I’ve only seen The Hateful Eight one time. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and thought it was some of the best dialogue writer-director Quentin Tarantino has conjured in quite some time. Some who have been lucky enough to see The Hateful Eight a second time (or more) claim that it gets better once you know all of the characters and fully understand their true motivations. And that might be the case. But for me, the best part of the story was not knowing, and waiting to decipher the inherent mystery in the plot. And it sounds like I’m not alone.
Quentin Tarantino is out promoting his latest movie, The Hateful Eight, which opened in limited release on Christmas Day (in 70mm format, where available) and has been expanding in subsequent weeks. While speaking with IGN about the various Westerns that influenced his tone on Hateful, Tarantino revealed Samuel L. Jackson’s favorite part about working on this, his latest QT film:
I asked Sam [Jackson], after he read the script, ‘What was your favorite part?’ And he goes ‘Well actually, my favorite part is when I’m just figuring out what happened to everybody, and I turn into Hercule Negro.’ That’s what we called that character through the whole shooting!
Sam Jackson is referencing the famous Hercule Poirot, the lead detective in numerous Agatha Christie novels, as Quentin Tarantino was telling IGN that he was catching up with the author’s And Then There Were None… (also published as Ten Little Indians). The reference is a direct nod to the conclusion of The Hateful Eight, though I’ll leave it for you to figure out, in case you’ve read this far without seeing the actual movie.
So, Samuel L. Jackson’s favorite part was mine, as well. While The Hateful Eight boasts many of Quentin Tarantino’s trademark cinematic tools – from lyrical and boisterous dialogue to bloody shootouts that surprise the audience with their levels of violence – the thing I found most intriguing about the story as it unfolded was the mystery of who was playing whom? Even as we have been lucky enough to speak with cast members from The Hateful Eight, they all have their theories about the movie. Kurt Russell has a great theory about his character, John Ruth, while Walton Goggins told me what scene he’d LOVE to see after the movie concludes.
The bottom line is, everyone seemed to enjoy working on The Hateful Eight with Tarantino. Did you enjoy watching it?
