Quentin Tarantino’s Blunt Take on Mumblecore Films
Quentin Tarantino doesn’t mince words when it comes to the mumblecore subgenre, sharing why its style leaves him cold despite his respect for some of its key directors.
Everyone’s got their own taste when it comes to films, no matter how much of a film buff they claim to be. Some genres just don’t click, and that’s fair enough. For Quentin Tarantino, it only took one go to decide he’d had his fill of a certain style. His preferences have always been pretty clear, right from the days of Reservoir Dogs. He’s got a massive knowledge of cinema, but it’s obvious he’s got favourites and a few he’d rather skip.
The bloke’s a big fan of Clint Eastwood’s old westerns, Sergio Leone’s classics, the wild action flicks out of Hong Kong from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, early Brian De Palma, dodgy horror, rough exploitation films, and the odd big studio blockbuster—unless it’s a Marvel one. But there are some niche trends you just can’t picture him getting into, and one of the most talked-about in recent years is right up there.
Mumblecore: Not Tarantino’s Cup of Tea
When resources were tight, a bunch of up-and-coming filmmakers started making films on the cheap, roping in their mates, and focusing on chatty scenes and character banter instead of big plots. Usually, they’d stick to one or two locations to stretch their tiny budgets. This style got labelled ‘mumblecore’, though not everyone was stoked about the name. Greta Gerwig, who copped the title ‘Queen of Mumblecore’, can’t stand the term, but it’s stuck with her all the same.
Tarantino, for his part, is a self-confessed fan of Noah Baumbach, even calling him the Paul Mazursky of his time. Still, the whole mumblecore thing left him scratching his head.
“All that mumblecore stuff happened when I was in Germany doing Inglourious Basterds, so I didn’t even know about it,”
he once said. Given he’s a writer and director who loves big, loud set pieces, punchy soundtracks, over-the-top characters, and a fair bit of violence, it’s not a shock that after reading up on what mumblecore was all about, his first reaction was,
“What the fuck is this shit?”
One Good Pickle in the Barrel
Still, he did give the Duplass brothers a bit of a pass, even if the rest of the subgenre didn’t win him over.
“I said to my friend Elvis Mitchell, ‘Have you seen any of those mumblecore movies? I was curious and watched Baghead, and I thought it was really good,”
Tarantino explained. That chat told him all he needed to know about whether he should dig deeper into the style.
Mitchell’s response was pretty blunt:
“He goes, ‘You saw the good one. They’re not all like that. You reached into a pickle barrel and grabbed the right pickle.'”
Instead of a glowing recommendation, Tarantino got the message that he’d already seen the best the subgenre had to offer, and that was enough for him. It never really felt like his thing anyway, even if Baumbach and the Duplass brothers got a nod of approval.