Quentin Tarantino Slams ‘True Detective,’ Praises ‘The Newsroom’ In Wide-Ranging New Interview

The Hateful Eight media tour has begun.

With four months left before his next film opens, Quentin Tarantino sat down with Vulture’s Lane Brown for a wide-ranging conversation about his work, his career, and his taste in current and classic films and television. Tarantino’s in feisty form throughout, tossing bombs at all kinds of sacred cultural cows, but the diss that’s probably going to get the most attention is his absolute and complete dismissal of HBO’s True Detective:

I tried to watch the first episode of season one, and I didn’t get into it at all. I thought it was really boring. And season two looks awful. Just the trailer — all these handsome actors trying to not be handsome and walking around looking like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. It’s so serious, and they’re so tortured, trying to look miserable with their mustaches and grungy clothes.

It’s a brutal withering description — and a completely accurate one. The HBO show Tarantino dug, he said, was Aaron Sorkin’s much-maligned The Newsroom:

That was the only show that I literally watched three times. I would watch it at seven o’clock on Sunday, when the new one would come on. Then after it was over, I’d watch it all over again. Then I would usually end up watching it once during the week, just so I could listen to the dialogue one more time.

It’s not shocking that the movies’ foremost maestro of thickly stylized dialogue with love TV’s foremost maestro of thickly stylized dialogue. As to the largely negative critical reaction to The Newsroom? QT: “Who the f--- reads TV reviews? Jesus f---ing Christ. TV critics review the pilot. Pilots of shows suck.” (Obviously, Tarantino does not keep abreast of recap culture.)

Again, you need to go read the entire piece, but here are just a few other highlights:

• Tarantino loves David O. Russell, and thinks movies like The Fighter and American Hustle will be watched by audiences in 30 years. (“I think he’s the best actor’s director, along with myself, working in movies today.”)
• He likes superheroes and superhero movies but wishes they’d come sooner. (“Back in the ’80s, when movies sucked — I saw more movies then than I’d ever seen in my life, and the Hollywood bottom-line product was the worst it had been since the ’50s — that would have been a great time.”)
• After Grindhouse flopped, he was offered gigs directing Green Lantern, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Westworld. (“Truthfully, I’d go see a Westworld made by me.”)

He also talked about his previously discussed plans to retire after he makes ten movies (Hateful Eight is, appropriately, his eighth). A world without new Quentin Tarantino movies to look forward to would be a sad place. But as long as Tarantino keeps doing interviews like this in retirement (or maybe just becomes a full-time cultural critic) I’d be okay with it. The Hateful Eight opens in theaters on Christmas