Quentin Tarantino’s latest Western opus The Hateful Eight offers stellar moments for the entire acting ensemble.
Set in the years following the Civil War, the story follows a Wyoming bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell), who is bringing wanted criminal Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the gallows in a local town. They get sidelined by a blizzard and are forced to hole up in Minnie’s haberdashery with six other strangers to wait out the storm. The inhabitants include a black bounty hunter (Samuel L. Jackson), a British lawman (Tim Roth), the local sheriff (Walton Goggins), a Civil War general (Bruce Dern), a Mexican running the haberdashery in Minnie’s absence (Damien Bichir), and a rogue cowboy (Michael Madsen). Soon, they all find themselves in a plot of betrayal and deception, and it’s not certain who will survive.
In one of the most animated press conferences ever, Tarantino and his actors, including newbie Channing Tatum, spoke with reporters about the film and hearing great stories about working with Quentin.
Step 1: Keep close to Tarantino’s script
Samuel L. Jackson: “There’s not a lot you need to change. Quentin and I have conversations about what I say, and I don’t just willy nilly change things. If I want to say something else, I go and discuss it with him, and we’ll talk about it. He’ll say, ‘Well, let me hear what I wrote’ and I’ll say what he wrote. And then he’ll say ‘What do you want to say?’ and I’ll say what I want to say, which is very close to what he wrote. I just want to say it another way because I think it comes out that character’s mouth a different way. And Quentin will say okay or he’ll say, ‘No, leave it the way I wrote it.’ And that’s generally what happens. The rest of these motherf**kers need to say what he says. [laughter] We are generally on the same wave length… The only big change [in The Hateful Eight]… was the cold. That was the wild card we didn’t really know about. All of the sudden it changed the urgency of everything. Especially outdoors, like ‘I’m gonna get inside this stagecoach now cause I don’t like the snow raining down my neck.’”
Step 2: Know Tarantino then and now
Tim Roth: “It’s been a trip. It was weird sensation to be the old school, the old boys coming in. Sam has been around almost as much as I have. I had a long break. I didn’t make it back since… Pulp Fiction [Tarantino reminds him it’s Four Rooms] Four Rooms, right, sorry. So I didn’t know the new version of how Quentin filmed. And the atmosphere on set that he’s developed and encouraged. It was brand new for me so it was almost like coming to Quentin fresh again. It was wonderful.”
Step 3: How to be a newbie a Tarantino set
Channing Tatum: “First off, it is an actual alumni to be in a Quentin film, and you really feel that. All these guys have worked together a lot and it is a unique experience to be in a Quentin movie, I promise you. And you’re really intimidated. But every one was so great. I mean, I did my first movie ever with Sam [Jackson], to come full circle to this is pretty extraordinary. I think on the first day, I must have looked so geeked out. The very first shot was this crazy 360… and I’m just like wide-eyed and trying to figure it out and not to screw up. And Tim [Roth] goes, ‘Yep, you’re about to be in a Quentin Tarantino movie.’ It was amazing. Every single person here I’d admire and it was a learning experience every single moment.”
Step 4: Learn a page of new Tarantino dialogue in a few hours
Walton Goggins: “When you talk about Quentin’s dialogue, from an actor’s perspective, it’s like finding gold in a river. Like the Gold Rush. I read [Hateful Eight] like 300 times, we all did. Quentin said at the onset, ‘You need to know these words’ as every one up here does. Not just so you can be ready at any moment to go where the story goes, but so you can give this man a 100 different versions if that’s what he needs in order to reach his vision. That’s just how I look at it. But there was one day in particular when Quentin gave me a monologue, a page of dialogue. I spent 14 years in TV, learning 10 pages for me in a hour is no problem. But this is Quentin Tarantino dialogue. It started off in the morning, right after my coffee, and I’m sitting there having the best fucking day. I know 150 pages of this script. I know everybody’s shit. And then I get this whole page from [Quentin’s assistant], ‘Hey Quentin wants you to say this later on today.’ And it freaked me out, brought me down. I’m like, ‘Oh, fuck’ and I start walking around. And people see that I’m freaking out a little bit. Tim says, ‘What’s wrong?’ and I’m like, ‘I got this page right here.’ And he says, ‘You got that, man.’ No, I don’t, I don’t fucking have it! I’m still pacing back and forth and Kurt comes up, ‘Hey, man, what’s wrong?’ I show him the page, and he says, ‘You got this.’ Again, NO I FUCKING DON’T! Same thing with Sam! And then it all came down that night, it’s the last thing we shot. And it was me and Bruce [Dern], and we’re sitting there and I’m still freaking out! Quentin just looks at me and says, ‘You got this.’ And then it came out.”
