“It was a disaster!” Quentin Tarantino went through the ordeal to premiere one of his best films

Whether it soars at the box office or flops at the door, a film’s fortunes don’t always come from how it performs after its theatrical release. Its fate can also be realized during two preliminary stages, no less important.

The first is test screenings. A moment of legitimate stress for the studio and film crew, considering the director, the test screening can also turn into a nightmare and a disaster; There are many examples of this.

This led to famous moments of tension between the director, who would sometimes take the work away, impose or do it behind his back, a completely limited artistic vision, resulting in a completely distorted work. Sometimes, in the end, a heavy economic sanction in the form of a big commercial failure in theaters. We have dedicated this topic.

The second is the (earlier) premieres of the films. Moments that, at least on paper, should be moments of celebration, where the film team, the lead director, reveals to the public his artistic vision, sometimes hard-won.

But these moments are not always a peaceful sequence. They can turn out to be absolutely devastating, seriously hampering careers in theatres…

“It was a miserable disaster!”

Presented out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1992, Reservoir Dogs was received with particular enthusiasm. Then the world discovered a 29-year-old director with a bright future in addition to becoming the new darling of independent cinema: Quentin Tarantino.

It is enough for the director to significantly ease the painful memory of the first presentation of the film at the Sundance festival on January 21 of the same year, which, in his own words, was. “Damn disaster.”

According to him, people left the room by the end. Among the disaffected was Wes Craven: “The Boy Who Made Last house on the left It came out of my movie!” He was angry. “I think it was very difficult for him.”

Like a painful Murphy’s Law, problems seemed to follow: the film’s projector was not equipped for the CinemaScope format, and the power went out shortly before the final scene.

“In the last chapter, everyone’s yelling at each other and suddenly the lights come on. And people are like, ‘Oh, what’s going on with the lights.’ In the end, everyone points to their own”. weapons in every movie, and as if on purpose, at the height of this scene, it was a disaster. told QT, During a visit to the Tribeca Film Festivalin 2017.

Fortunately for the filmmaker, a second screening was arranged at Sundance a week later, this time for executives from the powerful Creative Artists Agency, which manages the interests of the talent under contract to him.

A show that brought together almost the entire Hollywood elite, who work behind the scenes of the industry, between artistic agents and major executives. It’s enough to catapult Tarantino’s star into the sky. The rest is history.