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Director Quentin Tarantino went on a rant when asked about the content in his films—especially his extrajudicial use of the N-word.
In an interview for the HBO Max series, Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace, Quentin Tarantino was indignant. Variety shared some of the interview, “You talk about being the conductor and the audience being the orchestra,” Wallace told Tarantino. “So when people say, ‘Well there’s too much violence in his movies. He uses the N-word too often.’ You say what?”
“You should see [something else],” Tarantino answered. “Then see something else. If you have a problem with my movies then they aren’t the movies to go see. Apparently I’m not making them for you.”
Where the response begs the question— who is Tarantino making these movies for? Some of the Academy Award-nominated director’s biggest critics have been actors in his films.
In 2018, Oscar winner Jamie Foxx defended Tarantino to Yahoo Entertainment saying, “I understood the text. The N-word was said 100 times, but I understood the text — that’s the way it was back in that time.” Samuel L. Jackson, who starred in Django Unchained alongside Foxx added, “You take ’12 Years a Slave,’ which is supposedly made by an auteur,” Jackson said in a Tarantino documentary in 2019.
“Steve McQueen is very different than Quentin. When you have a song that says [the N-word] in it 300 times nobody says shit. So it’s ok for Steve McQueen to use [the N-word] because he’s artistically attacking the system and the way people think and feel, but Quentin is just doing it to just strike the blackboard with his nails. That’s not true. There’s no dishonesty in anything that [Quentin] writes or how people talk, feel or speak [in his movies].”
With some of the biggest Black stars in the industry defending his work, it is unlikely that Tarantino plans to change anything anytime soon. Meanwhile, he is doing press to support the release of his new book, Cinema Speculation, available now.
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