Jackson quips, “And it’s not in the movie.” [Loads of laughter] Sam’s kidding, of course.
Step 5: Explain race relations in the movie
Jackson: “We all understand race relations in that time. It’s like getting back to that whole nigger, not nigger conversation when you’re talking about me. I could be in the room or out of the room, but you very seldom going to say, ‘You know, the black guy that was with me.’ That’s not what people said [at that time]. That’s just not how people talked. So when I’m in the room or out of the room, when they say ‘the nigger’ I don’t have to look around to see who they are talking about. They’re talking about me… There’s going to be a whole bunch of people who are going to watch this movie that agree with [Walton Goggins’ character]… And there are going to be people watching the movie that are going to be on my side. Everyone’s going to have a fan. Daisy is going to have fans. There will be people there who wish things were still like they used to be… And we know we’re not just making a movie for Quentin’s fans because we know people who hate Quentin’s movies and what they stand for but are still going to go see this movie. Just because they like shoot ’em ups. They are gonna sit there and go, ‘Shit, that’s my thing right there! Damn right, all those niggers lie!’ That’s just what they’re gonna do because that’s that segment of society. And other people will be like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe they talked like that.’ But that’s just what movies do and that’s why we make these things, so that we can start conversations or get people thinking. And hopefully, that will make a change.”
Step 6: Screw being politically correct
Quentin Tarantino: “Me as an artist I don’t really think about it at all. It actually is not my job to think about that. Especially in terms of with me as a writer in particularly, but also as a filmmaker… It is my job to ignore social critics or the response that social critics might have when it comes to the opinions of my characters, the way they talk, or anything that can happen to them. We can talk about the race stuff which we just talked about. I am sure some people here sitting in the room might be uncomfortable about the violence that is handed out to Jennifer’s character. And actually I am playing with that in the course of the movie. When she gets that crack in the head by John Ruth at the beginning of the movie, that is meant to send a shock wave through the audience. You aren’t necessarily meant to like Domergue, in that moment, but you are meant to think that John Ruth is a brutal bastard at that moment because that does seem like an overreaction to what she did and what she said. Now time goes on and you see how you feel about the characters. But it’s meant to do that.
“The thing is, the pressure cooker that we’re talking about, is that anything can happen to these characters. Any piece of outrageous violence could happen to them. I paint in a system where there aren’t color book lines. I can cross those lines. So, I am going to make it that seven of these characters, anything can happen to them. But when it comes to this eighth character I have to protect her because she’s a woman and they can’t have the same destiny? No, that goes against the entire story. I am not going to think like that. I think of somebody like [director] Ken Russell who was raped over the coals by the press in England, constantly for the boundaries he pushed. Do you let these people get you down? I don’t think about them. I can’t think about them. It’s my job not to think about them. Because I believe in what I am 100 percent. And I am doing what I’m doing. If you don’t like it, don’t go see it.”
Step 7: Tackle the future, Quentin?
Tarantino: “That’s a really interesting idea. I don’t think anyone has ever really proposed it exactly the way you proposed it to me. Everyone always talks about the science fiction genre in particular, which always makes me think about people in spaceships, and I can appreciate that but that’s not really where I think my dramatist aspect lies. I don’t think I have ever thought about it as far as dealing with a future society like ours, and what that would entail. And what would it mean to jump 20 years or 50 years or a 100 years in the future and literally look at it at that point of view. I’ve never really thought about that before. But it is a profound thought I have to admit.”
And boom! Just like that, we’ve got Tarantino’s next movie. One can only hope. See The Hateful Eight in theaters Christmas Day.