Quentin Tarantino has revealed that his new film, The Movie Critic, will be about a “porno rag” journalist.
Speaking to Deadline, the director said that the upcoming project will go into “pre-pre-production” this June, and that he’s currently looking for an actor around the age of 35 to play the lead.
Tarantino said that the film – which will be set in 1977 Southern California – will be based on a real-life movie critic for a pornographic magazine, which the director used to read when he was growing up and working as a vending machine re-stocker.
“All the other stuff was too skanky to read but then there was this porno rag that had a really interesting movie page,” Tarantino recalled of reading the magazine as a teenager.
“He wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic. I think he was a very good critic. He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic. Think about Travis’ diary entries.”
The Pulp Fiction director added: “But the porno rag critic was very, very funny. He was very rude, you know. He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his shit was really funny. He was as rude as hell. He wrote like he was 55 but he was only in his early to mid-30s. He died in his late 30s. It wasn’t clear for a while but now I’ve done some more research and I think it was it was complications due to alcoholism.”
For his upcoming film, the magazine will be given the fictional name ‘The Popstar Pages’. Of the critic, Tarantino further described him as “a guy who really lived, but was never really famous”.
As for casting, Tarantino noted that he will be looking for a male American actor in his mid-30s, adding that it will be someone he has not yet worked with.
“I haven’t decided yet but it’s going to be somebody in the 35-year-old ball park. It’ll definitely be a new leading man for me,” Tarantino said. “I do have an idea of somebody I can imagine doing it really well.”
Earlier this week, Tarantino killed off Rick Dalton, the fictional character played by Leonardo DiCaprio in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
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