Quentin Tarantino doesn’t have another movie out, and he may not be long for the profession. But he did recently publish his first book of film criticism. You know what that means: He’s doing another round of press, spouting off his wacky hot takes. Some of them aren’t that wacky: Maybe Once Upon a Time in Hollywood really is his best film, as he believes. He’s also telling some inside baseball stories he may not have told before — like that time he went hunting with some of the biggest filmmakers in the business.
“I went duck hunting with Spielberg once,” Tarantino told Howard Stern. “I was the new kid in town, and they were all really impressed with Pulp Fiction.”
Spielberg wasn’t the only walking through the woods with him, carrying firearms. So was the NRA’s most famous filmmaker member, John Milius, responsible for Conan the Barbarian, Red Dawn, and some of the better lines in movies like Dirty Harry and Apocalypse Now. Also there was Robert Zemeckis, who had his own film that year: Forrest Gump. The two were in tight competition for a number of Oscars, including Best Picture. In fact, that’s exactly why Spielberg invited them both out to go duck hunting.
“You and Bob Zemeckis are gonna be in competition the whole rest of this year, so before the competition starts it might be nice to all go off and do something together,” Spielberg told him, as Tarantino recalled. They had a good time, and Spielberg even pulled him aside to offer some industry advice.
“He’s talking to me very pragmatically. We’re walking through a forest and … he’s like, ‘So, here’s what’s going to happen at the Oscars,’” Tarantino recalled. “I think it’s gonna be Bob who wins Best Picture … and Best Director … but I do think you’ll win Best Original Screenplay.’ And then he stopped, turned around and looked at me, and said, ‘Second movie. Little gold man. Not too bad.’”
That’s exactly what happened, although over the years Pulp Fiction has been the one with the better rep, prompting its star, Tom Hanks, to mount a defense.
Tarantino’s book Cinema Speculation, which mostly finds him analyzing ‘70s cinema, is available for sale now. You can watch the clip below.