What we know so far about Quentin Tarantino’s next film, “The Movie Critic,” is that it will be shot this fall, the story is set in Los Angeles circa 1977, and the lead protagonist is male critic who writes for a porno rag.
Tarantino gave us some more clues in Barcelona this past April, insinuating that this isn’t going to be a revenge story like all of the films he’s made the last 20 years.
“There is a lot of speculation about who it is based on. And yes, he is a real critic, but he is not known […] it will also not be what you might call a “revenge story”.
Tarantino’s writings under the pseudonym of Jim Sheldon on the New Beverly website have gone totally under the radar. This 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 was based on critic William Margold — who he brings up in his book “Cinema Speculation” during the chapter on Paul Schrader’s “Hardcore”.
Well, it turns out that Jim Sheldon was an actual film critic who wrote in the same magazine as Margold. Tarantino fooled us. Thanks to fine folks at the Tarantino subreddit Waltz With Tarantino for this info.
Tarantino mentioned at Cannes that the lead of his film died in his 30s but I cannot find any info on Sheldon’s personal life — he’s literally an unknown critic who stayed in the underground during his writing career. There way more info about Marigold though, he lived well past his 50s.
A lot of people thought that “The Movie Critic” was going to be based on Margold. Now that we have paper proof that Sheldon is 100% real, it could potentially be about Sheldon instead. Who knows!
So Tarantino's character is going to be BASED on second-string critic JIM SHELDON and Tarantino's made up magazine THE POPSTAR PAGES is going to be based on THE HOLLYWOOD PRESS. Very excited to see what turns out.
There’s even a Letterboxd account with an innumerable amount of Sheldon’s reviews, transcribed, for good measure.
