Trying to make a feature film yourself with no money is the best film school you can do.
— Quentin Tarantino
I want to have more original-screenplay Oscars than anybody who's ever lived! So much, I want to have so many that - four is enough. And do it within ten films, all right, so that when I die, they rename the original-screenplay Oscar 'the Quentin.' And everybody's down with that.
One of the privileges you have of living the life of an artist and creating your own world and everything is the fact that, in-between times, you can kind of spend them however you want. Because, you know, once you open up your candy store again, you're open for business. And you have to be responsible. You have to be available.
I'm definitely not on Twitter. I do have a Facebook page and Facebook friends. It's a lot of fun, especially if you don't just start friending people you don't know.
When I make a film, I am hoping to reinvent the genre a little bit. I just do it my way. I make my own little Quentin versions of them... I consider myself a student of cinema. It's almost like I am going for my professorship in cinema, and the day I die is the day I graduate. It is a lifelong study.
I'm probably only going to make 10 movies, so I'm already planning on what I'm going to do after that. That's why I'm counting them. I have two more left. I want to stop at a certain point. What I want to do, basically, is I want to write novels, and I want to write theatre, and I want to direct theatre.
Australian genre films were a lot of fun because they were legitimate genre movies. They were real genre films, and they dealt, in a way like the Italians did, with the excess of genre, and that has been an influence on me.
Digital presentation is just television in public; we're all just getting together and watching TV without pointing the remote control at the screen.
'The Grand Budapest Hotel' is not really my thing, but I kind of loved it.
If you go out and see a lot of movies in a given year, it's really hard to come up with a top ten, because you saw a lot of stuff that you liked. A top 20 is easier. You probably get one masterpiece a year, and I don't think you should expect more than one masterpiece a year, except in a really great year.
I will never do 'Pulp Fiction 2,' but having said that, I could very well do other movies with these characters.
I just grew up watching a lot of movies. I'm attracted to this genre and that genre, this type of story, and that type of story. As I watch movies I make some version of it in my head that isn't quite what I'm seeing - taking the things I like and mixing them with stuff I've never seen before.
All my movies are achingly personal.
If there is something magic about the collaborations I have with actors it's because I put the character first.
Movies are my religion and God is my patron. I'm lucky enough to be in the position where I don't make movies to pay for my pool. When I make a movie, I want it to be everything to me; like I would die for it.
A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here.
I actually think one of my strengths is my storytelling.
Whatever's going on with me at the time of writing is going to find its way into the piece. If that doesn't happen, then what the hell am I doing? So if I'm writing 'Inglourious Basterds,' and I'm in love with a girl and we break up, that's going to find its way into the piece.
I liked the idea of creating a new pop-culture, folkloric hero character that I created with 'Django' that I think's gonna last for a long time. And I think as the generations go on and everything, you know, my hope is it can be a rite of passage for black fathers and their sons. Like, when are they old enough to watch 'Django Unchained'?
I want to write novels, and I want to write and direct theater.
I always write these movies that are far too big for any paying customer to sit down and watch from beginning to end, and so I always have this big novel that I have to adapt into a movie as I go.
I had so much fun doing Django, and I love westerns so much that after I taught myself how to make one, it's like, 'OK, now let me make another one now that I know what I'm doing.'
I have a lot of Chinese fans who buy my movies on the street and watch them, and I'm OK with it. I'm not OK with it in other places, but if the government's going to censor me, then I want the people to see it in any way they can.
None of my costume designers have ever been nominated for an Oscar 'cause I don't do period movies that have ball scenes with a hundred extras in them.
I don't believe you should stay onstage until people are begging you to get off. I like the idea of leaving them wanting a bit more.
I don't really know if I'm writing the kind of roles that Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore would play. Jessica Lange on 'American Horror Story' is a little bit more my cup of tea.
In the '50s, audiences accepted a level of artifice that the audiences in 1966 would chuckle at. And the audiences of 1978 would chuckle at what the audience of 1966 said was okay, too. The trick is to try to be way ahead of that curve, so they're not chuckling at your movies 20 years down the line.
I have an idea for a Godzilla movie that I've always wanted to do. The whole idea of Godzilla's role in Tokyo, where he's always battling these other monsters, saving humanity time and again - wouldn't Godzilla become God? It would be called 'Living Under the Rule of Godzilla.'
I cannot get myself interested in video games. I've been given video game players and they just sit there connected to my TVs gathering dust until eventually I unplug them so I can put in another special-region DVD player.
I look at 'Death Proof' and realize I had too much time.
If you just love movies enough, you can make a good one.
Dogs got personality. Personality goes a long way.
As a viewer, the minute I start getting confused, I check out of the movie. Emotionally, I'm severed.
I always do an all-night horror marathon on Saturdays where we start at seven and go until five in the morning.
My movies are painfully personal, but I'm never trying to let you know how personal they are. It's my job to make it be personal, and also to disguise that so only I or the people who know me know how personal it is. 'Kill Bill' is a very personal movie.
'Django' was definitely the beginning of my political side, and I think 'Hateful Eight' is the... logical extension and conclusion of that. I mean, when I say conclusion, I'm not saying I'll never be political again, but, I mean, I think it's like, in a weird way, 'Django' was the question, and 'Hateful Eight' is the answer.
I got into Facebook late, and I think if you get into Facebook late, you tend to use it the right way, as opposed to the people who got into it sooner and friended everybody and now have a thousand friends. I keep it at about 80 or so, and they're all people I know. Just because I do a movie doesn't mean I friend everybody in it.
I do feel that I need to do at least one more Western - I think you need to make three Westerns to call yourself a Western director.
I actually want to do a theatrical adaptation of 'Hateful Eight' because I actually like the idea of other actors having a chance to play my characters and see what happens from that.
I come from a mixed family, where my mother is art house cinema and my father is B-movie genre cinema. They're estranged, and I've been trying to bring them together for all of my career to one degree or another.
Truth be told, actually, my favorite director of the Movie Brats was not Scorsese. Loved him. But my favorite director of the Movie Brats was Brian de Palma. I actually met De Palma right after I'd done 'Reservoir Dogs,' and I was very beside myself.
I think we spent 60-something million on 'Hateful Eight,' which is actually more than I wanted to spend, but we had weather problems. And I wanted to make it good.
There is such a thing as my kind of actor, and how well they pull off my dialogue is a very, very important part of it.
CGI has fully ruined car crashes. Because how can you be impressed with them now? When you watch them in the '70s, it was real cars, real metal, real blasts. They're really doing it and risking their lives. But I knew CGI was gonna start taking over.
I don't really consider myself an American filmmaker like, say, Ron Howard might be considered an American filmmaker. If I'm doing something and it seems to me to be reminiscent of an Italian giallo, I'm gonna to do it like an Italian giallo.
L.A. is so big that if you don't actually live in Hollywood, you might as well be from a different planet.
I am a genre lover - everything from spaghetti western to samurai movie.
If I wasn't a film-maker, I'd be a film critic. It's the only thing I'd be qualified to do.
I don't believe in elitism. I don't think the audience is this dumb person lower than me. I am the audience.
Everything I learned as an actor, I have basically applied to writing.
