While most filmmakers remain coy about the films that have influenced their craft, Quentin Tarantino has never been shy about his constant homages to the Spaghetti Western genre. Until his last directorial effort, Tarantino has only paid homage to the Western in films like Kill Bill Vol. 2 and Inglorious Basterds. Then, in 2012, Tarantino brought us Django Unchained – a fresh twist on the Western genre with Jamie Foxx playing an escaped slave turned bounty hunter. Django won Tarantino his first Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay since 1995’s Pulp Fiction. Until now Quentin has yet to win the Oscar for Best Director, of which he was nominated twice, but he’s giving himself another chance with his next film which he discussed in minute detail on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.
Quentin Tarantino’s Spaghetti Western influence goes beyond mainstream media conjecture. In fact, in the actual script for Django Unchained Tarantino describes him film in Western terms.
The following is an excerpt of the screenplay for Django Unchained which has become available online just in time for Awards season:
AS The CREDITS play, DJANGO has a SPAGHETTI WESTERN FLASHBACK. Now Spaghetti Western Flashbacks are never pretty, it’s usually the time in the film when the lead character thinks back to the most painful memory inflicted on him or his loved ones from evil characters from his past. In this instance we see Django in a SLAVE PEN at the Greenville Auction.
While this is just one example of Tarantino injecting callbacks to one of his favorite classic genres into his own films, his DVD commentaries, interviews, and Q&As are littered with similar insights that make it undeniably obvious that the renowned filmmaker is lovingly trying to bring those sensibilities into modern cinema.
It will be interesting to see Tarantino attempt to dive back into the genre so soon after Django Unchained. As a point of comparison, Pulp Fiction is universally regarded as one of his best post-modern crime dramas and yet it seemingly took him three films to get to that point: True Romance, Natural Born Killers, and Reservoir Dogs. If history is any indication his next film might be the pinnacle of his this Western-era Tarantino, if only for the fact that it is the follow up to Kill Bill Vol. 2, Inglorious Basterds, and Django Unchained.
Of course this Late Night “announcement” has to be taken with a grain of salt. The writer/director has been known to speak to soon about his upcoming projects, like when he announced his desire to make films like Kill Bill Vol. 3 and The Vega Brothers. We’ll have to wait until there is an official announcement until we know for sure that he is on the verge of penning his Western opus.
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