If there were two words in one sentence you could say to alot of movie fan that would spark white-hot excitement, those words would be “Tarantino” and “Western.”
At a small luncheon recently held to celebrate the well-deserved Academy Award nominations for Inglourious Basterds, NY Daily Mail was on hand to ask a few questions to director Quentin Tarantino. Amidst clarifications of how he and star Brad Pitt don’t smoke weed when they’re working on a movie, speculations that Basterds has a fighters chance at pulling off a Best Picture upset, and implications of Best Supporting Actor nominee Christoph Waltz possibly moving on to star in a film called The Talking Cure as Sigmund Freud, there was a juicy little nugget of tasty good-ness!
Tarantino was asked what he would be doing next, and to my sheer delight, it did involve the word “Western!” The only problem is that it doesn’t sound quite like Quentin wants to make that gritty, old school Spaghetti Western that I’m dying to see him make. No, no — it sounds like he has an entirely different plan for what he refers to as a “Southern.”
I’d like to do a Western. But rather than set it in Texas, have it in slavery times. With that subject that everybody is afraid to deal with. Let’s shine that light on ourselves.
You could do a ponderous history lesson of slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Or, you could make a movie that would be exciting. Do it as an adventure. A spaghetti Western that takes place during that time. And I would call it a ‘Southern.’
It’s no secret that Quentin Tarantino has talked about a lot of projects that never saw any sort of light after his words, but that doesn’t mean that this won’t happen, either. It wasn’t long ago that the director made the bold announcement at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival that he would have his long-rumored World War II drama done and ready for Cannes ’09. Most laughed it off as ridiculous, but when images and a script started leaking out, laughs turned to elation, and Inglourious Basterds did indeed debut at the festival.
No promises have been made on a Tarantino Western yet, but for now, this is enough to dance about. And for those of you who might be even more itchy for any kind of Western movie related to Tarantino, just go pick yourself up a copy of Sukiyaki Western Django and thank me later.
