Quentin Tarantino, still feeling spicy, says some theater chains didn't deserve to survive COVID

The Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood director has been dropping hot takes for the last few weeks

By Sam Barsanti  |  July 6, 2021 | 9:45pm
Film News Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino, still feeling spicy, says some theater chains didn't deserve to survive COVID
Quentin Tarantino Photo: Rebecca Sapp/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Quentin Tarantino has been in a mood for the last week or so, going on Joe Rogan’s podcast to dredge up the controversy over Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood’s depiction of Bruce Lee (saying, among other things, that anyone who has an issue with it and isn’t Shannon Lee can “go suck a dick,” exactly the sort of discourse we expect from The Joe Rogan Experience). Tarantino also went on Real Time to commiserate with Bill Maher about PC culture, which sounds similarly exhausting, and his novelization of Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood ended up being more of an alternate cut of the film that reworks certain things that he thought people read too much into in the movie (i.e., the Charles Manson stuff). That’s not really following the same theme as his media appearances, but it does indicate that Tarantino is spending some time these days thinking about the general culture and how people react to the art they consume.

Over the weekend, Tarantino’s Hot Take Summer continued, with him going on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast and sharing some thoughts on the American movie theater industry. For starters, he says that he bought Los Angeles’ Vista Theatre on Sunset Boulevard (via Deadline), which he says will “show new movies that come out where they give us a film print.” That’s opposed to Tarantino’s New Beverly theater in L.A., which is a revival house that primarily shows classic films. Tarantino’s other talking point was that a lot of the theater chains that struggled to survive the pandemic deserved to die anyway, saying that some chains have “taken all the specialness out of movies anyway.”

Specifically, he takes issue with theaters that are “showing commercials all through it,” that “don’t turn the lights down,” and are full of “stadium seating” and “plastic shit.” He says he’s not talking about “the La-Z-Boy, order nachos and margaritas” theaters, because he does “like the Alamo Drafthouse a lot,” but he wants to go to a theater when he goes to a theater, not “a living room.”

 
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