With all the blood, weapons, and ass-whooping that comprises a typical Quentin Tarantino film, it’s a little unexpected that the man isn’t too keen on shooting another type of graphic content. Speaking to the Spanish publication Diari ARA (via NME), the director explained why his characters almost never engage in sex scenes: “Sex is not part of my vision of cinema,” he said.
Tarantino went on: “In real life, it’s a pain to shoot sex scenes,” he said, adding that cast and crew members often get “tense” trying to bring in intimate moment to life. “If it was already a bit problematic to do it before, now it is even more so. If there had ever been a sex scene that was essential to the story, I would have, but so far it hasn’t been necessary.”
So far, the only times Tarantino has included sexually explicit scenes in his films are a brief and lackluster encounter in Jackie Brown, as well as an infamous rape scene in Pulp Fiction. Finding the right camera angles, good chemistry between actors, and non-corny script certainly does take quite a bit of work — but Tarantino’s use of the words “problematic” and “before” hint that he might also feel disgruntled by the extra precautions that need to be taken to establish consent, especially in light of the #MeToo movement and subsequent fall of Harvey Weinstein (whose Miramax Films, it’s worth noting, has distributed almost all of Tarantino’s movies).
Tarantino calling sex scenes a “pain” also brings to mind Sean Bean, star of the notoriously horny Game of Thrones, who has a bone to pick with intimacy coordinators on film sets: “Somebody saying, ‘Do this, put your hands there, while you touch his thing…’ I think the natural way lovers behave would be ruined by someone bringing it right down to a technical exercise,” he said, which raises eyebrows for a number of reasons.
But maybe Tarantino genuinely just isn’t that interested in getting freaky on the big screen. His next and supposedly final feature film is titled The Movie Critic, which is currently in pre-production, so we’ll see if he goes out on a bang (pun intended).
