Quentin Tarantino Talks Retirement And Avoiding Having His Last Movie Be His Worst

Quentin Tarantino has directed nine movies, but will he make a tenth? The director spoke about his plans for the future on the Pure Cinema podcast, saying he hasn't made a decision about retirement yet, but he wants to avoid the curse he observed of directors ending their careers on a low note.

Tarantino's latest movie, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, was generally well-received and considered by some to be among his best work. As such, Tarantino said that if he retired from filmmaking now, it would be a mic drop kind of moment.

"Maybe I should not make another movie because I could be really happy with dropping the mic," he said (via IndieWire). "That's the frustrating part… a lot of the really terrific directors, it's like their third-to-the-last movie would have been an amazing, amazing one to end on, which goes back to what I was saying about myself. Or you know, if Don Siegel had stopped with Escape from Alcatraz, oh my f**king god. What a career…he really said it all. The other two were just jobs."

Tarantino observed that "most directors have horrible last movies," and he doesn't want this to be true for himself.

"Usually their worst movies are their last movies," he said. "That's the case for most of the Golden Age directors that ended up making their last movies in the late '60s and the '70s, then that ended up being the case for most of the New Hollywood directors who made their last movies in the late '80s and the '90s. I mean, most directors' last films are f**king lousy."

If Tarantino does direct another movie, and it's well-received, he would be in rare company as a director ending on a high note, he said.

"To actually end your career on a decent movie is rare. To end it with, like, a good movie is kind of phenomenal," he said.

Tarantino has not officially announced any plans for a new movie, but he said in November 2019 that he planned to eventually make at least one more movie.

"There will be a 10th one, yes," Tarantino said at an appearance in London (via NME). "I have no idea what it’s going to be. It's going to be a little bit down the line."

Tarantino's first movie was Reservoir Dogs, which debuted in 1992. He followed it up with Pulp Fiction in 1994, and then Jackie Brown in 1997. The two Kill Bill films followed in 2003 and 2004, with Death Proof (2007), Inglorious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012), and The Hateful Eight (2015) following. Tarantino won Oscars for Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained.

There was talk of Tarantino directing a Star Trek movie, but that is no longer the case.

In the same podcast interview, Tarantino spoke about how his upcoming novelization of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood will reveal some of the backstory for Brad Pitt's mysterious character, Cliff Booth.