We don’t know much about Quentin Tarantino’s “The Movie Critic,” set to shoot in the fall, but from a recent interview with Paul Schrader it looks like he’ll be recreating some scenes for iconic ‘70s films:
Quentin [Tarantino] — this may have changed — but about a month ago he was making a film, had something to do with filmmaking in the ’70s. And part of this, he’s going to use clips from movies from the ’70s, but he’s also gonna remake movies from the ’70s. And he asked me, ‘Can I redo the ending of “Rollling Thunder?”’ And I said, ‘Yeah, go for it. I’d love to see you redo the ending of “Rolling Thunder.”’ Who knows whether he actually will or not. But it was something that was tickling his imagination in a very Tarantino-esque way.
We already know this film won’t be about Pauline Kael, but will revolve around film criticism.
What we do know for sure is that it will be shot this fall, the story is set in Los Angeles circa 1977, and the lead protagonist is male. The rest is really anybody’s guess.
There are also hints that the lead might be based on underground critic William Margold .
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 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.
What I do hope is that Tarantino manages to send a message to the industry with this one, he hasn’t been shy about his disdain for current movies.
The fact that this new film takes place in the same year as when “Star Wars” was released, a shapeshifting moment for American movies, greed came into the picture, tells me that we might be looking at Tarantino’s scathing indictment of the industry.
As expected, Snyder's latest is being torn apart by TIFF attendees. No mercy given. The film, which had its world premiere this evening, is being called by some one of the worst movies to ever premiere at the festival.