Premature director retirements are bad for the future of movies

Quentin Tarantino and his muse Christoph Waltz

When Jay-Z said he was retiring early from the hip-hop game, nobody took him seriously. So maybe we should feel the same way about Quentin Tarantino.

For a while now, the eccentric but undeniably talented auteur has been hinting that his days in the director's chair were numbered.

The 51-year-old has suggested that the rise of digital film-making (supplanting traditional film stock) has turned him off, but he also has said he believes directors' skills diminish with age and he wants to leave fans "wanting more."

I think Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and a few other legends might have a bone to pick with the age argument. But Tarantino definitely will have made his mark on film culture after just 10 films (he is saying his tenth, The Hateful Eight, which is currently in development, will be his last). And I believe he will be missed.

Tarantino is not the first filmmaker to hang it up prematurely. His contemporary Steven Soderbergh has also decided to stop making feature films even though he was still doing terrific work and he went on the high note of his critically acclaimed HBO film Behind the Candelabra.

Soderbergh appeared to be burnt out by the Hollywood industry, with its current preoccupation with superhero blockbusters and built-in young adult audiences. I suspect that Tarantino, despite all his Kanye-esque bluster about his own legacy, has a similar anxiety. These were two filmmakers who made original movies (even Soderbergh's highly commercial Ocean's films had a fizzy style and tone of their own) that were largely driven by actors and dialogue, not special effects.

Steven Soderbergh

Both directors ushered in the best generation of filmmakers since the so-called "movie brats" of the late '60s and early '70s. Tarantino, besides refining and mastering the meta-movie, revived the careers of John Travolta, Robert Forster, David Carradine and Pam Grier -- and introduced us to the talents of actors like Christoph Waltz. Samuel L. Jackson was a respected character actor before he teamed up with Tarantino for Pulp Fiction, but that movie made him a star.

Soderbergh is responsible for making George Clooney the icon that he is. And his box office success with Traffic and Erin Brockovich proved you could inject hit mainstream movies with indie sensibility.

These are voices we need in movies right now more than ever.

Besides Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Alexander Payne, P.T. Anderson, Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze -- there aren't a hell of a lot of directors out there these days with a singular style that you can almost instantly recognize.

It's true that Tarantino might have had some misses once he got into his sixties (some may feel he has already stumbled, although I would disagree), but sometimes great director's "failures" end up being some of their most fascinating films. Take Hitchcock's Marnie for instance, some think it was a misstep, for me it's one of The Master's best movies.

And quite often a truly talented filmmaker can have a resurgence. Robert Altman had many years in the wilderness before his triumphant 1992 comeback with The Player. Sidney Lumet was remarkably inconsistent but went out with a bang with Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.

So has Woody Allen, who I've gleaned Tarantino is a fan of (he named Midnight In Paris his favorite film of the year back in 2011). Allen's work became stale and repetitive in the 1990s and I remember reading several pieces at the time that he should just hang it up already. And then came Match Point and Vicky Christina Barcelona, a one-two punch any director would envy. And Blue Jasmine was one of his more timely and potent movies ever. The guy is nearly 80 years old and he still makes movies worth seeing.

Clearly, these guys have made up their minds and I'm not going to change them. But I am going to miss their work and I would have liked to have seen their visions evolve with time.