#cinema speculation

Director, Don Siegel on Audie Murphy portraying the serial killer 'Scorpio' in Dirty Harry:

"My god, I'm looking for a killer and here's the killer of all time, a war hero who killed over 250 people. He was a killer though he didn't look like it. I thought it might be interesting. He had never really played a killer."

But Murphy perished in a plane crash before the idea could be fully explored. And then Siegel started to rethink the role.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be rolling out my Best Of 2024 lists. I believe in waiting until the year is over to announce the winners! Here's the first one in the Book category:

Cinema Speculation  Quentin Tarantino (released in 2022)

All good books are about something. But in most good books, the theme is not evident at first sight. There’s the obvious “something”, the story that shows, and then there’s the not-so-obvious “something”, the one that is really the soul of the writing. In this case, at first sight, you could conclude that the book is about what Tarantino thinks about American films of a certain period: the…

“Cinema Speculation” is only the second book by Quentin Tarantino (is debut was a novelization of his film “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), and the first non-fiction book. Apparently, Tarantino is aiming at a writing career, after he’s finished with the movies (he’s been saying for a while, his next film would be his last).

“Cinema Speculation” was just edited in 2022, and was straight away on my books waiting list to acquire. I was lucky enough to have got it as a Christmas present. Aside from the book being a true page turner, the fact that I had a bit of extra time during the holidays made me able to finish it in 3 weeks – for such a large book, I was unusually quick.

Speculation is a sort of a memoir of Tarantino's experience of the movies (and movie theaters he went to) throughout the 70s. I already knew of his reputation as a movie buff, but it’s quite different to read it. Because I’ve seen quite a few interviews of Tarantino, as well as watch him act in many movies, it’s hard not read with his voice in your head when you're going through the sentences and expressions, which are actually very characteristic of his.

Tarantino goes through a very wide array of movies, and not just the gender you’re expecting (blackspoitation, grind movies,…). He has very particular knowledge on many stories that surround movies like Escape from Alcatraz, Bullit, Rocky. I didn’t know many of these and a lot of the movies I never heard of either – it made me feel that I still have a lot to go with regards to American cinema (I thought I was completely lacking on the cinema of other countries, which I will not name here), but it also made me feel the urge to list those movies and start watching them all with the new information I just learned.

It's also very entertaining to hear about how was the experience of going to the movies in different areas of LA in the 1970s, and to learn some details of Tarantino’s own life while growing up, son of a single mother, and trying to pitch his scripts. He actually lands himself an interview with a very well known script writer, Paul Shraeder.

The whole book is a compilation of film critiques of all these movies, that Tarantino actually loves. He knows it's still his own view and you take it as you wish.  But, agree, or not, with his perspective it’s worth the hours you take to read it.