One look at the multi-tinted poster art for Joe Carnahan’s “Smokin’ Aces,” (www.smokinaces.net) and you get the impression that it’s being marketed as yet another stylish U.S. crime film made in the decade-plus wake of “Pulp Fiction.” And maybe it deserves to be lumped in with its similarly postered films (see collage), although it’s not half as derivative as Carnahan’s first crime feature, the amateurish 1998 Tarantino clone “Blood, Guts, Bullets & Octane.” But according to the “Aces” writer-director, the inspiration for his latest movie is, ahem, a “stately” 1987 comedy. In our interview, Carnahan discusses where he fits into the very referential world of current crime cinema.

So I thought you were the only competent actor in “Blood, Guts, Bullets & Octane.”

(Cackles hysterically) That shows how woefully poor your taste is.

Why haven’t you written roles for yourself in your later pictures?

I’d prefer to be the voice on the phone, or the guy that’s f**king with Matt Fox (in a telephone scene of “Smokin’ Aces“) as he’s in the (security) room. I would deliberately throw him these curve balls. I’d say, “We got an infant here that spilled a hot toddy.” “We got an old lady here, she’s gagging on a quarter.” And then you can see him—I almost get him on one of those instances. So I prefer doing that. I played a voice on the phone in “Narc” (Carnahan’s 2002 mainstream debut).

And I’ve had a couple of opportunities where they wanted me to come in and audition. I went in for “The Good Shepherd.” It was literally down to me and Alec Baldwin. And I thought, “You probably made the right move, getting Alec Baldwin.” True story. Robert De Niro and Cathy Sandrich told me, “It’s between you and Baldwin.” I said, “This character is written as much older than the Matt Damon character.”

I make myself go on auditions, just so I can remind myself of how hard it is for an actor to go in and do that. And if you don’t have the guts to do that, you shouldn’t be directing.

I heard some familiar Ennio Morricone during one scene. Was that from “Once Upon a Time in the West?”

No it was “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly“—”Death of a Soldier.”

Are there other film references in the movie?

I think the urge is always to go into Tarantinoland, because we’re f**king Pavlovian at this point for Tarantino. Somebody rings a bell, and we go, “Quentin? Where? Who? How?” I don’t even blame him, the poor b*stard. I think he’s a victim of his own success. But in this instance, the primary influence filmicly were the Coen brothers. And the film I always use as a reference for this is “Raising Arizona.” If you look at “Raising Arizona,” you can see the DNA of “Smokin’ Aces,” because essentially the baby in “Raising Arizona” is (Jeremy Piven’s character) Buddy Israel. And Tex Cobb’s character—the Tremor brothers could be his illegitimate kids.

I love saying this is my tribute to these guys. Because those are guys that are—for whatever reason—so undervalued. It’s almost like we’ve forgotten that these two amazing f**king filmmakers are still doing their thing now for more than, Jesus, almost 25 years since “Blood Simple.”

Will you mind if “Smokin’ Aces” draws comparisons to Tarantino?

Yeah, if you’re lazy. That’s my answer. Because I don’t think it requires any great critical fortitude to say, “That’s Quentin Tarantino.” If I picked up a gun right here and said, “F***!” you could also say that’s Quentin. I think it’s so run ragged and it so gets my ire, because I feel like it’s such a reductive process in that you eliminate all the guys—(Sam) Peckinpah, Don Siegel, John Boorman, et al—that have come before that movement who did things that were just as good or better.

Yeah, but it wasn’t so postmodern back then. Now it’s all so referential.

Absolutely. But if there are things that are referential, or reverential, in “Smokin’ Aces,” I’m not aware of them. I mean, these guys aren’t sitting around talking about cheeseburgers. It sounds like me being hard on that (the Tarantino movement and the comparisons thereto). I’m only hard on that because of the pall that it cast over all of filmmaking.

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Mike Malloy wrote the biography of Spaghetti Western star Lee Van Cleef and is currently under contract to write “Movie Tough Guys of the 1970s: An Encyclopedia.”