The Hateful Eight, a Reinvented Western

Title: The Hateful Eight, a Reinvented Western

Description: Steve is joined again by Josh Cohen of the Unfiltered Podcast and Eyewitness History Podcast to talk about the 2015 Quentin Tarantino film, The Hateful Eight. We discuss how this movie is part western, part thriller, Agatha Christie mystery with a dash of Alfred Hitchcock.

Learn More About our Guest:
Josh Cohen of The Eyewitness History Podcast and Unfiltered Podcast
Unfilteredpodcast.blogspot.com
https://www.speakpipe.com/eyewitnesshistory
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Music Provided by:
"Crossing the Chasm" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Image Credits:
By http://www.impawards.com/2015/hateful_eight_ver10.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47218421

Begin Transcript:

Thank you again for listening to Beyond the Big Screen podcast. We are a member of the Parthenon Podcast network. Of course, a big thanks goes out to Josh Cohen host of the Unfiltered podcast and the upcoming Parthenon podcast, Eyewitness History Podcast. Josh is the content editor for the History on the net website. Links to learn more about Josh and the Unfiltered Podcast along with is new Eyewitness Podcast can be found at the unfilteredpodcast.blogspot.com or in the Show Notes.
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Another way to support Beyond the big screen is to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. These reviews really help me know what you think of the show and help other people learn about Beyond the Big screen. More about the Parthenon Podcast Network can be found at Parthenonpodcast.com. You can learn more about Beyond the Big Screen, great movies and stories so great they should be movies on various social media platforms by searching for A to z history. Links to all this and more can be found at beyond the big screen dot com. I thank you for joining me again, Beyond the big Screen.
Steve: [00:00:00] it's driven by strong characters, plot twists, and as a warning, a great deal of violence. I think if you're at all familiar with Quentin Tarantino films, you have to realize there's violence in them. So I know I'm really excited to talk about this movie and I'm really excited to talk with Josh again.
About Quentin Tarantino films. We're going to go through this whole filmography. So we'll, uh, we've started now. We're here at the hateful eight. Uh, just to get an overall view before we dive into the overview, what did you think about this movie in particular?
Josh: Yeah, Well, first off, Steve, thanks for having me back. I had such a blast in our last. Our last podcast and I couldn't be happier that we're doing a string of these. Um, if it's, if it's Quinn, Terentino's Tino, I can always make the time. Um, yeah. W w when I thought of it, it probably won't be a surprise to you, uh, that I loved the movie, which did actually surprise me somewhat given the texture [00:01:00] of the movie itself.
I I'm sure we'll talk about this The movie is set up very much like a play in a sense that there's only a few characters and there's only really one. Um, for, for the action to take place. And by and large, I tend to, despite smoothies, I'd only have one setting. I can never shake this feeling of being cheated.
Um, I watched a horrible movie way back in the day called the boss's daughter, but Terry Reed and Ashton Kutcher. And that was the, it was one, one scene, basically the entire movie. And I'll never forget how cheated I felt. So I came into it prejudice, but of course, Quentin Tarantino, uh, healed me of that.
Steve: Well, this is a part of the context too, in which I think for me what that one, that one setting was kind of a. Quaint, but it really threw me back to the Alfred Hitchcock, like rope where it's all, everything happens in that one room or two rooms and [00:02:00] the, and the apartment. And I thought that that was. A really fun way to do it.
I thought it was for this format. It was engaging. I could see it. If it was an Ashton Kutcher movie, it might be a different stuff. And Tara Reed movie, it might be a different story. I don't recall seeing that, but I think that the way this was filmed, the setting and the, the whole concept, it, it worked.
Josh: Well, Yeah.
that's a really good point. I mean, if you watch the movie, um, he uses multiple cameras. Uh, obviously he does do the 70 millimeter and he creates depth in the scene with the characters. Um, you see the other characters in the background of. Camera's focused on major Marcus Warren for instance.
