The Coppola/Lucas Of His Time
Remember all those “cuts” of Apocalypse Now? Remember how George Lucas fiddled with Star Wars instead of developing new stories?
Quentin Tarantino is now falling into the same trap. The man who can’t stop fiddling with multiple variations of Kill Bill and The Hateful Eight was talking at a forum in Hollywood ahead of the Golden Globes, about fiddling some more with Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
From the trades:
Tarantino sounds like he’s going to be delivering a much longer, extended version of “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.” Already 161 minutes long, at a recent screening Special FYC screening at the ArcLight Hollywood in Los Angeles, the filmmaker suggested he may release a supercut next year.
The film already re-added 10 minutes to the movie in a re-release earlier this year. When they were deciding what to add, before that re-release, Tarantino then talked about showing the longer version to Sony’s chief Tom Rothman for guidance.
If you need “guidance” from a studio chief in order to mess with something that’s already done, you’re creatively bankrupt.
Will Anyone Want to See It?
There are plenty of people who swear by the Hateful Eight “series” on Netflix right now. However the question is, in a world of digital filming, how much, really, could have been left on the “cutting room” floor, that would add anything interesting or new to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood?
From the trades, yet again:
The director already recut “The Hateful Eight” as a series on Netflix. It’s largely the same, but it’s chaptered up, and there are a lot of subtle new things to it. He also still has a “Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair” with a new animated sequence in it to eventually release (it was shown theatrically a few years ago, but has never come out).
Nope. No new interest and probably nothing much new going on in a “new” cut.
What Are We To Make of All of This?
Some artists have only a few stories in them, and Tarantino—unlike Lucas and Coppola—has always been clear that he has about ten films in him. Which does give him credibility when he states incredulous things like this.
The problem with stating that there is a limited amount of creative water in that pool though, is that once the water is out, what does Tarantino do for the remainder of his career? And his life?
