Pulp Fiction, that established Tarantino as a darling of indie film and catapulted him to becoming one of the biggest directors in the world.
Fast-forward to 2021 and Tarantino maintains his status as one of the few directors whose name alone can sell a movie. This was indeed reaffirmed in 2019 with Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, Tarantino’s loving homage to the movie scene of the 1960s (which he is currently reworking into a novel that reveals Cliff Booth's backstory). After his latest triumph, Tarantino’s fans can only wonder what he will do for his next film, which would be the tenth in his filmography. The suspense is only heightened because for years Tarantino has insisted he would end his career with his tenth movie, as he doesn’t want to wear out his welcome like so many other once-great directors.
Speaking recently on the Pure Cinema Podcast Tarantino not only reiterated his desire to end his career before he has a chance to embarrass himself with a bad movie, he actually talked about possibly not sticking around to make that promised tenth movie. "I mean, most directors' last films are f--king lousy," he said, adding “It's making me think that maybe I should not make another movie because I could be really, really happy with dropping the mic on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." Tarantino went into further detail on directors who stay in the game too long, citing examples from movie history (via EW):
"Most guys have horrible last movies. Usually their worst movies are their last movies. And that's the case for most of the Golden Age directors that ended up making their last movies in the late '60s and the '70s, then that ended up being the case for most of the New Hollywood directors who made their last movies in the late '80s and the '90s."
Tarantino used Bonnie and Clyde director Arthur Penn as a specific example of a filmmaker who hung on too long, saying "The fact that Arthur Penn's last movie is Penn & Teller Get Killed is, like, a metaphor for how crummy most of the New Hollywood directors' last, last films were.” Tarantino has also spoken in the past about becoming a husband and father in his late fifties and how he may want to retreat into a life of writing, becoming a “man of letters” in his own words, rather than drag his family all over the world on film shoots.
Of course Tarantino has always been in a very different situation to directors like the aforementioned Penn, who made a handful of classics but was to the end primarily a working filmmaker taking studio jobs, something Tarantino as a true independent has never done. Obviously, Tarantino ending his career as a hired hack would be sad given his prior output of original and sometimes even daring indie films. But Tarantino doesn’t have to end his career that way, as he can surely put together one last film as an independent and go out on his own .
That Tarantino is openly pondering retirement may indeed seem like one more instance of the ever-effusive director thinking out loud and perhaps not meaning much of what he’s saying. Tarantino of course has a habit of openly discussing plans and projects, most of which never come to fruition. In other words, who knows what Tarantino will ultimately do. If Once Upon a Time In Hollywood turns out to be his last movie, it would indeed be a good movie to go out on. But it would not be a shock to see him do a 180 from his retirement talk and suddenly announce a new movie. The last person to trust when it comes to talk of Tarantino’s plans is Tarantino himself.
Source: Pure Cinema Podcast (via EW)
