November 26, 2017

Quentin Tarantino Doesn’t Even Know How Netflix Works, Still Misses Video Stores

The way we watch movies may be changing, but Quentin Tarantino isn’t. The director, who still shoots on film and refuses to screen anything digitally at the New Beverly, is well known for having worked at a video store in his younger years — and, as evidenced by a new interview (below), he still prefers the brick-and-mortar experience to streaming sites like Netflix.

“I’m not on Netflix, so I can’t even tell you exactly how that works,” he says. “But even if you just have all the movie channels in your [TV] package — and that’s something I do have — so you hit the guide and you go down the list, and you hit there and you watch something or you tape something, and maybe you never get around to watching it or you actually do watch it, and then maybe you watch it for 10 minutes or 20 minutes, and maybe you start doing something else, and ‘Nah, I’m not really into this.’ And then that’s kind of where we’ve fallen into.”

Not feeling committed to the movie you’ve chosen was less of a problem at actual stores, the “Hateful Eight” director argues. “There was a different quality to the video store. You went down to the video store, you looked around, you picked up boxes, you read the back of the boxes — you made a choice,” he continues.

“And maybe you talked to the guy behind the counter, and maybe he pointed you toward something. And he didn’t just put something in your hand, he gave you a little bit of a sales pitch on it to some degree or another. And so the point being is, you were kind of invested in a way that you’re not invested with electronic technology when it comes to the movies.” Listen to his full thoughts below.

Source: IndieWire film