I love Tarantino as a movie director. The first poster I purchased, when I moved into my own place was Pulp Fiction (still have it). Pulp Fiction changed my perspective on movies and taught me to appreciate the layers that go into a scene (Royale with Cheese, Say what one more time, Yolanda be cool, Ezekiel 25:17). I admire Tarantino for many reasons, but what intrigued me the most is his conviction, that he will only do 10 feature films and would retire thereafter. This is despite being one of the most celebrated directors in Hollywood, and going by his recent directorial venture, an artist, who is still fantastic in his craft.
In his book Cinema Speculations, Tarantino gives us a glimpse of possibly why he took such a decision, while talking about the movie Escape From Alcatraz, and its director Don Siegel, who was 67 when he directed this classic. The relevant part to this discussion is what happened after this movie, with Siegel's career, as he directed two other movies (Rough Cut and Jinxed), which were box office duds, and cannot hold a candle to Alcatraz. It's claimed that he was fired from one of the movies, as he would fall asleep during shooting. This thus begs a question, how would have Siegel been remembered, if Alcatraz was his last movie. When to quit is an extremely difficult decision.
Self Awareness - A senior executive, was a regular speaker in an industry conference. The conference took care of him really well: First class tickets, a chauffeur driven car at the airport, executive suite and before he spoke, he often asked for a cup of coffee and the conference served the same to him in the best ceramic cup. This was the regular practice and was repeated several years. This year, he was the speaker but had retired from his senior executive role and started to notice significant changes. He flew coach, had to take an Uber, regular rooms and when he asked for his coffee this time, the conference directed him to the vending machine and he took his coffee in a Styrofoam cup. He realized that his true value was a Styrofoam cup, everything else was perks attached to his position and he was mistaking the positional worth with his own.
Not knowing when to quit can happen because of a few reasons. When failing, it's driven by sunk cause fallacy — the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial. When successful it's multiple factors like thinking that the past successes is an indication of the future results, cognitive biases such as Halo effect and Ikea effect. But the key in all of this is self awareness. Knowing when you have stopped creating music and started creating noise is a rare skill, especially when you have been a good musician for a long time.
Christopher Nolan says this the best....
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become the villain - Harvey Dent (Batman - The Dark Knight)
