Tarantino’s Hateful Eight Has Live Reading in Hollywood
Last night in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino assembled a group of actors, many of them veterans of his films, to do a live staged reading of his latest script, The Hateful Eight. It was done for a standing-room, many industry people (each paying much as $200 a piece), and among those present to do the reading were Tim Roth, Kurt Russell, Walton Goggins, and (of course) Samuel L. Jackson.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tarantino spoke to the audience (which included some reporters for sites, and naturally Harvey Weinstein, Tarantino’s studio chief for twenty years) and mentioned that the script would be re-written and this would be the only time they might see the film with its original ending and third act. “I am working right now on a second draft. This is the first draft,” he said.
The late 1860’s-set Western story, as with other Tarantino works, is split up into chapters and, harkening back to his first film Reservoir Dogs, primarily the action takes place largely in one room with a tight ensemble and includes flashbacks (and, in this case, flashbacks inside flashbacks) in a non-linear style as well as a ‘who-dunnit’. The story starts with Samuel L. Jackson with a saddle but no horse (!) approaching bounty hunter Kurt Russell and his $10,000 reward in Amber Tamblyn. Along with another mystery man, they have to hold up at a haberdashery during a blizzard, and it’s here the rest of the story and unfolds.
The project has been steeped in controversy for quite some time – the lawsuit that Tarantino has brought on the website Gawker, who gave a link to the leaked screenplay of The Hateful Eight in an article about the script and is charging them with dissemination, is still ongoing with, according to Deadline, a trial date set for January of next year – and Tarantino has said due to the leak he will re-write the script (though as it is, he admitted, a first draft it seemed likely he would re-write the script anyway).
But that didn’t stop this exclusive reading, which featured all three of the actors whom Tarantino had originally given the script to and to which the leak happened in the first place, perhaps indicating it was someone else and there are no hard feelings (Bruce Dern as an ex-Civil War general and Michael Madsen were the others along with Roth).
The audience got a lot of laughs and cheers during the reading, as Tarantino’s wild mix of violence, “F” and “N”-words (Tarantino joked after the first one there would be at least 200 more), and subversion – including a monologue from Jackson about getting oral sex from someone before shooting them – as well as a MacGuffin final-act plot around a poisoned pot of coffee. Tarantino also didn’t stop from giving direction at times, telling them at one point “Guys are starting to drift a little away from the dialog. Bring it back to the page. No co-writing.”
There’s no telling how long Tarantino will take with his re-write as of now, or if the cast assembled, such as character actors James Remar and James Parks, but ideally once the script is completed and casting commences – and if the reading showed anything it would be more than likely his next film, albeit publishing the script as a book is still not without possibility – shooting could begin later this year for a 2015 release. Whether the lawsuit will muddy the waters is still hard to say at this point in time, however the re-writes will make the first leaked draft an interesting point of comparison for those that downloaded the script upon the film’s eventual release.
