10 Django Unchained Lessons Tarantino Must Learn For New Western

8. Let Ennio Morricone Write An Entire Original Score

Morricone You've probably noticed that Quentin Tarantino rarely incorporates an original score into his soundtracks, and instead opts to include musical cues from pre-existing film ventures. He's done this with a whole bunch of composers, including Jerry Goldsmith, Luis Bacalov and - most famously, perhaps - Ennio Morricone, who famously scored pretty much every great spaghetti western from the '60s and '70s, notably those of Sergio Leone. Morricone's music has appeared in both Kill Bill movies, in Inglourious Basterds, and - yep - in Django Unchained. I'd be willing to put a bet on the fact that Morricone is without a doubt QT's all-time favourite composer, but Tarantino's stance on original scores ("I don't like the idea of giving somebody that much power over my movie") means that the pair have never worked together in the full-on collaborative sense (Morricone wrote an original track for Django Unchained, as it happens, but that's not enough). Given QT's passion for spaghetti westerns, then, he needs to bite the bullet and allow Morricone the opportunity to write a full-on musical score for his next flick. Can you imagine how amazing this could be if it actually happened? "He places music in his films without coherence," Morricone once said of QT's "jukebox" style. Okay, you two: it's time to get together and make some magic happen. The question is: can Tarantino trust Morricone to deliver a score the beats out the tracks he would have picked himself? (he absolutely can - do it!)
Contributor

Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.