What can we expect from Quentin next? Well, fans will have to wait. “I’m writing something now, won’t be ready till 2018, won’t be out till 2019 at least. Doing something else too, but I’m not saying. I’m lying low for now.”
I talked to Quentin at last week’s L.A. premiere of Sofia Coppola’s “The Beguiled,” her adaptation of a classic Clint Eastwood film. Tarantino’s all consuming passion love for films and for his movie theater is demonstrated at the New Beverly Cinema, which shows classic and contemporary films. Quentin and his admittedly slavishly fan base have made the theater a rousing success, frequently selling out. “I’m going to show a double feature of both “Beguiled’s,” with Sofia talking after on June 21st and 22nd,” Quentin told me. “Doesn’t get cooler than that.”
That’s tonight and tomorrow night.
Coppola just won the Palme D’or for directing at Cannes, “The Beguiled.” She’s only the second woman ever to win, and the first in 50 years. The Civil War thriller is a feminist remake of Don Siegel’s 1971 movie starring Eastwood and Geraldine Page. The film stars Nicole Kidman as the head of a devout Christian Southern boarding school, the Farnsworth Seminary. She oversees a handful of Southern belles of various ages. Their Gothic mansion, with its overgrown willow trees in the sweltering heat, provides refuge to an injured enemy soldier, Corporal John McBurney, played by Colin Farrell. The house is filled with longing women. Kirsten Dunst beautifully plays the most frustrated, conflicted hence rivalries, sexual tension and jarring unexpected events.
Longtime pal Quentin had no doubts this was in Sofia’s wheelhouse. “She called me even before she began the project to tell me she was thinking about it. I told her she was the perfect director to do it. Just the right fit. I knew it then. I told her to do it. She did a fantastic job with it.”
Others that joined Coppola and Tarantino at the DGA were cast mates Nicole Kidman, Elle Fanning, Kirsten Dunst as well as Sofia’s cousin, actor Jason Schwartzman, and pals Courtney Love, Mitch Glazer and Kelly Lynch, actor Tim Roth, Paris Hilton, Maya Rudolph, Coppola’s musician hubby Thomas Mars (his band Phoenix composed the music for the film) and one of the film’s producers, the legendary Fred Roos.
Focus’s chairman Peter Kujawski noted that the film, “is a deeply personal one for Sofia,” and he’s right. Coppola’s skillful artistic take simmers in a Southern Gothic, melodramatic, languid, hypnotic way, with all the actors — especially Fanning (she’s on her way to be a superstar). The always fascinating Kidman and Farrell kind of steal the show. His ‘nobody told me it was a house of mad women!’ and Nicole’s ‘Edwina! Bring me the anatomy book’ will surely become memes. Coppola, with her truly singular evocative style i.e. — “Virgin Suicides” “Marie Antoinette” and “Bling Ring” — has added one more artistic success to her impressive filmography. Kudos to her.
