Quentin Tarantino, self-proclaimed ‘student of Hong Kong cinema’, talks the making of The Hateful Eight

Quentin Tarantino loves to talk films. The ones he’s made, those that other people have made, something he saw long ago, it doesn’t matter. Line up a dozen media interviews for him in one day, but as long as he gets to focus on film, he can keep going and not tire.

That was clearly evident on a recent Sunday afternoon when Tarantino, relaxed in his suite in a Beverly Hills hotel although nattily dressed in a pale suit, got to talk about apparently one of his favourite film-related subjects – Hong Kong cinema.

“I think I could call myself not just a fan of Hong Kong cinema,” he says. “But I’m a student of it. A scholar. As I’ve done more study on it, I know even more than I did when I was younger. I didn’t know about the women’s movies from the sixties and seventies. They weren’t shown to us here in America. Now, I know them. It became about more than the Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest.”

Tarantino has long maintained that his enduring love of Hong Kong action films has informed his aesthetic. His first two films, the dark and gritty Reservoir Dogs (1992) and the iconic Pulp Fiction (1994) earned him a reputation as a visionary in the cinematic arts. Then followed Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds and more. Awards and accolades started to accumulate, as much for himself as the talent he has put in his films – Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Uma Thurman. He became known for a unique kind of film – violence and bloodshed mixed with snappy dialogue and subtle, sometimes inexplicable, humour. During an early screening of his latest, The Hateful Eight, the audience burst into laughter every time something gruesome happened on screen.

Tarantino wrote and directed the film, starting from “a bunch of blank pieces of paper and a pen.

That starts you off, and it becomes something you could never have imagined before you started writing.”