“Tarantino's cancelled movie: 5 things we learned from The Hateful Eight script
The screenplay for ‘The Hateful Eight’ has now leaked online, but what would his Western have been like?”
'Hey, isn't Tarantino a dickhead?'
'I don't know. I've only ever seen his films – they're alright.'
Jesus, we're a million miles away from that now, if we were ever there. I can't imagine how geeky and obsessed and sad we would look to the lay audience of the '90s and earlier. They saw finished products, and maybe a couple of short interview clips with one or two cast members that made it onto TV around the release date. It was sickeningly polished PR, but it was brief – acknowledged and moved on from. That general audience took home only relatively small (house-able) VHS tape collections, and sans special features. Movie, album, show, career... spotlight goes on – the production, the final edit – spotlight goes off. Sensationalist/prurient media coverage of the famous personnel involved notwithstanding.
Finished products... Today we know that a film that wasn't even going to be in production for over a year has been ditched for now. It's not even that; it's that we can read verbatim, time and time again, everything Tarantino said about it in all his interviews, stretching the hissy fit blips out into infinity. Because so-and-so must have given the script to his agent who then leaked it to friggin' Hollywood because he's a douche and has spoiled it for everyone. And the agent's company's got a track record for this shit, as you know.
Jesus, we're a million miles away from that now, if we were ever there. I can't imagine how geeky and obsessed and sad we would look to the lay audience of the '90s and earlier. They saw finished products, and maybe a couple of short interview clips with one or two cast members that made it onto TV around the release date. It was sickeningly polished PR, but it was brief – acknowledged and moved on from. That general audience took home only relatively small (house-able) VHS tape collections, and sans special features. Movie, album, show, career... spotlight goes on – the production, the final edit – spotlight goes off. Sensationalist/prurient media coverage of the famous personnel involved notwithstanding.
Finished products... Today we know that a film that wasn't even going to be in production for over a year has been ditched for now. It's not even that; it's that we can read verbatim, time and time again, everything Tarantino said about it in all his interviews, stretching the hissy fit blips out into infinity. Because so-and-so must have given the script to his agent who then leaked it to friggin' Hollywood because he's a douche and has spoiled it for everyone. And the agent's company's got a track record for this shit, as you know.
As you know, indeed. People don't bother to find this stuff out – it is no bother. It's just there, all the time. Specific, in-industry notoriety or observed traits and tropes get shared with everyone. Everything from litigious directors and artists to unfortunate newspaper layouts to John McAfee's opinion of his software under Intel to Morrissey's instant Penguin Classic deal to Google +'s existential crisis to the red shirt survival chances of a Sean Bean character. Even the lay audience is exposed to this stuff. Footnote material gets its own article – gets its own PR. Pithy comic headlines knowingly position the content as being both specific and anal and yet ripe for everyone to lap it up because it's still appealing or funny. It's actually funnier because it's obsessively specific. 15 Very Unique Ryan Gosling Items You Can Buy On Etsy, anyone?
Once this was something for fans, for people who 'bought in.' Now it's viral... clickbait. The ordinary viewers like to get the reference – they are expected to be able to. Namechecking an actor in a particular context in an interview, movie or series shoots a circle of recognition round an audience who've all seen the rant, funny dance, captioned screenshot or whatever being referenced (how about a little figure of Sad Keanu?). We're like a creepy friend-by-association-by-research, who knows about and can nod along to everything related by an actor or director: 'oh yes, this is going to be your anecdote about...' But we don't have to stalk; it's broadcast to us – the more specific the information or gag the better. It's the specific as general, on general release. In-jokes that everyone's expected to get – obliterating the dictionary definition.
It's played beautifully, too, by a lot of famous people in the various industries. Acknowledging – whether in polished productions or through their own social media channels – popular perceptions/misconceptions of themselves, references to themselves on Twitter or Instagram or in fan-made videos, or joining in with memes, or maybe those surrounding other celebrities... The result is a kind of peer to peer humour, even if this makes Stephen Fry or Joss Whedon or Dave Grohl or Nick Grimshaw or Barack Obama your 'peer' in the humour.
Of course 'behind the scenes' is funny – pitched perfectly by cast, crew and/or marketing and still feeling genuinely personal to you as the the eager audience. Of course when you're waiting months for a movie or a series to come out you want to see Benedict Cumberbatch's hand on his morning coffee or X-Men director and cast fooling around or whatever's appearing with a wink from the set or recording studio or wherever and go all to jelly. But then what about a ditched movie, a failure? What about this 'gather round me, my fans' thing when it's forwarding, en masse, the unguarded, heat of the moment stuff: '"I gave it to three motherfucking actors. We met in a place, and I put it in their hands. It's got to be either the agents of Dern or Madsen. Please name names."'
