Filmmaker, screenwriter and author Quentin Tarantino stopped by Real-TimeFriday night conversation with Bill Maher about the new book Cinema SpeculationTuesday, February 10, 2009:
Tarantino went to a lot of sophisticated films as a young child, he admitted, sometimes viewing subject matter that he didn’t quite understand, like a certain infamous Ned Beatty rape scene in Delilverance.
Tarantino spoke out about that scene. “I’m seeing it in ’73, so I’m about nine,”He replied. Admitting he didn’t know about sodomy, Tarantino did know Beatty was being subjugated, because everybody on the school yard has been subjugated to some degree.
“I’m not sure what the lesson is here,”Maher laughed.
Tarantino was able to get back to his point regarding young viewers of sophisticated movies. “There will be some stuff that goes over their head,”He said. He said it, however, “I got the gist of it.”
He was right when he went to the Raquel Welch and Jim Brown films 100 Rifles. He was taken to a theater with an all-Black audience, Tarantino reminisced, by his mother’s boyfriend. The opening film was met with raucous applause. The Bus is ComingYou yell at the screen. “The first time I ever heard ‘suck my dick’ was someone in the audience,” Tarantino said. Tarantino, who was brimming with energy and joy at the moment, eventually gave in to the urge to use a similar epithet.
Maher reminded Maher. “If you’re promoting the book on the ‘Today’ show, don’t tell these stories.”
But 100 RiflesIt stimulated something in Tarantino’s young. “Being taken to a Jim Brown movie at an all-Black theater, that was the most masculine experience I have ever had.”
He was shaped by that moment. “Either as a movie consumer, or when creating movies for an audience – that goal of a Jim Brown movie on a Saturday night in1972 is what I’m trying to recreate.”
Gillian Tett, US editor-at–large of the magazine, joined Maher for the panel discussion.Financial Timesand author of Anthro-Vision – A New Way of Looking at Business and Lifeand Yuval Noah Harari, author of the book Unstoppable Us Volume 1: How Humans Take Over the World
The conversation was civil and involved a lot tut-tuting about the ways in which technology and social media influence politics and people.
“Something is broken in the information system,”Harari. “People can no longer hold a conversation and agree on the most basic facts.”
Tett said that such a state results from being able to program their environment, through music or social media.
Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter will not necessarily help that, Tett said. She stated that Musk “is increasingly godlike and capricious.”
Harari was also skeptical. “(Musk’s) view is that it’s the town square. It’s not. Twitter is more like a gladiatorial arena.”
Finally, “New Rules”editorial: Maher blasts BuzzFeed editors and others who whine about it “forbidden”Halloween costumes
“If Halloween is too much for your fragile sensibilities and you’re worried about seeing something on the forbidden costume list, just stay the fuck home,”Maher stated, “Additionally, “I’m so tired of a handful of emotional hemophiliacs telling us what we can’t do on Halloween.”
Queen Elilzabeth is on the prohibited costume list (“too soon”), no sexy schoolgirls, no Playboy bunnies, can’t dress up as Elvis, and “don’t even think of characters outside your race.”
Worse, “no unhoused person,”Thus, you can eliminate the “default costume of every kid in history.”There are no drag queens. “because if kids want to go see drag queens, they can go to story hour.”
Also banned: No Trump or Putin, no Johnny Depp and particularly no Amber Heard“no shit”) and nothing related to vaccines and monkeypox.
“Listen to me,”Maher addressed a hypothetical audience of teens, “I’m your last connection to fun.”He was a big believer in mixing and matching. “Have the Queen shit in Johnny’s bed, have Will Smith smacking a hobo, have Kevin Spacey hitting on a mariachi band. Jeffrey Dahmer is the ideal Halloween costume.
Ironically, it’s Gen Z who are the scolds on this. “Your parents protected you, and now you’re these assholes. Gen Z is the one telling you to get off my lawn.”