The acclaimed director, Quentin Tarantino, was recently honored at the Burbank International Film Festival, or BIFF (not to be confused with TIFF), with the Vanguard Award for his career. As part of the event, Tarantino would sit down and have a conversation with Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter. According to Deadline, it was during this conversation that Tarantino talked about the somewhat ambitious project with him and Robert Rodriguez from 2007 — Grindhouse, which was a double feature of exploitation films. His film, Death Proof, was not received as well as his other films and it became a flop at the box office with an $11.5 million opening on a $67 million budget.
Tarantino admitted that the reception “shook my confidence on the opening weekend.” He also admits how he was humbled by this turn of events, “You work really hard on a movie and the opening weekend happens; people either go see it or they don’t. At the time, they didn’t.” After movies like Kill Bill and Sin City, he says, “we thought people would follow us anywhere, but they didn’t follow us there.” Tarantino expounded, “At the time, it felt like the moviegoing audience was my girlfriend and my girlfriend broke up with me.”
He went to fellow filmmakers like Tony Scott and Steven Spielberg for guidance when he felt low and he explains that their consolation advice was essentially: “Did you make the movie you wanted to make? Yes. Are you happy with the movie you made? Yes. Well, there’s a lot of people who can’t say that. Just think about how lucky you are to work in the business that you work in, and you’re able to make the movies you want to; sometimes the public gets them, sometimes they don’t.”
Then, he revealed something extra that Spielberg told him,
Quentin, you’ve been pretty lucky. But the next film that’s a hit, you’re going to enjoy that more than all your other hits put together, because you’ve been here now. You know what it’s like to have a flop. The next time you have a hit, it’s going to be easy.”
Tarantino’s next film would be Inglourious Basterds, which would nab him Academy Award nominations (including a win for Christoph Waltz), and of all of his movies, he considers it to be his masterpiece.
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