Quentin and the spoilers

Quentin Tarantino has me thinking.

About the relationship between fiction and an audience in the current age, that is...and about the market forces and capitalistic dimensions to both.

The reason for that is due to what has transpired just within the past week or so.  A script for a once upcoming film by Tarantino called The Hateful Eight was leaked to the Internet by either an actor or an agent.  The script was also posted on the blog site Gawker and as riposte, Tarantino has announced plans to sue Gawker.  He has also scrapped the project.

Okay, a few things first.  I'm not an enormous fan of Tarantino.  Pulp Fiction is a masterpiece.  Natural Born Killers is too (even though that one might be more due to Oliver Stone).  Kill Bill was pretty good.  As for the other movies, I either haven't seen them (Django, Inglorious Basterds) or am just utterly unimpressed (Jackie Brown, From Dusk Til Dawn).

The other thing is that Quentin has every right to do whatever he wants with his film projects.  He doesn't "owe" us anything and if he chooses not to direct a script for whatever reason, that's cool.  Plus, the leak was an obvious breach of his trust and should be treated accordingly to the fullest extent of the law.

But what I'm left coming away with is the notion that Tarantino won't direct the film because his planned Western about eight renegades is now "spoiled."

Ahhh spoilers.

The world at-large seems to hate them.  In line for the special screening of Star Trek II with William Shatner last May, I had a guy jump down my throat because I told a friend with me that there are "tribbles in the latest movie."  That's it.
"Why would you tell him that??"

A sacred seal had been broken.

I get it.  Sort of.  How poorer would my movie experience have been as I sat alone in the dark with films such as The Crying Game or Fight Club had I known their surprises beforehand?  Notice that even though those films are many years old, I'm not about to reveal the secrets here.  Wouldn't want to "spoil" anything.

At the same time, I like to know about what I'm getting into when I see a film.  "Spoilers" don't bother me so much because regardless of what I learn ahead of time, I still want to see how it plays out on the screen.  I still want to watch how the director renders the image that I have in my head.  How do the two compare?

When I was nine, I got the Marvel Comics adaptation of The Empire Strikes Back before ever seeing the film in the theater.  Did reading it make me want to see it any less?  Hell no!  If anything, it made me want to see the film's execution play out even more.  How would any of this look as "real" images?  The same goes for what I hear about films today.  After all, with so many adaptations of books and comics (God knows Hollywood can't seem to come up with an original thought), I most likely have a thorough understanding of what is to come.  The joy...if there be any to be had...will be in seeing the execution, to see the characters and the localities brought to life.

Have we made "spoilers" into too big of deal?




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