Actually, Quentin Tarantino Might Make More Than 10 Films
So much for his firm schedule...
For years we've known that Quentin Tarantino will only be making 10 films and that's your lot no matter how much love his fanbase has for him. To hear him reiterate that fact in Jerusalem is not, in fact, news, BUT the 53-year-old director has offered some insight into how he actually counts and how he plans to stretch his own rules.
Thus far, Tarantino has made 8 films by his own reckoning (because Kill Bill only counts as one), and there are some suggestions for his ninth outing, with things like his Vega Brothers spin-off, or his Inglourious Basterds spin-off or any of the other ones he's teased over the years.
You'd have to suspect that Kill Bill Vol 3 - if and when it happens - won't be classed as a stand-alone, because Tarantino counts the first two volumes as one. Changing his rule for the third would be silly and very un-Tarantino-like. And it would rob him of one of his open slots, which it doesn't sound like he wants to do unthinkingly.
And while fans might weep at the very idea of only getting two more films from the master, he's already proved himself particularly open to bending the rules. He spoke at Jerusalem Cinematheque to outline his plans (via Variety here):
“I’m planning on stopping at 10. So it’ll be two more. Even if at 75, if I have this other story to tell, it would still kind of work because that would make those 10. They would be there and that would be that. But the one he did when he was an old f*cking man, that geriatric one exists completely on its own in the old folks’ home and is never put in the same shelf next to the other 10. So it doesn’t contaminate the other 10.”
He sounds like a man who will make films as long as he wants (as long as he's established that they don't actually count by some convoluted set of rules before hand).
Personally, I'm absolutely game for Tarantino to absolutely lose his mind and continue to make films when he's ancient. Clint Eastwood has mostly improved with age as a director and George Miller lost nothing between Mad Max and Mad Max: Fury Road thanks to the advancing of the years.
If anything, Tarantino might feel freer when he's older, and maybe the lack of pressure will finally see him deliver on some of the movies he said he'd make. He might as well, it's not like they'd actually count.