The first thing Tarantino does when he has a good idea is bounce it off of other people. “Usually I’ll call up a couple friends on the phone and I’ll go, ‘Hey, can I read you this scene I just wrote?'” he said. These trusted friends include Eli Roth, the multi-hyphenate filmmaker behind horror movies like “Cabin Fever” and “Knock Knock,” and Stacey Sher, who produced ’90s hits like “Erin Brockovich” as well as Tarantino’s 2012 film “Django Unchained.”
Just because Tarantino calls his friends doesn’t mean he’s looking for their input. “The truth of the matter is, I don’t really want a lot of comments back from them, unless they’re positive,” he admitted. The filmmaker isn’t out to get his ego stroked, though — he feels confident enough in his own work as is. “I’m a pretty good storyteller, so I don’t think my stories are dopey,” he said, giving himself a rare but measured compliment. “Even something like ‘Inglorious Basterds’ is fairly plausible, the way I tell the story.”
These phone calls aren’t for criticism or praise, but they do serve an important purpose for Tarantino. “The point of reading it to them is for me to hear it through their ears,” the director explained. “I can walk up and down my room and read it six times in a row, but it still seems like an echo chamber … now all of a sudden I’m not just reading it in the room, now I’m performing it.”
