Tarantino flop goes back to cutting room

Forty-four is the sort of age many directors in Hollywood first hit the big time. In Quentin Tarantino's case, it's the age at which he appears to have blown it.

His latest project, a double bill with his long-time pal and fellow director Robert Rodriguez called Grindhouse, has been an unmitigated disaster, earning the movie-world equivalent of pennies at the US box-office and getting axed elsewhere around the globe while the producers - most notably Tarantino's old mentor, Harvey Weinstein - try to figure out what to do with it.

The concept was, perhaps, a tough sell - three hours of film paying homage to the kitschy junk Tarantino has long revelled in, the low-grade sex and violence exploitation movies that first surfaced during the Beat era.

Rodriguez's half of the double bill, Planet Terror, features Rose McGowan as a dancer whose right leg is eaten by zombies, while Tarantino's half, Death Proof, is a variation on a slasher film starring Kurt Russell as an out-of-control car driver.

Variety, the entertainment industry paper of record, perhaps nailed the key problem: "It was intended as an affectionate salute to the cheesy low-budget films of the 1960s and 1970s. But people old enough to remember those movies may not have been willing to spend more than three hours of their time celebrating the schlock of yesteryear."

The film is facing the very real prospect of a DVD-only release in Britain and the rest of Europe. All is not yet lost though: Tarantino is recutting and lengthening Death Proof and submitting it as its own film in the main competition at Cannes. Harvey Weinstein, who powered Pulp Fiction to box-office success 13 years ago, is also considering other, more radical forms of surgery.

It says something about the directors' propensity to self-indulgence that they both came in with films 50 per cent over length at a cost of $53m (£26.5m).

For Tarantino, the project is the latest way-station on a downward path since his initial flush of success with Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs. His martial-arts double feature, Kill Bill, marked a return in 2003 without bringing him much of his old glory.

His career can be measured by the nature of his relationship with Weinstein. When they hooked up in 1992, Tarantino was still the geeky, rake-thin former video store manager who turned up late to the premiere of Reservoir Dogs at Cannes because he hadn't put on a bow tie and got turned away. Within a few months, he had enough steel to insist on casting John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Weinstein, uncharacteristically, caved on almost every demand, and after the film won global acclaim he let Tarantino do whatever he wanted. His faith was not especially well repaid.

However, one flop does not end a Hollywood career necessarily. Tarantino says he has many more projects up his sleeve, including a Second World War story. He may have to work just a little harder at selling himself though.