Quentin Tarantino on WTF with Marc Maron

Tarantino’s novelization of the characters he created for his 2019 hit Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood arrives tomorrow, June 29. He gave a free-wheeling interview with Marc Maron where they talk about a lot of things, and rarely do they focus explicitly on the book or the movie.

Unsurprisingly, they talk about a lot of old movies, old Hollywood, and it’s a lot of fun to hear them go back and forth. They talk about Charles Manson, the hold he had over their generation, and how researching for the movie and novel exorcised that obsession for Tarantino. They talked about whether or not Tarantino will retire after his 10th film. They talked about how Maron was recommended by Jennifer Lawrence to play Marty Schwarz in the film version. They talked about a little bit of everything.

As with some of the best Maron podcasts, they have a surprisingly candid discussion about Tarantino’s biological father and how he wasn’t around during his childhood but came back around the time he got famous.

QT: It was so fucked up. You can’t even say he was, like, a bad dad and maybe that reflected on Quentin’s life. No, he was not there!

MM: Did you have a confrontation with the guy?

QT: No, I just wanted him to go away.

MM: … Did he ask you to be in a movie?

QT: … He wanted to be an actor a long time ago, and then some time in the 90s, him and Al Pacino’s estranged father, Sal Pacino, hooked up and they started doing these straight-to-video movies, starring them. So you could actually put on the video box “Pacino and Tarantino in Silver Dudes with Guns” or whatever it was called.

MM: Did you watch it?

QT: No, I never saw it. I didn’t even want to know what the guy looked like.

MM: That’s hilarious. The only movies you won’t watch…

QT: Oddly enough, I actually think there is something — look, I’m not into this dude — but I actually think there is something kind of sweet about the idea that the son he never saw, ever, allowed him to have somewhat of a semblance of the career that he was never able to get on his own. I actually think there is something sweet about that. It’s done as exploitively as possible, but nevertheless, he was able to end up living his dream doing these straight-to-video movies, acting and playing roles, and my fame gave him that. I’m compassionate enough to appreciate that, and think that’s actually a good thing.