Quentin Tarantino reveals the one line he won’t cross in his movies when it comes to violence. Since the release of his debut feature Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino has been known for pushing the boundaries of on-screen violence. The director’s violent tendencies don’t seem to be mellowing with age either, as his last film Once Upon a Time In Hollywood featured one of his most outrageously brutal scenes, a climactic sequence where stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt inflicted gut-churningly horrific damage on members of Charles Manson’s family.
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Though Tarantino has made a name for himself unleashing such unspeakable violence in films like OUATIH, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, the writer/director insists there is one line he refuses to cross, because to do so would destroy the escapist nature of his movies. Speaking during his recent Cannes Film Festival Quinzaine des Cinéastes masterclass (via Variety), Tarantino addressed why he would never do real violence to an animal for the sake of creating cinema. Check out what he had to say in the space below (around 33:07 of the clip):

“I have a big thing about killing animals in movies. That’s a bridge I can’t cross. Insects too. Unless I’m paying to see some bizzarro documentary, I’m not paying to see real death. Part of the way that this all works is that it’s all just make believe. That’s why I can stand the violent scenes, cause we’re all just fucking around. Some animal, some dog, some llama, some fly, some rat, doesn’t give a fuck about your movie. I’d kill a million rats, but I don’t necessarily want to kill one in a movie or see one killed in a movie, because I’m not paying to see real death. Almost always, it’s not just the violence that I have a problem with. There’s usually an incompetence factor in there.”

Will Tarantino Leave Violence Behind In His Final Film?

Tarantino’s new remarks make it a given that there will be no real animal violence in his upcoming final film The Movie Critic, but what about the director’s usual brand of acceptable make-believe human-on-human violence? It’s fair to assume, considering his past output, that Tarantino will unleash some form of brutality in his last film. On the other hand, could it be that after filling nine feature films to the brim with all manner of outrageously violent acts, Tarantino is ready to make his first violence-free movie?

Not a lot is known about The Movie Critic, but the title alone would seem to imply a more sedate exercise than films with names like Kill Bill or Death Proof. The few details Tarantino has revealed about his tenth and final film – that it’s set in the 1970s and involves a real-life movie critic who once wrote reviews for a porno magazine – also indicate a potential opening for him to unleash an uncharacteristically non-violent movie.

Given Tarantino’s career-long commitment to depicting the extremes of brutality, it’s perhaps unfair to expect that he would eschew violence altogether in his last movie. On the other hand, after a career of making murder and mayhem his trademarks, Tarantino might now believe it’s time to make a dramatic statement by showing he can indeed craft a movie that doesn’t have any violence at all. The film scholar Tarantino would doubtless appreciate such a gesture in a great director’s valedictory film, and as Tarantino clearly considers himself a great director, the appeal of performing such a gesture might be too great for him to resist.

Source: Quinzaine des Cinéastes/YouTube (via Variety)