Iconic filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has lately been promoting his new and much-anticipated nonfiction book, Cinema Speculation. His passionately goofy gift for gab has made Tarantino’s press rounds interviews as entertaining as many of the scenes from his classic movies. While Cinema Speculation, Tarantino’s second book following his 2021 novelization of his 2019 film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, has been riding the charts (currently a New York Times bestseller), the highly influential writer/director has been having invested conversations about his big screen obsession on such shows as Real Time with Bill Maher and Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and in such publications as The Los Angeles Times.

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These compelling exchanges have given many insights into Tarantino’s film fandom while priming readers for what to expect in the 400-page book of essays focused on American films released between 1968 and 1981. The filmmaker’s appearance on HBO’s Real Time on October 28, 2022, was particularly rich with revelations as we learned how young Tarantino was when he first caught the movie-loving bug, which shapes his career even today.

Quentin Tarantino’s Early Exposure to New Hollywood (But Not All the Classics)

     Paramount Pictures

In his one-on-one interview with Maher, Tarantino talked about first going to the movies when he was seven years old. “At some point, I did notice that I was seeing different movies than the other kids were allowed to see,” Tarantino explained. “I saw M.A.S.H. three times in 1970.” The celebrated filmmaker went on to list other “very adult” (as Maher repeatedly put it) films he saw in his youth, including The French Connection, The Godfather, Deliverance, and The Wild Bunch. Tarantino summed up that “the explosion of what they called New Hollywood. Well, that’s me getting used to going to the movies, you know?”

In an anecdote that he also relayed to Jimmy Kimmel the day before (October 27), Tarantino recounted to Maher going to a double feature of The Bus is Coming and the Jim Brown and Raquel Welch film 100 Rifles in 1971. “Being taken to a Jim Brown movie at an all-Black theater, that was the most masculine experience I have ever had.”

Towards the end of their over 20-minute interview, Kimmel asked Tarantino, “What’s the biggest movie, the most well-known, or well-respected, or whatever movie that you’ve never seen?” After pondering the question, considering “there’s a few,” Tarantino answered, “I’ve never seen Sound of Music.” “Wow!” Kimmel exclaimed, “I’d love to watch that with you.

The Movies that Traumatized Tarantino the Most

     Walt Disney Productions

The revered writer/director told Whipp, “I think Bambi is well known for traumatizing children, it’s a cliché, but it’s true. The only other movie I couldn’t handle and had to leave was at a drive-in in Tennessee. I was there alone, sitting on the gravel by a speaker, watching Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left. So for me, Last House on the Left and Bambi are sitting on the f— shelf right next to each other. Both take place in the woods, and both had me saying, ‘I gotta get out of here!’”

Fans Will Likely Not See Quentin Tarantino Take on a Superhero Movie Anytime Soon

     Marvel Studios

The most publicized portions of Tarantino’s media tour for Cinema Speculation involved his disdain for the superhero films that currently dominate the movie landscape. The Los Angeles Times’ Glenn Whipp wrote that in his conversation with Tarantino, “he muses that, just as ’60s antiestablishment auteurs rejoiced when studio musical adaptations fell out of favor, today’s filmmakers ‘can’t wait for the day they can say that about superhero movies. The analogy works because it’s a similar chokehold.”

Much like Martin Scorsese’s criticism of the Marvel-mania that crowds the multiplexes, Tarantino’s anti-comic book cinema quote was put through the social media ringer, as was his comment to Whipp that “You have to be a hired hand to do those things,” about directors in the MCU.

The Most Recent Controversy Surrounding Django Unchained and Kanye West

     A Band Apart

Perhaps more of a splash was made by the filmmaker’s response to the recently disgraced Kanye West’s claim that he had the idea for what later became Tarantino’s Django Unchained. Tarantino clarified to Kimmel, “There’s no truth to the idea that Kanye West came up with the idea of Django, and then he told it to me and I go, ‘Hey, wow, that’s a really great idea, let me take Kanye’s idea and make Django Unchained out of it.’ Okay. That didn’t happen.”

Quentin Tarantino’s promotional tour for Cinema Speculation continues this month. The filmmaker will make appearances in Los Angeles at the Ace Hotel, San Francisco’s Castro Theater, two nights at Portland’s Hollywood Theater, Austin’s Paramount Theatre, and Town Hall in New York City.