Quentin Tarantino reveals the two favorite scenes he's ever written
Even when pressed for time, Quentin Tarantino can still give a good response to a meaningful question.
Towards the end of the San Diego Comic-Con panel for "The Hateful Eight," which hits theaters on Christmas, Tarantino was asked by one fan what his favorite thing was that he's ever written in a movie.
"That's actually such a good question I don't even know if I have an answer for it, especially with this pressed for time bulls**t." Tarantino told the crowd at Comic-Con.
Tarantino wanted to move on and announce the big news that he would be working with composer Ennio Morricone on "The Hateful Eight." He revealed that his favorite scene from his filmography is the opening of "Inglourious Basterds."
"My favorite thing I think I've ever written is the scene at the French farmhouse at the beginning of 'Inglourious Basterds.'" Tarantino said.
The scene Tarantino refers to is the very first scene of his brutal World War II epic. In the scene, SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) arrives at a remote dairy farm in France that is suspected of hiding Jews. Landa sits down with the farmer (Denis Menochet) and questions him about the whereabouts of the Dreyfus family.
The scene is a tense and sneaky psychological mind game in which a Nazi plays detective.
The unique part about this entire scene is that it clocks in at around 20 minutes long.
Most scenes in movies are about a third of that length and typically aren't as dialogue heavy. Like most Tarantino scripts, he avoids exposition and instead loves to trail off into incredibly long conversations.
Take this four and a half minute stretch of the opening, where Landa stops interrogating and instead talks about why he enjoys being called The Jew Hunter:
Tarantino wouldn't reveal exactly why this was his favorite scene that he is written, but it seems like almost everything he had written up to this point was building up to this conversational scene. Tarantino loves writing for bad guys, but he has never had to make somebody this evil come as terrifyingly charming.
And Tarantino was working on this script for about ten years. During that time, it changed drastically. Many of the action scenes he had planned would eventually be used in "Kill Bill."
"True Romance" was released in 1993, one year after Tarantino's directorial debut "Reservoir Dogs" and one year before "Pulp Fiction" would make him the hottest filmmaker in Hollywood.
"True Romance" was actually not directed by Tarantino, but rather by the late Tony Scott. And yet, Tarantino's brilliant writing still made it on the screen completely intact. This was back during a time where he still didn't have the amount of clout that he has today.
This scene clocks in at ten minutes long. Like the "Basterds" scene, that is much longer than the typical film scene, especially one that doesn't exactly move the plot forward.
There is a big gap between "True Romance" and "Inglourious Basterds," the latter of which came out in 2009. Between that time, Tarantino won Best Original Screenplay twice for "Pulp Fiction" and "Django Unchained." Now, it's up to "The Hateful Eight" to give him some more amazing dialogue to boast about.
The speech starts at around five minutes into the "True Romance" clip below (Warning: this scene is very NSFW):