One Quentin Tarantino Movie Bombing Damaged The Director’s Confidence

Quentin Tarantino opens up about how Death Proof bombing damaged his confidence. The 2007 film, which is more of minor work in the auteur’s illustrious filmography, stars Kurt Russell as a sadistic stuntman who murders young women with his modified car which he purports to be “death proof,” but only if you’re sitting in the driver’s seat that is. Death Proof underperformed at the box office by grossing only $31 million and barely making back its $30 million budget, which in the eyes of Tarantino and many others, was a failure.

In a recent interview with Diari ARA during the international portion of his Cinema Speculation book tour, Tarantino opened up about how the only box office bomb of his career, Death Proof, damaged his confidence as a director. But instead of transitioning to a for-hire Hollywood director, Tarantino decided to stick to his guns by telling his own original stories. He reinvested in himself by making Inglourious Basterds, one of the biggest hits of his career. Read what Tarantino shared below:

I have been lucky enough to write stories that have connected with many people, and this has allowed me to practice my art without the restrictions that most filmmakers have. Now, a funny thing happened: for a while I was getting a lot of project proposals, until the studios ended up assuming that I do my stories and it wasn’t worth the effort. But after Death Proof, which didn’t do well at the box office and was a bit of a shock to my confidence, I started getting proposals again.

They must have thought, “Perhaps now he’s touched and his temper has gone down, now is the time.” And there’s nothing wrong with making commissioned movies for Hollywood. They always offered me interesting projects. But I preferred to reinvest in myself and made Inglourious Basterds.

Why Death Proof Bombed At The Box Office

Death Proof was released in theaters as part of a Grindhouse double feature along with Robert Rodriguez’s Planet Terror. After Grindhouse initially underperformed at the domestic box office, Death Proof was released as a standalone feature internationally, though it didn’t fare much better. In the past, Tarantino has been open about how he over-estimated general audiences’ interest in a Grindhouse-style double feature, as they didn’t have much of a reference point for exploitation films of the 1970s and the now-defunct theaters that showed them. Because of this failure on his part, Tarantino considers Death Proof to be his worst movie.

Though Death Proof bombing damaged the director’s confidence, he quickly got it back with his next two films, Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained, which are two of Tarantino’s highest-grossing movies. But because of slight missteps in his career like Death Proof, Tarantino has decided to retire from directing after just ten movies in order to leave behind a mostly unblemished body of work. Tarantino’s final film is The Movie Critic, which he is planning to direct this fall.

Source: Diari ARA