Quentin Tarantino reveals final film is based on porn magazine film critic

Quentin Tarantino has revealed that his next, and supposedly last, film The Movie Critic is inspired by a contributor to a '70s porn magazine.

Speaking with Deadline columnist Baz Bamigboye at the Cannes Film Festival, the Pulp Fiction director said the film "is based on a guy who really lived, but was never really famous, and he used to write movie reviews for a porno rag." Tarantino discovered the writer as a teenager when he had a job loading adult magazines into a vending machine. "All the other stuff was too skanky to read but then there was this porno rag that had a really interesting movie page," he told Bamigboye.

The writer, Tarantino said, was the magazine's "second-string critic," focusing primarily on "mainstream movies." He added, "I think he was a very good critic. He was as cynical as hell. His reviews were a cross between early Howard Stern and what Travis Bickle might be if he were a film critic... the porno rag critic was very, very funny. He was very rude, you know. He cursed. He used racial slurs. But his s--- was really funny. He was as rude as hell."

According to Tarantino, the critic died in his late 30s. "It wasn't clear for a while but now I've done some more research and I think it was it was complications due to alcoholism."

The Movie Critic, he said, takes place in California in 1977. In the film, the porn magazine will be called The Popstar Pages.

The director revealed that he isn't planning on casting either Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio, Tarantino's male leads from his most recent film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. "I haven't decided yet but it's going to be somebody in the 35-year-old ball park," he said. "It'll definitely be a new leading man for me."

Tarantino has stated that he plans to retire from directing after completing his next film. "Working for 30 years, doing as many movies as I've done... that's a long career, that's a really long career, and I've given it everything I have," he told Bill Maher in 2021.

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