‘I’d rather read a book’: Tarantino criticises ‘flavourless sausage factory’ Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino has criticised contemporary Hollywood, calling it “a flavourless sausage factory”.

Writing in Sight and Sound magazine, Tarantino said that “since the pandemic … it seems almost impossible for a new movie to come out that I don’t pick to death”. He added: “Flaws, implausibilities, audience pandering, miscast performers or just plain stupid shit usually torpedoes every new movie coming out of the flavourless sausage factory that used to call itself Hollywood.”

Tarantino also said that while the “1980s were pretty bad too”, he was able to “forgive” 80s films because he “loved going to the movies”. “These days, however, the entire concept of what is a movie is more inclined to inspire contempt in me than generosity.”

In his article, Tarantino dwelled at length on one current film he enjoyed – The Rip, directed by Joe Carnahan, currently on Netflix – and mentioned Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story and the Kevin Costner-directed Horizon: An American Saga Chapters 1 and 2 as recent films he liked. He went on to say that he had seen “nothing that really held me in its grip and swept me away to the magical land of enjoyment that I used to visit regularly and was the reason I loved movies above all other art forms. These days I’d rather read a book.”

Tarantino is currently working on a “swashbuckling” play called The Popinjay Cavalier, which is due to open in London’s West End in 2027. His most recent film release was the 60s-set Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood in 2019, a novel adaptation of which he published in 2021, and to which a follow-up, directed by David Fincher, is currently in production. In 2024 Tarantino scrapped plans to make his 10th feature, The Movie Critic, supposedly his final film.