The director is married to Israeli singer/model Daniella Pick, who is pregnant with their first child, and he said he doesn’t just feel at home in Tel Aviv – it really is his home now.
“I have some short trips [back to the US] planned for the [Oscar] awards ceremony. And of course, we’ll be here for the birth and after.”
Tarantino answered questions about almost every aspect of his life and career, on everything from how he feels about his latest movie, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, getting 10 Oscar nominations last week (“It’s fun just to be a nominee”) to his plans to learn Hebrew.
According to the article, the Tarantinos live in tony Ramat Aviv Gimmel, and not near Kikar Hamedina, as has been previously reported.
Uxorious Tarantino says, “I have a beautiful wife and she’s great.”
He is excited about the birth of the baby and he describes his life with Pick: He writes, she makes lunch, he writes more and they watch movies together. “Really, it’s very, very pleasant.”
He bikes all over Tel Aviv and can often be found at the movies, sometimes at Cinema City in Glilot. His experience in Israel has been “great,” he says. “I love the country and the people are really nice, very nice to me and they seem excited that I’m here.”
Sounding especially Israeli, he says about missiles fired from the Gaza Strip, “I’m not scared at all. Like everyone else here, I don’t really notice it.”
He does follow the politics here and says, “I wish we had a third election in the US. Unfortunately there was only one.”
He loved seeing his father-in-law, Israeli music icon Svika Pick, perform at Festigal last month: “It was amazing, man, amazing. He was performing, playing the piano like Elton John.”
Winning a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay earlier this month, he thanked Pick in Hebrew. “I can’t have a conversation now, but I know many words in Hebrew.” The birth of his baby will inspire him to learn more.
“Obviously, I’m going to learn. I don’t want my boy or girl to speak a language I can’t understand.” The couple celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas, watching the classic American holiday film, It’s a Wonderful Life together.
The strongest experience he has had here was being present at the 2009 screening of Inglourious Basterds, his film about American-Jewish soldiers who are Nazi hunters. “There was a sense of liberation” at the screening, which “gave people permission to enjoy something they wouldn’t allow themselves to enjoy if you just talked about it on an intellectual level.”
And it was while on this publicity trip that he met Pick.
Talking about Israeli movies he has seen, he mentioned the 1984 political jailhouse drama Behind the Walls and the broad comedies from the Eskimo Lemon series. He also said he was a fan of the Golan-Globus genre movies from the 1980s.
He is currently writing a book and has recently written five episodes of a television series. Theater may also be in his future, since he has turned his film, The Hateful Eight, into a play.
As to rumors whether there will be a third installment of the Kill Bill series, his answer is a definite maybe: “It might happen. I had an interesting idea and I thought about talking to Uma Thurman about it and she loved it.”
It won’t actually be Kill Bill he noted, because Bill is dead. So are the Vega brothers, characters portrayed by John Travolta and Michael Madsen in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, and there won’t be a prequel.
Like many of us, Tarantino, who is famous for screening movies in his home theater, has been watching a lot of Netflix lately. “My favorite series, with no competition, is The Haunting of Hill House.”He’s also gotten into the series, Zoo, lately, about how animals around the world all become deadly killers. “That’s exactly what I wanted... I saw two episodes yesterday and I really enjoyed it.”
Netflix, if you’re interested in working with Tarantino, he’d rather make a series than a movie. Fans should know he doesn’t think that they’ll really enjoy watching Pulp Fiction on their phones, but if they do, he’s fine with it. “Who cares?” he said.
But he didn’t open up about everything. In response to a demand that he answer the question that virtually every fan wants to know – what was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction? — he simply said: “Never.”