Immortalizing a director or any personality when they're pissed off, immortalizing a short-lived mood and the opinions it created – obviously it's still captivating and amusing on some levels, whether you're giggling with or at. But it does start to feel like all concerned, producers and consumers (cynical or otherwise), have fallen into a YouTube comments section, unselfconsciously rising above the morons by... arguing with them and adding the last word every few seconds. I mean, getting to the end of a movie that did something to you and then connecting actors' or directors' names forever with that feeling, that reassurance that your mind can find inspiration and mirrors out there – that's quite nice. Feeling you have to defend or attack famous strangers after they've had an episode of being a whiny little bitch – really?
Of course 'behind the scenes' is funny – pitched perfectly by cast, crew and/or marketing and still feeling genuinely personal to you as the the eager audience. Of course when you're waiting months for a movie or a series to come out you want to see Benedict Cumberbatch's hand on his morning coffee or X-Men director and cast fooling around or whatever's appearing with a wink from the set or recording studio or wherever and go all to jelly. But then what about a ditched movie, a failure? What about this 'gather round me, my fans' thing when it's forwarding, en masse, the unguarded, heat of the moment stuff: '"I gave it to three motherfucking actors. We met in a place, and I put it in their hands. It's got to be either the agents of Dern or Madsen. Please name names."'
Immortalizing a director or any personality when they're pissed off, immortalizing a short-lived mood and the opinions it created – obviously it's still captivating and amusing on some levels, whether you're giggling with or at. But it does start to feel like all concerned, producers and consumers (cynical or otherwise), have fallen into a YouTube comments section, unselfconsciously rising above the morons by... arguing with them and adding the last word every few seconds. I mean, getting to the end of a movie that did something to you and then connecting actors' or directors' names forever with that feeling, that reassurance that your mind can find inspiration and mirrors out there – that's quite nice. Feeling you have to defend or attack famous strangers after they've had an episode of being a whiny little bitch – really?
There's something about showing all of the production process, and about having our cultural producers accustomed to having to show all of that process, that can go wrong. Look what happens when you give people the time and space to think too much about a delayed project, a void – freed from any information that might rain on their speculations:
“...Ben Affleck has pulled out of directing Fox’s high profile drama project, The Middle Man, because of scheduling issues with Batman vs. Superman. While Warner Bros recently pushed the release date from 2015 to 2016 […]
With Ant-Man taking Batman vs. Superman’s old date, does this mean that Batman vs. Superman will be reclaiming it’s [sic] old date or does this mean that Batman vs. Superman and Justice League is indeed filming back-to-back? There are so many questions and what ifs involved with this movie that it’s starting to become a little unsettling.”
With Ant-Man taking Batman vs. Superman’s old date, does this mean that Batman vs. Superman will be reclaiming it’s [sic] old date or does this mean that Batman vs. Superman and Justice League is indeed filming back-to-back? There are so many questions and what ifs involved with this movie that it’s starting to become a little unsettling.”
I bet you felt the earth shudder, waking up this morning in such a state of flux, right?
And fan forums are great, for the fans. Delayed albums and films and changes of plan and trailers and cliffhangers and posters and rumours and leaked/fan-gained images of whatever it is can create months... years of scrolling speculation. It bubbles up and down between rage and rationality. The specifics of the speculation too, like the girl who knows the firm that's making the DVD cover and how, since they changed their ink supplier last month, I think we can expect that season four of Blah won't be out until third quarter at least... Or the guy who's done some work with the cameras that Blah is using for the location shots on Blah: Blah, who knows that if they try and do the kind of scenes they did in the first movie with those cameras it will look BAD – I'm not even planning on going to the theatre to see it if they do that. Now, whether you're salivating or recoiling in horror at this sort of conversation, it's fine when it's there. What happens now is that pithier versions end up on your FB feed. You might even crack a smile for some of it and click on the Like, or at least empathize with the humour of the specific material the jokes and the rants are constructed out of.
For God's sake, I hadn't even seen the movie, hadn't ever even googled it, and I knew there was too much lens flare in Star Trek. I knew that it was popularly known that there was too much lens flare in Star Trek. I saw JOKES, galleries of comedy Photoshopped images, about how there was too much lens flare in Star Trek. If I travelled back to the '90s and said that to myself... Despite little me having a bedroom that had been sellotaped into a crap cardboard bridge of the Enterprise, he would have said: “get a life, dad” – before one or both of us went up in a puff of paradoxical smoke.
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