The writer-director revealed to MTV News that the CBS sitcom is his favorite show 'hands down.'

It takes about 30 seconds of a Quentin Tarantino movie to realize that the man has a ravenous appetite for film. The writer/director layers his flicks with obscure references to Italian gangster films from the '70s and kung-fu movies, but what does Tarantino watch on TV when he just wants to veg out?

For Tarantino, the answer is simple. He likes his TV legen — wait for it — dary.

"Hands down, my favorite show is 'How I Met Your Mother,' " he said in a recent interview with MTV News' Josh Horowitz. "I've been watching that since the very first episode, so that's the one show that I always keep watching."

And when he's not getting his fill of CBS sitcoms, Tarantino prefers the writing of another major-league scribe, Aaron Sorkin. "But I love 'Newsroom.' That writing, every week, is just so exciting," he added.

Tarantino has some experience working in television, having directed episodes of "ER" and "CSI," but recently, he's had to cut his consumption of TV way down since it started getting in the way of his true passion.

"I was for a while, about six years ago. I was watching a lot of the serialized television shows," he said. "I had to cut them out because I stopped going to movies because I was always caught up in four different serialized shows and the box set for this one and that one. I had to go, 'Look, I ain't about that. I'm about movies. I'd rather go out to the theaters.' "

"Django Unchained," Tarantino's latest film, starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson, opens in theaters on Christmas Day.