There are few filmmakers considered as thoroughly cool as Quentin Tarantino, the genius behind blood-stained genre romps Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds, but it turns out the director took that label very seriously on the set of The Hateful Eight. In order to maintain the realism of the period piece, set during a brutal winter blizzard, Tarantino apparently shot the film on a refrigerated set.
Samuel L. Jackson, who has a key role in the star-studded film, revealed to Collider that working on the film was “taxing in a very interesting way.” He went on to explain:
“Quentin shot on a refrigerated set, and it was 30 degrees every day in there. We were miserable in the environment. You could see our breath, but the stuff that we were doing was amazing. We would finish doing a scene and look at each other and just grin like, ‘this is incredible.’ And we may be blowing smoke up our own asses, but I hope it’s as good as we felt like it was when we were doing it.”
It’s no secret that The Hateful Eight will serve as a deeply enviable showcase for its stars, all of whom are playing an assortment of rogues crowded into Minnie’s Haberdashery during a brutal winter storm. As they are forced to huddle for warmth, the eight unlikely acquaintances, including all manner of bounty hunters and criminals, begin to turn on one another.
And so, it makes sense that Jackson would be bullish on the project. Tarantino is one of the best directors in the game, and he’s led many of his actors to awards attention, from John Travolta, Jackson and Uma Thurman’s Academy Award nominations for Pulp Fiction to Christoph Waltz’s Oscar wins for Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained. That he required a lot from his cast on The Hateful Eight was only to be expected, and his commitment to the realism of the project is sure to pay off in the finished product.