Tarantino’s rude awakening

From the magazine

Quentin Tarantino has had his first taste of failure, says Sheryl Garratt in the London Telegraph. After a string of box-office hits, the writer/director bombed this year when audiences ignored his latest offering, Grindhouse. “It was shocking,” Tarantino says. “I was depressed for a month. It was like I had a broken heart, like somebody broke up with me. And somebody did—the American public!” But he blames only himself. “It was too expensive. That’s the bottom line. I got too precious, I got too into the characters. I kept adding more and more. And all that s--- is now in the trash. I should have known better.” Already, Tarantino says, he can sense a change in Hollywood’s attitude toward him. Previously, people would send him scripts, hoping against hope that he would deign to sign on. “They were always coming from the attitude of, ‘Here’s The Green Lantern! You can do anything with it. If you want to rewrite it, fine!’ But now I’ve had a flop, and all of a sudden, it’s ‘We’ll have Quentin for this because he’s for sale now. He’s on the ropes!’” Seeking consolation, he called on Steven Spielberg, who early in his career had his own flop, 1941. He told Tarantino that a director can be judged only on his body of work, and that all the great ones sometimes fail. Tarantino has taken that advice to heart. “I can now officially say, ‘I am in Hollywood—that I’ve done the thing.’”

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