Christopher Walken recalls his first meeting with Quentin Tarantino
, who he describes as “shy.” Though it was 1992’s Reservoir Dogs that served as Tarantino’s breakout film, it was with Pulp Fiction in 1994 that the director rocketed to a new level of fame and acclaim. The film features a standout cast, including Bruce Willis, John Travolta, and Samuel L. Jackson, with Walken delivering a standout monologue as Captain Koons. Pulp Fiction ultimately served as a launchpad for Tarantino, and he went on to make Jackie Brown (1997) and Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2 in the early 2000s.
In a recent interview with AOL, Walken touches on his working relationship with Tarantino, recalling his first meeting with the legendary filmmaker. The actor reveals that they actually met through their mutual friend, Harvey Keitel, who had worked with Tarantino on Reservoir Dogs. Check out Walken’s recollection of the encounter below:
“I was staying at the Chateau Marmont at the time, and Harvey said to me, ‘There’s this guy you’ve got to meet, he’s brilliant,’ and he brought Quentin over. And I remember he was kind of shy and he looked about 12. And I thought, you know, Harvey had discovered this Orson Wellesian teenager. Anyway, he’s terrific.”
Tarantino has been open about wanting to retire from making movies after his tenth film, and Walken weighs in on this as well. “Quentin said somewhere that he wasn’t going to make any more movies,” Walken says, “but I hope that’s not true.” Walken also recalls preparing for his role in Pulp Fiction, praising Tarantino’s dialogue:
“I had the speech for about four months, and I think it was eight pages long. And no matter what else I was doing, I would spend an hour a day going over that speech and gradually learning it. And every time I got to the end of it, it would make me laugh. Because his dialogue is all there on the page.”
Walken appeared in 1993’s True Romance, which Tarantino wrote but did not direct.
What Walken’s Comments Mean For Quentin Tarantino
What Is The Director’s Last Movie?
Pulp Fiction remains the only movie Walken and Tarantino have made together, but it’s clear that the experience was a memorable one for Walken. The actor evidently thinks Tarantino has a great deal of talent, and his desire to not see the director retire is a common sentiment. Tarantino has long said that his movie career will stop at 10 films, meaning he only has one left to make.
Tarantino’s tenth and supposedly final movie was reported to be a project called The Movie Critic. Reports and rumors claimed that Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise were being eyed to star in the film, which is said to have started as a movie about a writer working for a fictional porn magazine in the ’70s before evolving into more of a Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood (2019) spinoff. Then, Tarantino scrapped the entire project after having a last-minute change of heart, and it’s now unclear what his last movie will be about and who will star in it.
Our Take On Walken’s Tarantino Comments
Walken & Tarantino Should Collaborate One More Time
With Walken clearly having a great deal of respect for Tarantino, it would be great to see the two work together one last time. Tarantino has a regular posse of actors he has worked with across a variety of films, including Jackson, Keitel, Michael Madsen, and Tim Roth, and though Walken isn’t among this group, his appearance in Pulp Fiction affirms that he knows how to deliver classic Tarantino dialogue.
Many questions remain about Tarantino’s final movie, including whether it will actually be his final movie, but, as Walken suggests, it would be a shame for the filmmaker to stop now. Tarantino is now 61 years old, and plenty of directors, including Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and Steven Spielberg have continued making movies into their 70s and beyond. When Tarantino‘s next movie does start to take shape, it certainly sounds like Walken would be open to another collaboration.
Source: AOL
