Quentin Tarantino Is Sick Of Dumb Questions
"Make no mistake, this is a commercial for my movie."
With those words Quentin Tarantino lays bare the whole joke that is the promotional interview process. In the interview above he's talking to a Channel 4 News reporter who is asking him about the (non-existent) link between violence in movies and violence in real life, and he just cuts to the heart of the matter: this isn't a deep think piece interview. This is a promotional tool. And as such, Tarantino isn't interested in rehashing the same shit he's been rehashing ever since the violence in Reservoir Dogs scandalized crowds at Sundance.
You're going to see a lot of journalists/bloggers attempt to paint Tarantino as a crazy man. They're going to claim that he's exploding or that he's stupid or that he's unthinking or that he's out of control in this interview. They're going to say that because Tarantino is exposing the entire farce of the promotional interview, and they feel threatened. They don't like to think that they're sitting in a hotel, doing a junket all day, simply as a tool of the marketing of a new film. But guess what: THEY ARE. That's what junkets are. They're marketing tools*. And it cuts both ways: the journalists want the interviews because the impending release of the movie means more interest, which means more views/traffic/clicks.
I feel for the reporter, by the way. I don't think he's asking a horrible question, I think he's asking it poorly. If I wanted to engage Tarantino about violence in movies versus violence in real life, I'd ask him why people have, and always have, blamed movies for bad behavior in the real world. Tarantino is a filmmaker with a rich and deep understanding of film history, so engage him in that way. You'll end up coming around to the same topic anyway.
The best thing about the interview, though, is that QT remains friendly and finishes the conversation. He doesn't storm out or become unresponsive. He gets irritated at the dumb question and then he moves on. That's the way to do it.
* I say this with all possible self-awareness. You'll soon see an article on this site about me riding a tank with Arnold Schwarzenegger for The Last Stand, an event that was only a marketing tool. When I go to Sundance I will spend most of my days in a CineFix studio doing interviews with filmmakers whose movies I probably haven't even seen yet. That'll be marketing. I'd love to be Charlie Rose of Elvis Mitchell, to be the guy who does the longform, smart, deep conversations with the major talents of the day, but I'm understanding of reality.