Right. Um, but uh, I think he does enough tricks with the camera and with perspective to make you think that you're in multiple areas, uh, you could, you know, you're, you're watching, uh, uh, Tim Roth as Oswaldo. Mowbray do his thing while you're watching Walton, Goggins, uh, as the [00:03:00] sheriff, supposedly, maybe we'll talk, um, do do his thing in the corner and you can be a fool by thinking it wasn't occurring in the same way.
Steve: So as usual, we'll get into specifics and plenty of spoilers in this conversation, but just to set the stage, this movie is a Western it's a, it's a Western, it's a mystery. It's a one setting play just to get us set up. Kurt Russell. He has a character named John, the hang man, Ruth. Who's a bounty hunter and he's traveling on a stage coach with his bounty.
And this is the one scene, the stage coach traveling through the snow as the one piece. That's not set in this one building, but we'll get to that. He has as bounty, Daisy, Dom, or guru played by Jennifer, Jason. Ruth is in a hurry to get her to this fictional town of red rock Wyoming. In order to collect this $10,000 bounty and beat the blizzard.
That's rolling in. As they're traveling, they run upon major [00:04:00] MarkWest Warren played by Samuel L. Jackson, who can, who stuck on the side of the road. He convinces Ruth to let him into the. Stage coach, because he also has three bounties who are dead, who he wants to bring to red rock. They finally set off again.
They run into Chris Mannix as played by Walter Goggins. As Josh mentioned, who claims to be the new sheriff of red rock, they take him in as well. Finally, they stopped and Minnie's haberdashery. Traveler's rest of sword for refuge from this blizzard. And that's where things get interesting. There's a whole new set of character herders there for four or five, five comma off of the, the stagecoach.
And then there's several other characters. We'll get into the details of that who are at many's have it. Ashery and this is. Well, this is particularly where the movie gets interesting because all sorts of unusual [00:05:00] alliances forum fall apart. And so, I mean really where to begin, I would say one place, um, where, where I thought it might be interesting to start is as a real Quintin Tarantino fanatic, you might say, how do you think that this one fits in with his larger body of work?
As of this point in 2022, it's his. Second to last movie a once upon a time. And Hollywood's his latest. So this was the movie, just to previous to that. It came out in 2015. So he's had, um, at that 0.8 movies that he's produced and directed to that point. What do you, how do you think it fits in?
Josh: Um, well, I mean, it was obviously critically, critically and commercially well-received. Uh, one thing that caught my eye when I, when I looked at the numbers, uh, was that it broke Terentino's streak of having, um, Movies that became as high as grossing. And I better give some context for that. Uh, he comes out with, uh, Inglorious [00:06:00] bastards to be followed by Django and chain.
When Inglorious bastards came out, it was his highest grossing movie ever. It made the most money for, for him. That was his record. And then Django came out and it was the exact same thing that became his highest grossing painfully broke that streak. Um, and I, I can never quite shake this feeling. That's it's the one second.
Uh, play that that may have caused an issue for audiences. I'm not quite sure as far as where it fits in. Um, as you point out, it's certainly genre, blending, uh, bending. Yeah. That'll work, uh, genre. Yeah. Blending or bending works. Um, uh, and one, wouldn't be watching a Tarantino movie if one wasn't sufficiently confused of what the genre was.
Um, and, uh, yeah, we see Tarantino, uh, play a little bit further with his, that bounty hunter fetish that we were talking about in the, in the last podcast, starting with Django, moving through April eight and obviously ending at one point in?
time in home. [00:07:00]
Steve: Maybe let's since it is this one setting play essentially at Minnie's haberdashery, maybe explain that one setting to us because that setting is it. The character in and of itself.
Josh: Yeah, Steve, you took the words out of my mouth, the setting and the environment. So it's the haberdashery in the storm, the storm that in crouches, on, on the haberdashery, like. This monster, it almost has a presence in and of itself. Um, well the habit ashtray as you point out is, is a refuge from the storm for all of these characters.