Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight"
2014-02-01, 1:49 am

The Tarantino film we might never see, "The Hateful Eight," is a really good read. I forced myself to put it down only to get some sleep much like watching one last episode before bed that ends with a cliffhanger.
The five chapters of the film work more as acts of a stage play than a book or maybe even a film.
1 "The Last Stage to Red Rock"
A man handcuffed to his woman prisoner meet a black man sitting on three frozen corpses. In Tarantino fashion, the black man talks them into giving him a ride.
2 "Son of a Gun"
We meet the son of a western gangster who isn't so bad. In fact, he's the new sheriff of their destination, where the woman prisoner is to be hung.
3 "Minnie's"
On the mountain on their way to "Red Rock," we meet some folks at a haberdashery that feels eerily empty. Conversation, anger, and hatred over characters that somehow know each other bring an intensity, and shockingly a poisoning! Who poisoned the "coffy?" Nobody really knows everybody...
4 "The Four Passengers"
...Until now. During the stagecoach scenes, we see what's really going on that makes "Minnie's" so eery. Death!
5 "Black Night, White Hell"
This brief third act is a stand-off.

The first two chapters may take place in only in my imagination as the same landscape where Disney's "Frozen" could have taken place, but you might only feel it. Much of the film will rely on atmosphere even if we only see faces on screen for most of the time.
There's a touch of Cabin Fever to this story as these first two chapters have characters in a stagecoach and the last three keep all the characters in a haberdashery (I never knew that was even a word).
"Gloriousness of 70MM SUPER CINEMASCOPE" is the idea indicated by the film-loving script for the entire picture. I wonder if these wide shots would take away from the claustrophobic feel to the film.
It's a bounty hunter's tale with Warren (a Lee Van Cleef type surely meant for Samuel L. Jackson).
An insensitive mustached "hangman" John Ruth (maybe meant for Michael Madsen), who is a bounty hunter who keeps his dead-or-alives alive (hence the "Hangman" moniker). He spends his (almost) entire existence in the story cuffed to a woman who is worth more than what she looks. He's expecting $10,000 for her head.
The four of them and their stagecoach driver eventually get to Minnie's haberdashery, a famous cafe-of-sorts (as famous as can be for being located on a mountain). We meet new characters.
Their descriptions prove Tarantino had actors in mind as the Englishman's voice could be spoken by regular Tim Roth. The older gent would have to have been one of the only actors given the script, Bruce Dern. And the Frenchman would have to be Oscar-favorite Christoph Walz (again a man with a beard).
The other man, "Cowboy Fella" Joe Gage is also fairly mysterious.
Who really makes up "The Hateful Eight" could surely be fully accounted for in the end. The time spent with all of these characters would not allow them to be forgotten. There are no protagonists. They're all badguys. Ev'ry one of 'em.
There's murder. There's humiliation. There's "coffy."
Everybody seems to be askin' for it and ready to give it. It plays like "Clue," really, or at best, like every scene in "Inglourious Basterds" that had men sitting around a table. With the "sheriff" in our town of a story, maybe nobody gets away with murder, but that sure doesn't stop the violence in a Tarantino story.

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