Quentin Tarantino Says He's Writing a Novel

Quentin Tarantino has said that his next film will be his last, but that doesn’t mean he’s planning on retiring from all creative endeavors. In a recent conversation with Martin Scorsese for DGA Quarterly, the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood director revealed that he’s currently working on a novel.

The book, Tarantino says, will focus on the differences between American and foreign films, seen through the eyes of a WWII veteran who has just returned home. “I’ve got this character who had been in World War II and he saw a lot of bloodshed there,” Tarantino said. “And now he’s back home, and it’s like the ’50s, and he doesn’t respond to movies anymore. He finds them juvenile after everything that he’s been through. As far as he’s concerned, Hollywood movies are movies. And so then, all of a sudden, he starts hearing about these foreign movies by Kurosawa and Fellini. … And so he’s like, ‘Well, maybe they might have something more than this phony Hollywood stuff.’”

The director also told Scorsese that he’s used the book as an excuse to go back and revisit some of his favorite old classics. “I find myself having a wonderful opportunity of, in some cases, rewatching and, in some cases, watching for the first time movies I’ve heard about forever, but from my character’s perspective,” he said. “So I’m enjoying watching them but I’m also [thinking], ‘How is he taking it? How is he looking at it?’ I always like to have a good excuse for just throwing down into a pit of cinema.”

There’s currently no word on when Tarantino’s novel is slated to be released. You can read his full conversation with Scorsese here.

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