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The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast
The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast

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S7E43: Cinema Speculating with Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino and Bret discuss the frightening Legend of Boggy Creek, the elements of a perfect movie and the motivation behind Brian De Palma's desire to thrill. Part 2 of 2.

S7E43: Cinema Speculating with Quentin Tarantino

Comments

He’s never seen Eyes Wide Shut

Mr.Pink1996

Reservoir Dogs is better than any New Hollywood movie ever and that includes Godfather 2! I’m looking at the 1995 ARTFORUM issue that QT talked about in his first ep about Gary Indiana - and the blown up photos of pulp fiction and RDs in the magazine are still so absolutely astonishing and captivating and iconic.

Seneca Garcia

I like how when discussing Paul Schrader, Bret pronounces academic like anemic. Great discussion, but after two episodes of listening to Quentin, I feel like Altman at Cannes.

John Presnall

How can I love this guy's movies so very much but and yet hate his speaking voice with an equal level of feeling?

Happyhead

You might like this then. https://youtu.be/krQ3YfGX4AI

ALAN c BERRY

QT if you read this, your book, it’s one of the best endings ever written 💪❤️💯

Knokkel knokkel

Cheers Alan!

Weaverwerx

Here is a video that goes deep on Cinema Speculation. https://youtu.be/krQ3YfGX4AI

ALAN c BERRY

Right on! Thanks for letting me know.

ALAN c BERRY

Adam will make a post saying it’s time for platinum Q & A and you can submit questions in the comments.

Ashley

This two-part QT interview was a great early Xmas gift! Love to hear BEE talk in-depth about CINEMA SPECULATION and hear that QT is already working on a follow-up book!

Weaverwerx

Does anyone know how you submit questions to Bret? I paid for that membership tier but don't see how to do it. Thanks!

ALAN c BERRY

I cannot believe Quentin hasn’t seen 3 women. Mainly, that I’ve seen a movie that he hasn’t!? What the heck! What else has he skipped?

TheRealAudreyHorne

Great episode. I remain staggered Bret hasn’t mentioned Mr Inbetween on the podcast

GC

As a teenager in the 90s I wrote Altman a fan letter, now knowing if the letter would ever get to him, and doubting the address I had managed to find. It was a real treat when a few months later he sent me a large signed photograph with a personal inscription. Was truly touched by that.

Christopher Ward

agree with alex

Collin Myers

Holdovers?

Collin Myers

rough way to end it

Collin Myers

everything, dude

Collin Myers

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Killer-Instinct-Young-Producers-Hollywood/dp/0767900758 Check this book out, Quentin features heavily…also features an unashamed Oliver stone

Lionel

Bret asks who "The Movie Critic" is about and Quentin keeps mum. For anybody curious, the movie is based on a critic named Jim Sheldon who wrote mainstream movie reviews in the '70's and '80's for a porno paper in Los Angeles called "The Hollywood Press". His employment with "The Press" mysteriously ended in the mid '80's and he died in his 40's in the early '90's, due to complications from alchoholism. He was the paper's second-string critic, who pounded (into the ground) the exploitation, arthouse, and foreign market beat, and a guy named Bill Margold (more well-known as a pornographer than a film reviewer) was the first-string critic for the paper, and he reviewed most major releases. These guys are Quentin's jumping off point for the film. But James (Jim) Sheldon is the basis for the titular "movie critic" character that the movie is mainly about. If you want to read their reviews they're very cynical and funny and sarcastic (and in the case of Margold, bombastic) check out this archive on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jim_sheldon/ https://letterboxd.com/bill_margold/

Conor C

I saw it last night, it's not scary lol. Maybe if you're a small child I could understand being a little frightened but as an adult it's campy. The movie features soundtrack ballads about the sad lonely sasquatch, for christ sake. And the narrator sounds like Adam West in "A Christmas Story". Charles B. Pierce's "The Town that Dreaded Sundown" is much better and creepier, but even then it's spliced with downhome sheriff deputy scenes that come straight out of "The Andy Griffith Show".

Conor C

Seconded.

John Q. Thompson

This Altmann story is fucking amazing.

Pp358

I really wish Bret would have Joe Bob Briggs on

Brent L. Smith

Pure BS and just plain untrue. Box Office numbers were up for non IP films this year. Was it great? No. Was it considerably better than the last few years? Undoubtedly. Oppenheimer performed great. Scorsese had one of the best openings of his entire career. Napoleon's sales are way ahead of Scott's films from a couple of years ago and back to a decent number. Priscilla, No Hard Feelings, Asteroid City, and The Holdovers all had respectable showings and many surpassed their box office projections. Meanwhile Flash, Blue Beatle, Indiana Jones, and Captain Marvel all underperformed along with other mainstream IP films. There was a clear pattern of original projects trending upwards and the movies everyone gripes about trending down. Bret will never acknowledge that because he's dug in and clings to this fantasy that he experienced the greatness of cinema and subsequent generations won't. It's a weird comfort but it's not reality.

Alex Waller

Did not know Legend of Boggy Creek was actually scary- I’ve only seen it on MST3K

Patrick Crowley

Is Bret just fucking with us at this point with the Coppola mispronunciations? 😂

Vin Bravo

I loved this conversation, but I wish it didn't end with, "It's all over!" I understand the defeatist attitude of those who feel that cinema isn't the same as it once was, I can't help but think more hopefully about the future. I work at an old repertory cinema and I remember right before the pandemic there were lines around the block for "Parasite". I know that people are starving for some kind of renaissance of original movies to remedy the jadedness film lovers feel.

