The Alamo Drafthouse used to do this thing every year called QT Fest where they would invite Quentin Tarantino to come down and bring 24 hours’ worth of film prints, then let him talk and talk and talk in the company of similarly verbose dorks like Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News fame. But QT Fest sputtered to a halt sometime around 2007, which is either an incalculable loss or a massive relief depending on your answer to this question: Would you rather be trapped in an elevator with Hannibal Lecter, or Quentin Tarantino after a couple of Red Bulls?
Most people fall somewhere in the middle, which is why it’s a good thing that Tarantino is reportedly limiting his new role as full-time programmer of the New Beverly Cinema, the theater he owns in Los Angeles, to putting together double features. (Tarantino bought the theater in 2007 and has left its care to Michael Torgan, son of original owner Sherman Torgan, ever since). The New Beverly has been closed for almost a month, sparking rumors that the theater was going dark forever. But as Tarantino tells LA Weekly, he’s actually planning on ramping up his participation in the theater by using it to screen 35mm prints from his personal collection:
“We’ll be doing the thing the New Beverly does so well—we’ll have Fassbender double-features, Truffaut double-features, The Thin Man movies, all that. But I have a really, really huge film print collection that I’ve been curating for almost 20 years now. And I want to show my prints!”
(Incidentally, I once saw a list of the titles available for rent from Tarantino’s collection—just the ones he was willing to lend out, mind you—and it is indeed very impressive. Although, he did own a 35mm print of Big Daddy for some reason.)
Tarantino also says he will be adding six-track magnetic sound and a 16mm projector to cement the New Beverly’s reputation as the last bastion of celluloid fetishism. He plans on programming the first three months of double features at the New Beverly after the theater reopens; no exact date for that has been announced, so expect all Tarantino, all the time through the end of the year.