50 Fun Facts About The Hateful Eight

Which museum loan did Kurt Russell smash for real while filming The Hateful Eight, unaware that it was not a prop?

An antique guitar from the 1870s, lent by the Martin Guitar Museum, was meant to be swapped for a copy before the smash. The museum then stopped lending to film productions.

Which president supposedly wrote the letter carried by Union veteran Major Marquis Warren in The Hateful Eight?

Abraham Lincoln never wrote a word of it: Warren admits the letter is a forgery that buys him some leeway with the white strangers he meets.

Which drink is secretly poisoned in The Hateful Eight, killing John Ruth and the stagecoach driver who brought him?

The coffee is poisoned while every eye is on Major Warren and General Smithers. Daisy alone sees who did it, and she lets her captor drink.

Which actor plays Jody, the outlaw hiding under the floorboards for much of The Hateful Eight?

Channing Tatum stays out of sight until his character shoots Major Warren from below. A flashback then shows how the gang reached the lodge hours earlier.

Why was the Hollywood soundstage for The Hateful Eight kept colder than the mountain location?

To show the actors' breath, a fleet of air conditioners ran until the indoor set was colder than the real mountainside. The camera had to be wrapped in blankets against the damp.

What happened to the script of The Hateful Eight that made Quentin Tarantino briefly abandon the whole film?

It leaked online soon after he shared it with a few trusted colleagues, and he planned to publish it as a novel instead. A live reading with much of the eventual cast changed his mind.

Which veteran composer won his first competitive Oscar for the music of The Hateful Eight?

Ennio Morricone was 87, which made him the oldest competitive Oscar winner up to that time. He wrote the music without having seen the film.

The Hateful Eight began as a sequel novel to which earlier Quentin Tarantino film, before its hero was written out?

Django Unchained was to continue in a paperback called Django in White Hell, until Tarantino realized that the character did not fit the story he wanted to tell.

The Hateful Eight strands its travelers on the road to the town of Red Rock in which wintry territory?

Wyoming is where the story unfolds, but the snowy exteriors were filmed on a ranch in the mountains of southwest Colorado.

Which streaming service re-released The Hateful Eight in 2019 as a four-part miniseries called the Extended Version?

Netflix added the extended cut on April 25, 2019, splitting a film that first played cinemas with an overture into four separate episodes.

Which Pulp Fiction star plays the bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren in The Hateful Eight?

Samuel L. Jackson had already made Jackie Brown and Kill Bill: Volume 2 with Tarantino, and he took part in the 2014 live reading of the script.

Which nickname has bounty hunter John Ruth earned in The Hateful Eight for always bringing his fugitives in alive?

The Hangman insists that every bounty he catches must reach the gallows, a habit the last two survivors honor in the final scene.

How does John Ruth keep the fugitive Daisy Domergue at his side on the stagecoach ride in The Hateful Eight?

With handcuffs linking them wrist to wrist, John Ruth makes sure his prisoner cannot slip away before he collects the bounty on her in Red Rock.

Which actress earned her first Oscar nomination for playing the fugitive Daisy Domergue in The Hateful Eight?

Jennifer Jason Leigh was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and she also performs a folk ballad in character on the soundtrack album.

Which quiet cowboy admits to the poisoning in The Hateful Eight when Major Warren threatens to kill Daisy Domergue?

Joe Gage confesses only when her life is at stake, and his real name turns out to be Grouch Douglas, one of the Domergue gang.

On which holiday in 2015 did The Hateful Eight open in a limited run of 70 mm roadshow screenings?

Christmas Day brought the film to about 100 specially equipped theaters, and the wide release followed five days later.

Which old-fashioned extra, rare in modern cinemas, was built into the roadshow cut of The Hateful Eight?

An intermission of twelve minutes split the roadshow cut, which also opened with a three-minute overture in the manner of a 1960s epic.

The soundtrack of The Hateful Eight reuses unused music first written for which John Carpenter horror film?

The Thing also starred Kurt Russell and trapped suspicious men together in the snow, and its unused cues came from the same composer.

Which blockbuster kept The Hateful Eight from the top of the US box office when it expanded nationwide?

The Force Awakens took $90.2 million that weekend against $15.7 million for Tarantino's Western, which finished third behind Daddy's Home.

Tim Roth and Michael Madsen of The Hateful Eight both starred in which earlier Tarantino film about a botched heist?

Reservoir Dogs cast them as Mr. Orange and Mr. Blonde in 1992, and both were among the few colleagues handed the first draft of this script.

Which Colorado ski town, also home to a well-known film festival, was the base for shooting The Hateful Eight?

Telluride lay close to the ranch where the lodge was built, more than 10,000 feet up, and mornings on set often began far below zero.

Which extra-wide film format, unused since the 1960s, did Quentin Tarantino revive to shoot The Hateful Eight?

Ultra Panavision 70 gives a picture far wider than ordinary widescreen. Its long-unused lenses were found intact at Panavision and rebuilt to fit modern cameras.

Which actress turned down the part of Daisy Domergue in The Hateful Eight and later said she regretted the decision?

Jennifer Lawrence met Tarantino about the part but was already committed to Joy and the Hunger Games films.

Which groups urged a boycott of The Hateful Eight after Quentin Tarantino spoke at a rally before its release?

Police unions across the United States took aim at the film after he condemned police brutality at a New York rally. He said he would not be intimidated.

Which job in Red Rock does Chris Mannix claim to be starting when he boards the stagecoach in The Hateful Eight?