Andrew Lapointe

"If there's a demand Hollywood will make more" There's not

Richard Raymond

It's been a so-so year for cinema at best. Outside of Oppenheimer, there were zero great 2023 movies. And the box office numbers for that were a social media driven fluke

Richard Raymond

Great interview! I'm the exact same age as these guys , saw all those 70s classic movies they mentioned when they were 1st released. I'm not as pessimistic as them about the future of cinema, the kids will come through, they always have !

Michael Madonna

Loved the conversation but this whole mantra about everything being over, publishing, TV, movies, is a bit repetetive, and, to be honest, just good old nostalgia from a sentimental old man.

J.A.

What's all over? 😂

Dave Mason

1) During her interview on Late Night with David Letterman (August 11th, 1986), actress, singer, & comedienne Beverly D’Angelo A) wears a frizzy blonde hairdo swept off its haunches by a hot desert wind B) displays the quick, punchy timing of a scrawny cornered gangster C) covers The Rolling Stones on concertina, or D) sneezes on a candelabra from the séance kit that she keeps in her purse 2) D’Angelo enters Late Night from the green room. In Latin (Javanese, and Kurdish) “green room” means A) Land of Giant Vegetables B) Holographic jungle enclosure C) The “Whites Only” section of a gay bar, or D) subterranean cannabis plantation 3) Crossing the stage, D’Angelo’s A) entrance beckons the broad, sheepish glamour of a grown-up Prom Queen B) hips swivel like a seasoned catwalker leading up to the moment when she plants a tangy kiss on Letterman’s canned cornfed cheek C) applause quotient duplicates the sound of the perfect rain falling on a road designed for overcoming insomnia D) marriage to Duke Lorenzo is put to the test 4) As Miss Ponderosa Steakhouse (1973), Beverly D’Angelo A) toured India with bodyguards and a portable trap door B) protested the human condition C) played the part of a Bond girl starving on top of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza D) was cursed to raise two seemingly very normal children 5) Awash in praise, the gobsmacked D’Angelo plunks down in Late Night’s guest chair and mouths “__________” to a throng of soused clergymen. A) Stop it B) Shoot me C) Do me D) All the Above

Sam Leuenberger

If there’s a demand Hollywood will make more. What we do need is more directors who want to be respected by their audience more than their peers

Alex Waller

am going to listen on my run. will say more later, after my run.

richard owain roberts

It’s all over!?! The fuuuuuuck

JC

God bless America. God bless Hollywood. And God bless these two. So good. Thank you!

Thomas Edwards

Only in comparison with the last few years (which isn’t saying much). At no other time would Oppenheimer, let alone BARBIE, make a billion dollars. We are just so starved for anything halfway decent we’ll gobble up any scraps we can get 😂

Brian James

PER-FORM-A-TIVE. this has been a good year for the cinema both in terms of content and box office

Alex Waller

Yeah, honestly, I am a little confused and taken a back by this. I can’t find any other information that says it was Friedkin who requested it. Seems out of character for him.

N.M. Janice.

I’m disappointed to hear Bret reveal that it was the late William Friedkin who decided to censor the slur in his own film. I assumed it had to do with Disney owning 20th Century Fox’s catalogue now. Friedkin gave zero fucks throughout his career, and I assumed there were absolutely none left in him towards the end of his life. He never placated the audience; he gave it to them straight. In his memoir The Friedkin Connection he writes: “When Popeye used the N-word, African American audiences laughed, because they saw it as an honest portrayal of police attitudes. The films of the 1970s started to depict the moral ambiguity we recognized in ourselves.” Morally ambiguous characters and pessimism were major features of many ‘70s New Hollywood films. They expressed an honesty about human nature and behavior, and filmmakers like Friedkin gave the audience credit to accept their films on those terms. Sad to think an old movie lion like Friedkin caved a little towards the end.

Billy Schafer

I love hearing the clink of what I only imagine (hope) are wine glasses hitting the table in between laughter and banter in this friendly, passionate open exchange of ideas, opinions, and memories. An all timer. 🙌

Patrick

There’s a Lyotard quote about postmodernists being scroungers in the garbage-heap looking for left overs — and this surely fits the bill with Quentin with the Altman story - Always viewed Pulp Fiction as a postmodern document - Thank you for another astonishing episode!

Seneca Garcia

Uplifting stuff, for sure. It does fit here though doesn’t it? One of the prevailing themes of the BEE podcast since the beginning seems to be that art and culture are over, and we are all just scrambling in the aftermath.

N.M. Janice.

I could listen to QT talk film all day. I loved Cinema Speculation and the Video Archives podcast. I love Q, even though I probably disagree with him about half the time. And boy, he’s got some hot takes here. I couldn’t disagree more about Altman. He’s one of my favorite filmmakers of all time. The story was funny though. Altman was always known as a prick. Also, I’m scratching my head at his list of “perfect” movies. I’m a fan of all of them listed, but “perfect?” I don’t even think they pass the test that he himself put forward.

N.M. Janice.

Great episodes, coinciding with my reading of the book. That 2nd episode sure ended on a hopeful note! 💀

Brian James

The Altman story was great! It would be cool to see a book or a podcast of just Tarantino celeb stories. I feel like he has hundreds of them.

Maxwell Rinehart

The Altman anecdote is INSANE

Giovanni Loddo

Fantastic stuff. That last sentence though...

Patrick Reinbott

So good 😊

PETER GREER

Been waiting all day!

Kerry

Oh baby!

N.M. Janice.


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