: the film will be inspired by the true story of a critic who wrote for a porn magazine, whose reviews Tarantino read when as a teenager he earned some change by loading porn magazines into a vending machine. “Most of the stuff was too dirty to read, but there was this porn magazine that had a very interesting film column,” explains the director.
The Movie Critic will take place in 1977, California, “and is based on this real-life but never-famous guy who was writing reviews for a porn magazine.” Tarantino does not reveal the name of the person, nor that of the magazine or column, which in the film will be called The Popstar Pages. The director explains:
He wrote reviews of mainstream films and was a second rate critic. In my opinion he was very good. He was terribly cynical. His reviews of him were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle [of Taxi Driver ] would have written if he had been a film critic […]. He thinks of the pages of Travis’ diary.
It’s still:
But the critic from the porn magazine was very, very funny. He was very rude. He said bad words, used racist epithets. But the stuff about him was very funny.
Tarantino explains that he “wrote as if he were 55 but he was about 35”:
He died at just under forty. It wasn’t clear to me at first, but now that I’ve done more research I think it was complications from alcoholism.
Given the character’s age, Quentin Tarantino thinks he’ll have to look for what will be “a new lead for me,” as his trusted actors, like Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio , are too old for the part. The director has an idea of who this actor could be, but he doesn’t give a damn. One thing is certain, however: he will be American. And he explains why:
Obviously I have nothing against the British, but we live in a very strange time today. I think when people look into this era of cinema and [see] all these British actors pretending to be Americans and all these Australian actors pretending to be Americans, it will seem unreal. No one ever acts in his voice today.
Finally he clarifies:
However, this is not about xenophobia. The Brits would have a lot more trouble if American actors went there with their Dick Van Dyke accents to play famous Britons. They don’t want to see that stuff.