Director Quentin Tarantino declares the death of cinema as we know it during a news conference at the 67th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Friday, May 23, 2014.<\/p>\n
The outspoken U.S. director, at Cannes to celebrate the 20th anniversary his Palme d\u2019Or win for Pulp Fiction and also the 50th anniversary of Sergio Leone\u2019s \u201cspaghetti western\u201d genre innovations, began a press conference with an impassioned lament for traditional celluloid.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, digital projection . . . is the death of cinema as I know it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not even about shooting your film on film or shooting your film on digital. The fact that most films now are not presented in 35 mm means that the war is lost. Digital projection, that\u2019s just television in public. And apparently the whole world is OK with television in public, but what I knew as cinema is dead.\u201d
\nMore Cannes stories<\/p>\n
Celluloid projection has been fast losing ground to digital in recent years, to the point where it is now considered a niche format.<\/p>\n
Tarantino, 51, said he fervently hopes the movie business is merely going through \u201ca woozy romantic period with the ease of digital \u2014 and I\u2019m hoping that, while this generation is completely hopeless, that the next generation that will come out will demand the real thing.\u201d<\/p>\n
His optimism springs from the current trend by serious music lovers to choose vinyl LPs over digital CDs, a move that has helped revive the vinyl format.<\/p>\n
Despite his strong anti-digital stance, Tarantino said he does see some good in the new format, since it\u2019s so cheap and easy to use that it allows many more people to make films, some of them shot using smartphones.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe good side of digital is the fact that a young filmmaker can now just buy a cellphone . . . they can actually make a movie.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tarantino is planning to personally keep the celluloid spirit alive at Cannes by showing a brand new 35 mm print of his 1994 crime portmanteau Pulp Fiction Friday night at the free outdoor Cinema de la Plage screen on the Cannes beach. He\u2019ll introduce the film with its star Uma Thurman.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s arguably the most influential of his films\u2014which also include Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill, Jackie Brown, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds and the more recent Django Unchained \u2014 and Tarantino said he takes it as a compliment that his career-long rethinking of crime, western, war and Blaxploitation genres has inspired so many imitations and parodies.<\/p>\n
\u201cI take it absolutely as homage. Some of it (the copycats) I like more of than I like others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tarantino is also in Cannes to present the festival\u2019s closing movie, a gala screening Saturday night following the Palme d\u2019Or awards ceremony of Leone\u2019s 1964 spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood. He credits it as an important influence on himself and other directors for shaking up the western film genre and for its creative use of music and editing, among other things.<\/p>\n
For Tarantino\u2019s theatre at home he owns \u201ca pretty terrific 35 mm collection and an even better 16 mm collection \u2014 and I screen them all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMy feeling is I\u2019m studying for my professorship in the history of cinema and the day I die is the day I graduate.\u201d<\/p>\n
But he\u2019ll still leave the house and go to a public theatre if he hears, for example, that a new 35 mm print of Jean-Luc Godard\u2019s crime classic Breathless is being shown.<\/p>\n
And about the French New Wave auteur, who is competing in absentia for the Palme Saturday with his new film Goodbye to Language, Tarantino refused to take the bait of a French journalist who said Godard has been quoted as calling Tarantino \u201ca man without any value.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tarantino shot back: \u201cI can\u2019t believe that he said that, so unless you can exactly prove it to me or he said it to myself, then I\u2019ll assume that you\u2019re exaggerating.\u201d<\/p>\n
And whatever Godard said or didn\u2019t say, the fact remains that Tarantino has a Palme d\u2019Or and Godard hasn\u2019t yet won one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWinning the Palme d\u2019Or to this day is still the thing that as far as laurels are concerned, is my single absolutely positively greatest achievement. Of all the trophies that I have won, it\u2019s the one that has the biggest place of honour inside of my house. It\u2019s the one I want another one of maybe some day, before they turn out the lights.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy joke about the Palme d\u2019Or is the only thing more prestigious than the list of directors who have won the Palme d\u2019Or is the directors who haven\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tarantino\u2019s dictums seem carved in granite, but he admitted he\u2019s changed his mind on a couple of things.<\/p>\n
He railed against directors who make revisionist \u201cdirector\u2019s cuts\u201d to their movies (\u201cMy director\u2019s cut is the first time\u201d) yet in the same breath he said he\u2019s thinking of taking deleted footage from his 2012 slavery payback western Django Unchained and combining with the original film to make what might end up as a four-hour TV miniseries.<\/p>\n
He also said he\u2019s reconsidering his vow not to make a movie out of The Hateful Eight, the bounty hunter drama he furiously cut from his film projects after an early version of the screenplay leaked online.<\/p>\n
Tarantino said he\u2019s currently writing a second draft of the script and \u201cwe\u2019ll see\u201d if a film results.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have calmed down a bit. The knife-in-the-back wound is starting to scab.\u201d