“We’ve been rehearsing this for the last 3 days and we’re not bad,” Quentin Tarantino tonight told a packed Theatre at the Ace Hotel on downtown LA’s South Broadway at the live staged reading of his The Hateful Eight script. With alumni from his past pics such as Samuel L Jackson, Tim Roth, Kurt Russell, James Parks, Amber Tamblyn Michael Madsen, Denis Menochet, James Remar and Walton Goggins plus Bruce Dern by his side on stage, the director’s 3.5 hour performance of the 5 chapter post-Civil War era Wyoming-set Western revealed that Tarantino has a career in theatre if he ever decided to chuck the whole movie-making thing.
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However, despite the controversy and legal action surrounding the leaked Eight script, tonight’s once-in-a-lifetime Film Independent Presents the World Premiere of a Staged Reading by Quentin Tarantino: The Hateful Eight, as it was formally titled, also revealed the big screen version might now not be as shelved as the director first told my colleague Mike Fleming Jr. on January 21. “I’m working on a second draft and I will do a third draft but we’re reading from the first draft,” the black Stetson and red ribbed cowboy shirt wearing Tarantino said to the 1200 patrons in the majestic almost SRO theatre before the performance started. “The Chapter 5 here will not be the Chapter 5 later, so this will be the only time it is seen ever.”
Regardless of how Eight lives on, the crowd tonight loved the show they saw tonight – especially the hands on on-stage narration and direction from Tarantino himself. “Guys, you are starting to drift away from the dialogue on the page,” the Oscar winner told the actors at one point around halfway through. “No more co-writing,” he added to a big laugh from the audience. “He’s directing,” said Jackson at another part when Tarantino ran across the stage to whisper something into his ear. That also got a big roar from the crowd. A couple of other times, the director asked the actors to start a particular scene over again. Near the end of the performance, Tarantino playfully told Goggins to just read the script and not worry about the imaginary guns in his hands. Also during the later part of the show both Goggins and Madsen broke from the script and joked with Tarantino about a narration line where Madsen’s character was described as looking like “he’s cumming in his pants.” Madsen told the director that “its never happened before.” Tarantino shot back that he’d show him one day what it was like. Besides several standing ovations, only a 20 minute intermission broke up the show. Tickets for tonight’s event went for around $150 to $200 a pop, with all proceeds going to helping out Film Independent’s programming efforts at LACMA. Security was a top concern with the well heeled crowd having to give up their cell phones and other electronics before entering the downtown theatre.
Filled with the sometimes laconic, sometimes sardonic and often violently profane language we’ve come to expect from Tarantino’s screenplays, the sharp Hateful Eight script tells the tale of a small group of stagecoach passengers stranded during an Equality State blizzard in the later part of the 19th Century. In this case, the group includes a couple of grizzled bounty hunters, a Confederate General, a transplanted Englishman and Frenchman and a female prisoner among others in the secluded mountainside Minnie’s Haberdashery. With a boxcar of bullets, weaponry and betrayal also in hand, tiddlywinks does not ensue, to put it mildly.
Jackson was there playing the tailor-made for him role of bounty hunter and former Union soldier Major Marquis Warren. Though the e-cig smoking Captain America: The Winter Soldier star’s appearance tonight was previously known, his co-stars were not. Introduced at the beginning by Tarantino, Russell played fellow bounty hunter John Ruth AKA “The Hangman”, Roth was Brit expat Oswaldo Mobray, Menochet as Bob “from France,” Dern was Southern General Sanford Smithers, with Madsen as cowboy John Gage. Additionally, Tamblyn was prisoner Daisy Domergue, with Goggins as Confederate soldier Chris Mannix of “the scourge of North Carolina, Mannix’s Marauders” and Parks as stagecoach driver O.B. Jackson, Parks, Russell and Tamblyn did double duty as other characters and were joined by Zoe Bell, who was in the Tarantino-directed Death Proof in 2007 and Django’s Dana Gourrier in smaller roles. Longtime Tarantino film EPs Harvey and Bob Weinstein were among the crowd.
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The sparse on-stage set up saw Tarantino reading from a podium on the left. The actors sat on the half a dozen red leather seat chairs placed in front of microphone stands. Though at various points in the night, Jackson, Russell, Goggins and others moved around the huge stage with the mics in hand. A number of the performers also acted out shooting guns and drinking coffee. Tarantino used a blue coffee pot as a pivotal prop throughout the later part of the reading. A couple of slightly worn comfy plush armchairs were brought on for a portion of the show for Dern’s character and those he spoke with.
Intended to be Tarantino’s next project after 2012’s Django Unchained, the director put Hateful Eight on ice after the script appeared online after he’d shown it to a select few actors earlier this year. “I’m very, very depressed,” Tarantino said in late January. “I finished a script, a first draft, and I didn’t mean to shoot it until next winter, a year from now. I gave it to six people, and apparently it’s gotten out today.” Tarantino added, “I’ll publish it. I’m done. I’ll move on to the next thing. I’ve got 10 more where that came from.” Just 6 days later on January 27th, Tarantino sued Gawker for copyright infringement and $1 million over the site’s promotion and dissemination of the Hateful Eight script. With a January 27, 2015 trial date now set, the two sides are currently in court-ordered mediation over the matter. Originally scheduled for April 24 and at LACMA when it was first announced on April 3, the staged reading was moved to tonight on April 9 due to “unforeseen scheduling issues.” Trust me, except for the people who couldn’t get a ticket to the hottest show in town, no one who saw tonight’s performance had a problem with that. “Good night Los Angeles!” Tarantino shouted out to the audience after an almost 5 minute standing ovation at the end. Yes, it was.