Quentin Tarantino is at the Cannes International Film Festival, and he shed some light on Deadline The Film Critichis 10th and reportedly last film as a director.
Tarantino says the film is “based on a guy who really lived but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porn rag… He wrote about mainstream movies.”
From his research, the real person died in his late 30s, the filmmaker says, from what he explained were likely the effects of alcoholism.
“I think he was a very good critic. He was cynical as hell,” he continued. “His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle [Robert DeNiro‘s Taxi Driver character] could be if he was a film reviewer.”
The film is set in 1977, and Tarantino says he will go into pre-production in about a month.
He says it will “definitely be a new leading man for me,” like many of his returning stars, as 59-year-old Brad Pitt and 48 years old Leonardo DiCaprio, are too old to play the 35-year-old.
However, a subset of actors shouldn’t wait for their phone to ring.
“The truth of the matter is, yes, of course a Brit could do it, but I don’t want to cast a Brit,” says Tarantino.
“Of course, nothing against the British … I think when people look back at this era of film and it’s just all these British actors pretending to be American and all these Australian actors pretending to be Americans, it’s like phantoms. Nobody acts with their own voice.”
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