More at <LINK_TEXT text=“http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/review/ … /cannes_6/”>The other Cannes festival | Salon.com</LINK_TEXT>
A guy who I think was Croatian took the mike and exclaimed “‘Death Proof’ rocks!” before asking Tarantino whether it was true that his long-brewing war film, “Inglorious Bastards,” would star Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and Sylvester Stallone. (Sadly, it will not.)
Weinstein held his peace at that moment, but a few minutes later, when another eastern European journalist asked why none of the fake trailers from “Grindhouse” are being shown with “Death Proof,” he stepped up to the mike. “We had a great time with the whole ‘Grindhouse’ thing,” he began, in the tones of a man not having any fun at all. “Now European audiences will get to see these new movies by Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez, and they’ll enjoy them much more [than ‘Grindhouse’]. You’ll see Robert Rodriguez making a true Robert Rodriguez movie, you’ll see Quentin making a pure-essence Quentin movie. It’s a completely different experience. They will dwarf ‘Grindhouse,’ trust me.”
Tarantino added: “There are essentially three movies here. ‘Death Proof’ is its own movie and ‘Terror Planet’ is its own movie. Then ‘Grindhouse’ was something else, a full evening’s entertainment.” To get from his original edit of “Death Proof” to the “Grindhouse” version, he said, “we didn’t cut to the bone. We cut past the bone.”
“If you have to be a diehard grindhouse fan to enjoy this movie,” Tarantino observed, “then the movie’s probably pretty limited. I’m not saying my movie is better than that genre, but I am trying to transcend it. I have my own agenda I’m trying to get across, and it’s not the agenda of most drive-in movies.”
When another Eastern European asked how it felt to be a “big star” at Cannes, Tarantino showed some uncharacteristic humility. “To the extent that I could call myself a favorite son of Cannes, and I’m only saying that because you’re saying it,” he said, “I just don’t have the adjectives for it. I was probably a teenager before I figured out what Cannes was, or even knew what a film festival was. I probably rented some movie that had the Palme d’Or on the box. Once I figured it out, it seemed like Mount Olympus, where the gods go, where the greatest films ever made premiere. Just to be invited here was amazing, and the possibility that I might someday win the Palme d’Or [as he did for ‘Pulp Fiction’] was so far beyond anything I could have imagined. There’s nothing I’m prouder of in my whole career.”
