The Movie Critic

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The Movie Critic was set to be Quentin Tarantino's 10th and final film but in April 2024 it was announced it wasn't going to be made.

Background

The film is set in Southern California in 1977, the year one of QT's fave films, Rolling Thunder was released (and which he presented as a special screening at Cannes 2023) and also the blockbuster hit Star Wars. The main character is based on a porno rag journalist Tarantino read growing up while he was working (his first job) as a vending machine restocker in his early teen years. Speaking about the critic Tarantino says: "His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern (rule breaking radio persona) and what Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic. Think about Travis’ diary entries". In the movie, the publication the critic writes for will be called "The Popstar Pages". There is a character arc similar to that of Travis Bickle in Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.

Trivia

  • The Popstar Pages is the fictional version of real L.A. porno rag The Hollywood Press. Quentin's first job around age 14 was restocking newspaper vending machines which is where he first read this publication.
  • The main character is based on a real person named Jim Sheldon, a relatively unknown second string film critic for The Hollywood Press. Unlike QT, Sheldon was not a big fan of low budget exploitation films.
  • The main character is partly inspired by Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) from Martin Scorsese's New Hollywood classic Taxi Driver.
  • The film is set in 1977, that year Star Wars was released and became a pop culture phenomenon. Other notable movies from that year include: Saturday Night Fever, Rolling Thunder (the first film QT would be inspired to critique more in depth), Sorcerer, Slap Shot, Smokey and The Bandit, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Annie Hall

News chronology

Tarantino XX BluRay
Bad Mother Fucker Pulp Fiction Wallet