While being interviewed at the Sundance festival, Tarantino brought up the idea of his final film, stating he probably won't make it until his kids are older because they'd have to travel to America to do it, and he wants them to be old enough to understand why that's happening.
Currently, he's writing a play, which he says, if it becomes a smash hit, could be adapted into his last movie.
But when it came to the idea of movies in general, Tarantino changed the tone of the conversation.
He said, “That’s a big fucking deal pulling [a play] off, and I don’t know if I can. So here we go. That’s a challenge, a genuine challenge, but making movies? Well, what the fuck is a movie now? What — something that plays in theaters for a token release for four fucking weeks? All right, and by the second week you can watch it on television. I didn’t get into all this for diminishing returns. I mean, it was bad enough in ’97. It was bad enough in 2019, and that was the last fucking year of movies. That was a shit deal, as far as I was concerned, the fact that it’s gotten drastically worse? And that it’s just it’s a show pony exercise. Now the theatrical release, you know, and then like yeah, in two weeks, you can watch it on this [streamer] and that one. Okay. Theater? You can’t do that. It’s the final frontier.”
I do think Tarantino is right—we are in the final frontier of what used to define movies. It's a hard pill to swallow, and it does make me scared for the industry's future, especially as someone who writes a lot of movies and tries to make that my primary income.
That's why it's so hard to see people like Tarantino say they're just going to walk away.
We need everybody in the fight.
If we want to secure real theatrical windows and shift movies back to a more cinematic experience, we need the people with the most power in Hollywood to help spearhead that charge.
How could they do this?
Well, it would be cool to see them help find the next generation of voices who could make movies like they did in the 90s. Maybe even produce those movies so studios have reasons to bet on these projects and give them those windows.
Even if they don't want to do that, it would be nice to see them collaborate with studios or even form their own (like Dreamworks in the 90s) that take these things into account.
My overall point here is that complaining gets a lot of empathetic ears, but leading the charge gets a lot of pitchforks.
If we want to save these theatrical windows and bring movies back, we need more generals and fewer prophets.
That's my opinion.
Let me know what you think in the comments.