Sheriff of Red Rock is the post he claims to be riding toward. His father had led a Lost Cause militia known as Mannix's Marauders.

Which actor, Oscar-nominated for Nebraska, plays the Confederate General Sanford Smithers in The Hateful Eight?

Bruce Dern was one of the few people Tarantino trusted with his first draft. He is the father of the actress Laura Dern.

Which stuntwoman, Uma Thurman's double in Kill Bill, plays the character Six-Horse Judy in The Hateful Eight?

Zoë Bell is a New Zealander who once doubled for Xena, and she joined the 2014 live reading of the script before being cast in the film.

Which uncredited part does Quentin Tarantino, the writer and director, perform himself in The Hateful Eight?

The narrator is heard only in voice-over, so this is a cameo in which Tarantino never steps in front of his own camera.

Which rock duo's song Apple Blossom plays in The Hateful Eight, although the story is set in the 1870s?

The White Stripes released Apple Blossom in 2000 on the album De Stijl, and on the soundtrack it sits among roughly fifty minutes of new orchestral music.

What relation is the outlaw Jody to the condemned prisoner Daisy Domergue in The Hateful Eight?

Her brother Jody arrives with a handful of accomplices, who spend most of the film hiding behind false names inside the lodge.

How does Daisy Domergue free herself from John Ruth's corpse in The Hateful Eight while Chris Mannix lies unconscious?

She cuts off his arm and goes for a gun, but Mannix comes round just in time to wound her before she can use it.

What is Major Marquis Warren hauling to Red Rock when the stagecoach finds him stranded in The Hateful Eight?

Three dead outlaws are his bounties, each worth cash in town, and his horse has given out with a snowstorm closing in behind him.

The Confederacy put a price on Major Marquis Warren in The Hateful Eight after he escaped from and burned what?

A prisoner-of-war camp went up in flames during his escape, and John Ruth only learns about the price on his companion's head during the ride.

General Sanford Smithers has come to the mountains in The Hateful Eight to raise a memorial to which missing relative?

His son, Chester Charles, went missing in the area, and Major Warren's cruel account of what became of him goads the old general into reaching for a gun.

Which TV Western did Quentin Tarantino name beside The Virginian as an inspiration for The Hateful Eight?

Bonanza and its rivals often ran episodes in which outlaws held the regulars hostage, and Tarantino wanted a whole film made of those shady guest characters.

Quentin Tarantino called Daisy Domergue of The Hateful Eight a Wild West version of a follower of which cult leader?

Charles Manson follower Susan Atkins, convicted for her part in the 1969 Tate murders, was the model Tarantino named for the character.

Which actor, known as Boyd Crowder in the TV drama Justified, plays Chris Mannix in The Hateful Eight?

Walton Goggins had played a sadistic overseer for Tarantino three years earlier, then moved up to one of the biggest parts in this film.

Which Lord of the Rings star discussed a role in The Hateful Eight but had to pass because of scheduling conflicts?

Viggo Mortensen was in talks with Tarantino in September 2014, a few weeks before the main cast was announced without him.

Which cinematographer, already a three-time Oscar winner, shot The Hateful Eight on 65 mm film for Quentin Tarantino?

Robert Richardson earned another Oscar nomination for the film, having already shot both Kill Bill volumes and Inglourious Basterds for the same director.

Which studio distributed The Hateful Eight in the United States, its last collaboration with Quentin Tarantino?

The Weinstein Company never handled another Tarantino film: he cut all ties after the abuse allegations made against Harvey Weinstein in 2017.

The folk ballad that Daisy Domergue sings in The Hateful Eight comes from which country?

Australia's convict era produced the ballad, Jim Jones at Botany Bay, around 1830, yet it was not published until 1907, decades after the film's story takes place.

Which singer's 1960s recording There Won't Be Many Coming Home is heard in The Hateful Eight?

Roy Orbison co-wrote it for a 1967 comedy Western in which he also starred, the only acting role of his career.

Which Charlton Heston desert epic was the last film shot with The Hateful Eight's rare lenses before their revival?

Khartoum came out in 1966, and the lenses then went unused for almost fifty years until the film's cinematographer found them and had them refitted.

Which Christopher Nolan film replaced The Hateful Eight as the widest 70 mm release in decades?

Dunkirk took the title in 2017. Before Tarantino's Western, no film had opened on so many 70 mm screens since Far and Away in 1992.

Major Warren hates General Smithers in The Hateful Eight for executing captured Black soldiers at which Southern city?

Baton Rouge is why the Union major wants the old Confederate dead, while Chris Mannix admires the very same general as a war hero.

What is the name of the stagecoach driver who carries John Ruth and his prisoner toward Red Rock in The Hateful Eight?

O.B. is played by James Parks, and the driver is among the first to die once the travelers are shut inside the lodge.

In the first draft read aloud to a live audience, Bob of The Hateful Eight came from which country instead of Mexico?

France was his homeland at the 2014 reading, where Denis Ménochet took the part before the character was rewritten.

The Hateful Eight was the first Quentin Tarantino film to feature what?

An original score was new territory for him: his earlier films reused existing recordings, including pieces by the very composer he now hired.

After its release, Quentin Tarantino announced plans to adapt the one-room Western The Hateful Eight into what?

A stage play suits a story set almost entirely in one room, and the script had already been performed once as a live reading in 2014.

Kurt Russell, John Ruth in The Hateful Eight, had earlier played Stuntman Mike in which Quentin Tarantino thriller?

Death Proof cast him as a murderous stunt driver in 2007, and he went on to make a third film with the same director in 2019.