Deadline has the details on Quentin Tarantino at Cannes. More is revealed about his upcoming “The Movie Critic.”
The intel goes along well with what we reported a month ago: that the film is based on ‘70s porn magazine critic William Marigold. We were right.
It’s based on a guy who really lived, but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag.
He wrote like he was 55 but he was only in his early to mid-30s. He died in his late thirties. It wasn’t clear for a while but now I’ve done some more research and I think it was it was complications due to alcoholism.
No one has been cast. He says Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt are too old for the part.
“I haven’t decided yet but it’s going to be somebody in the 35 year old ball park. It’ll definitely be a new leading man for me. I do have an idea of somebody I can imagine doing it really well”
Austin Butler? Adam Driver?
Tarantino’s writings under the pseudonym of Jim Sheldon on the New Beverly website have gone totally under the radar. This made-up character is said to be a critic for the Hollywood Press (a cheap 70's porno magazine that featured mainstream movie criticism).
Tarantino has, more or less, admitted that Sheldon is based on William Marigold — who he brings up in his book “Cinema Speculation” during the chapter on Paul Schrader’s “Hardcore”.
In the final years of his life, Margold had his own blog where he mentioned how Tarantino was an avid fan of his film criticsm. Margold claimed that Tarantino was obsessed with Hollywood Press and LA Xpress for 30 years, but he himself has admitted to hating Tarantino's movies.
The short version: "Woman Unknown" was a compromise. The jury deadlocked over "Possible Love" and "NAZA," not able to com to terms, fell back on their #3, May el-Toukhy's film.