Quentin Tarantino Explains The Quentin Tarantino Universe

It's no secret Quentin Tarantino's films tie together. Forget Red Apple cigarettes, because the connections go deeper than that. Some of the writer-director's characters are related, some have possibly crossed paths with one another, and some, according to Tarantino, have even watched each other at the movie theater.

After the jump, the Hateful Eight director discusses the Quentin Tarantino universe.

Tarantino is still out there promoting his excellent western. On the Australian talk show The Project, the director was asked about the QT universe. Apparently talk shows Down Under are infinitely superior to what we generally see in the States, because that's not the kind of question we expect to hear on U.S. talk shows (ours are more like "Tell me, Quentin, how much fun did you have making this movie?"):

There are actually two separate universes. There's the realer than real universe, and all the characters inhabit that one. Then there's this "movie" universe, so From Dusk Till Dawn and Kill Bill take place in this special movie universe. Basically, when the characters from Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction go to the movies, Kill Bill and From Dusk Till Dawn is what they go see.

So, basically, even the characters from Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are fans of Tarantino's films. Going by this logic, Inglourious Basterds and True Romance also take place in the real world, since Sgt. Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth) and Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek) are related, while, I'm guessing, Death Proof and Django Unchained are a part of the special movie universe.

The Hateful Eight is also set in Tarantino's real world, because English Pete Hicox (Tim Roth) is related to Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) from Inglourious Basterds. How they're related, we're not sure, but it's nice to see that the badass English film critic brought some respect to the Hicox name.

One last thing: this is completely unrelated to the Tarantino universe idea, but any fan of Tarantino's and/or The Hateful Eight will get a kick out of this. Around the release of the film Vulture ran an interview with Kurt Russell, in which he discussed the characters' backstories and an alternate ending he envisioned for The Hateful Eight. I think it's worth sharing, so check out Russell's thoughtful take on John Ruth:

Ruth caught her on a boat going to Italy, so she's dressed kind of nicely. It would have been interesting to see the week they spent together before what is shown in the movie, to watch the progression of that strange Stockholm syndrome that came over them. I always pictured that ,at the end of that week, he takes her and she hangs, and she's looking at him as she's hanging. Then she dies, and you see him put the the handcuffs in his pocket, and now he doesn't have her on his left. He just walks down the street, kind of lost. He goes into a bar and he sits down, and you see him sit down at the bar, and the camera just continues on down the street and you fade out. You realize that that's what happens to him once in a while. It's like being Mary Poppins. At the end of that movie, she's standing there, and the parrot says, "They didn't even say thank you. They didn't even say good-bye." And what does Mary Poppins say to that parrot? She says, "And that's how it should be."

The Hateful Eight is now in theaters.