What if I did a movie starring nothing but those characters? No heroes, no Michael Landons. Just a bunch of nefarious guys in a room, all telling backstories that may or may not be true. Trap those guys together in a room with a blizzard outside, give them guns, and see what happens.
Tarantino’s idea in his own words. The hateful eight was his opus 8, and he asked Ennio Morricone for the score. Now Morricone hadn’t done a western in more than 30 years, and immediately after their last collaboration he stated he never wanted to work with the filmmaker again. He retracted the statement shortly after, and two years later we find him creating this full score. It would be the last before his death in 2000.
A small musically interesting fact about the movie has nothing to do with this soundtrack: there is a scene where a guitar is smashed to pieces. That was supposed to be a dummy of the guitar that Jennifer Jason Leigh plays in the scene right before: an antique Martin guitar from 1870. It was not however. I suppose the attempt at realism in that scene was superb: play a tune on an authentic guitar of the time (the tune itself was published in 1907 in Australia, so a little less authentic). As a result, the Martin Guitars Museum doesn’t lend any guitars anymore. All of this can be heard on this record: track 13: Jim Jones At Botany Bay. It includes the actual smashing of the guitar.