Star Film Director Made Broadway Debut

BROADWAY MAGAZINE — Quentin Tarantino is Hollywood’s man of the moment. With the success of his film Inglourious Basterds staring Brad Pitt in full swing, we take a minute to remember the celebrated director’s Broadway days. Riding high on the success of films like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino was not only the “it” director of the 90’s, he was also an actor. Did you know that in 1998, he made his Broadway Debut?

The play was Wait Until Dark and the role was Harry Roat, first played on Broadway by Robert Duvall and on film by the brilliant Alan Arkin. The show was a hot ticket at the time, but the critics were not kind to the show.

While co-star Marisa Tomei earned positive notices and the set and sound where given high marks, most critics focused on Mr. Tarantino’s performance as the madman who terrorizes a blind woman.

Of Quentin Tarantino’s Broadway performance, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly said “he’s about as threatening as an apoplectic professor.” Also noting that Mr. Tarantino wasn’t menacing, Ben Brantley of The New York Times said Tarantino “registers at best as merely petulant, like a suburban teen-ager who has been denied the use of his father’s Lexus for the night.” Critic Les Gutman wrote that Quentin Tarantino’s Harry “veers from calculating at best to bumbling and indifferent at worst.”

Still, in hindsight, there were some positive observations about Quentin Tarantino on Broadway. Matt Wolf of Variety said “that the part is pretty silly has little to do with Tarantino, who brings to it a surprisingly strong voice and a virtually constant sneer” and opined that “as psychos go, his (Tarantino) is unexpectedly straightforward; entering with sunglasses, hair slicked-back, he’s no more or less cheesy than Alan Arkin in the 1967 film.”

The show ran at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre and played for 97 performances. It is Quentin Tarantino’s only Broadway performance to date.

In a 2005 interview with MTV News, the star director said “I just don’t feel like acting anymore…I lost the bug.”

With the box-office success of his film Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino’s flair for spectacle and style, Broadway’s love of Movies turned Musicals, and the Weinstein Brother’s appetite for Broadway success (long-time Tarantino producers) it may seem inevitable that Tarantino will be back on Broadway as an artist in one way or another.

We suggest a Jacobean Revenge Play…bloody, humorous, and macabre—they were made for Quentin Tarantino to make.

Follow us on Twitter to see which Jacobean Revenge Plays would be perfect for Quentin Tarantino to stage on Broadway…also keep looking for George Washington’s teeth.

Tags: Alan Arkin, Brad Pitt, Broadway, Inglourious Basterds, Jacobean Revenge Tragedy, Marisa Tomei, MTV News, Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino, Resevoir Dogs, Reviews, Twitter, Wait Until Dark, Weinstein Brothers

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