Quentin Tarantino Cannes Violence Warning: The well-known director Quentin Tarantino recently traveled to Cannes, where he attended a special showing of his grindhouse masterpiece “Rolling Thunder” and gave out the festival’s Grand Prix. He discussed his lengthy association with the Cannes Film Festival during his visit, which contributed to his rise to fame when he won the Palme d’Or for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994.
Speaking to Deadline, Tarantino recounted how “Reservoir Dogs,” which premiered outside of competition at Cannes in 1992, raised issues with the festival over the film’s brutality. He claims that the festival incorporated a previously unheard-of violence warning to both “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” only to discontinue its use when European directors like Lars von Trier began to produce films with the same level of shock value as Tarantino. “They had never done it before,” Tarantino recalls Cannes putting content warnings.
Speaking with Deadline, Tarantino believes Cannes only put content warnings for his films. He said, “They invented something for our screening that they’d never done before. They put an orange sticker in the ticket that said: This movie may be too violent for you to watch,” he said. “And they’d never done that before and they ended up putting the same sticker on ‘Pulp Fiction’ when it played here in 1994. And then at some point with Lars von Trier, they stopped putting the sticker on.”
Tarantino has come under fire for glorifying violence in his flicks, which are renowned for their gore and blood. He has, however, defended his use of violence in the past by saying that some storylines require it.
In an old interview with NPR, Tarantino explained, “I don’t believe in censorship,” He added. I believe in giving people the freedom to tell the stories they want to tell. And if you’re going to tell certain stories, then you’re going to have to deal with certain elements of violence. You can’t tell a story about slavery without dealing with the violence of slavery. You can’t tell a story about World War II without dealing with the violence of World War II.”
What will Tarantino’s upcoming final film, “The Movie Critic,” be about?
“The Movie Critic,” Tarantino’s upcoming and final movie, is eagerly anticipated by both audiences and reviewers. The movie’s fictionalized tale will be based on a real film critic that the filmmaker used to read in a pornographic magazine while working at an adult movie theatre.
Speaking about his upcoming film, Tarantino said, “All the other stuff was too skanky to read, but then there was this porno rag that had a really interesting movie page. He wrote about mainstream movies, and he was the second-string critic. I think he was a very good critic. He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic. Think about Travis’ diary entries.”
The legendary filmmaker added, “But the porno rag critic was very, very funny. He was very rude, you know. He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his shit was really funny. He was as rude as hell. He wrote like he was 55 but was only in his early to mid-30s. He died in his late 30s. It wasn’t clear for a while, but now I’ve done some more research, and I think it was complications due to alcoholism.”
Overall, Tarantino’s trip to Cannes gave him a chance to pause and contemplate his career and the influence his films have had on the movie business. Even though the violence in his films has always surrounded controversies, there is no doubt that he made an impact on cinema.
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