The musical relationship between Morricone and Tarantino began long before they worked on a full score for the same film.
First came the music written for other films
Ennio Morricone’s presence in Quentin Tarantino’s cinema does not always amount to direct collaboration during filming. In Kill Bill and Inglourious Basterds, much of that relationship consists of selecting recordings from earlier films. The composer had written for other characters and other edits; Tarantino reuses that material within a new structure.
That distinction makes it possible to recognize two different creative works. Morricone builds the original piece, with its form and instrumental associations. The later director decides where it begins, how long it lasts, and which images it accompanies. The new function does not erase authorship, but neither does it necessarily reproduce the function the music had in its original film.
In Kill Bill, Morricone’s pieces provide different forms of suspense, violence, and emotional uplift. There is no single texture that can be summed up as a western sound. The selection shows the breadth of the catalog: one theme can create intimacy, while another can turn an escape from captivity into an almost mythical act. That variety explains why Tarantino returns to the composer without always needing a new work.
In Inglourious Basterds, the reuse also changes the relationship to the war genre. The film’s music selection brings together scores from diverse sources. Morricone contributes pieces that make it possible to treat a scene as a duel, a memory, or a farewell, even though the setting is occupied France. The effect comes from the tension between the world being depicted and the cinematic memory of the music.
Ancora qui and the step toward The Hateful Eight
Django Unchained adds a detail that prevents The Hateful Eight from being described as the first absolute occasion on which Morricone created something for Tarantino. Ancora qui, performed by Elisa, was an original contribution for Django. It is a song, not a complete instrumental score for the entire feature film. Precise terminology makes it possible to recognize the precedent without confusing the scale of the two works.
The function of Ancora qui belongs to the realm of emotional memory and separation. Within a soundtrack that includes numerous borrowings, the song opens a different kind of collaboration: the material is born already tied to the new project. The director still selects and edits, but the composition does not come only from an earlier film.
With The Hateful Eight, released in 2015, Morricone composed an original score of a different breadth. Threat is organized through recurring motifs, low registers, and a sense of pressure that matches the confinement. It is not simply a return to the most popular style of his westerns with Sergio Leone. The new story requires work on the suspicion and hostility of a trapped group.
The score for The Hateful Eight also coexists with other musical materials. Talking about original music does not mean that every musical sound in the film was composed for it for the first time. A film soundtrack can combine a commissioned score, songs, and preexisting fragments. The album and the film do not have to arrange those contributions in the same way either.
Recognition, disagreements, and careful attribution
Morricone received the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Hateful Eight at the 2016 ceremony. The award corresponds to the 2015 film; confusing the release year and the ceremony year creates an unnecessarily confusing chronology. The distinction recognized a collaboration that had moved from admiration for a catalog to the creation of specific material for a shared project.
That award was competitive and specific to a score. It should not be confused with the honorary Oscar Morricone had already received in 2007 for his entire career, a recognition of a different nature.
The relationship has also been described through disagreements over how to use music. It is reasonable to recognize that selecting fragments and composing an architecture for a film reflect different perspectives. However, not every controversial statement attributed to the composer can be repeated as true. The alleged 2018 Playboy Germany interview was challenged by Morricone and later the subject of an editorial correction.
That episode should not be used as simple proof of hostility. A reliable chronology needs to distinguish documented criticism, an aesthetic disagreement, and a claim that was later denied. It should also avoid the opposite story of a perfect harmony inferred from an award alone. Shared work can exist between professionals who understand differently the relationship between composition, editing, and musical autonomy.
The journey makes it possible to appreciate a concrete transformation. Tarantino began by using Morricone as a privileged source of already existing music; later he added a new song and finally a large-scale original score. That evolution does not cancel the record selection that characterizes the director. It broadens it: alongside the editing of cinematic memories comes the possibility of asking a composer to build a new form of threat for a film that still has no musical history of its own.
Return to the Tarantino music collaborators guide.