Quentin Tarantino on the 'Hateful Eight' Lincoln Letter
‘Hateful Eight’ director Quentin Tarantino (left) and cast member Kurt Russell arrive at the Costume Designers Guild Awards at the Beverly Hilton hotel on Feb. 23, 2016, in Beverly Hills, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
By Jeffrey Slomin
In much the same way it works on screen in The Hateful Eight, the mere mention of the Lincoln Letter is an attention-grabber.
At least that was our experience at the 2016 Costume Designers Guild Awards, held in Los Angeles on Feb. 23. The Hateful Eight director Quentin Tarantino, a VIP at the event as the Distinguished Collaborator honoree, was hurrying away from reporters on the red carpet and into the ceremony when a Yahoo Movies question about his original idea for the correspondence from Honest Abe caught his ear; he turned back for a quick chat. In the movie, one of the Eight, Major Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), carries a well-worn letter of appreciation from Abraham Lincoln, a prized relic that impresses everyone who sees it, including Kurt Russell’s grizzled bounty hunter, John Ruth.
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“In the first draft,” Tarantino explained, “it was just in the stagecoach and Major Warren brings it out and [he and Ruth] talk about it. And that’s it. It wasn’t brought up again. But that was just the first draft. I knew I’d have to deal with it, but I wasn’t ready. And then, in the second draft, I dealt with it a little bit more midway through. And, on the last draft, I dealt with it at the very end. But it was always an evolving thing. I don’t really know exactly where it came from. It just grew from the back and forth between the characters.”
Was Tarantino aware of any similar real-life historical documents? “Well, I’m sure there are,” he said, but that wasn’t as important to him as the idea that in the movie’s historical moment just a few years after the Civil War, “when this black man shows white people who respect the North a Lincoln letter, all of a sudden they look at him differently. All of a sudden they’re dealing with him in a different way. They have a different attitude to him about him: ‘Have a seat, sit down.’ It’s a whole different thing.”
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And does Tarantino believe that tactic could have a present-day equivalent? “Oh, absolutely,” he says, laughing. “I’m sure there are a lot of people showing their selfie that they have with Barack Obama.” Just don’t call that a trump card.
Watch a behind-the-scenes featurette for Quentin Tarantino’s ‘The Hateful Eight’:
