Quentin Tarantino Offers Bizarre Reflection About Working With Harvey Weinstein
"I felt it was pathetic. I felt what he was doing was pathetic and I didn’t want to deal with his pathetic-ness.”
US filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has spoken openly about his relationship with ex-colleague and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein, claiming that he “never heard the stories” involving the former Miramax founder’s crimes.
Since disgraced former film producer Harvey Weinstein’s was convicted for counts of rape and sexual assault, speculation has remained about the extent of Tarantino’s knowledge of his employer’s crimes during their working relationship on films like Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill.
This week, Tarantino has opened up about his awareness of Weinstein’s misconduct at the time, informing HBO’s Chris Wallace that he had initially dismissed the seriousness of the former Miramax co-founder’s conduct.
“I’d never heard the stories that later came out at all,” Tarantino said.
“To tell you the truth, I chalked it up to a Mad Men era version of the boss chasing the secretary around the desk. I’m not saying that’s ok. That’s how I heard it… in that category. There was never any talk of rape or anything like that.”
The bizarre admission from Tarantino gets worse, with the director explaining how he compartmentalised Weinstein’s misconduct later in the interview.
“I didn’t think it was, ‘OK, you do this for me or you’re not going to get this movie.’ I never heard any actresses say anything like that,” Tarantino said.
“It was just you know, ‘Don’t get in the back of a limo with him.’ It was easy to compartmentalise that to some degree.”
Sure, Tarantino can imagine complicated alternate histories where Hitler is assassinated by covert operatives, but seemingly couldn’t imagine what was happening in the backseat of limousines shared by Weinstein and female film industry figures at the time! Acknowledging that he wished he’d had a “man-to-man” with Weinstein at the time, Tarantino concedes that he didn’t confront his boss at the time because it was simply too hard.
“The reason I didn’t [say something to Weinstein] was because that’s a real hard conversation to have,” Tarantino admitted.
“I felt it was pathetic. I felt what he was doing was pathetic and I didn’t want to deal with his pathetic-ness… I feel bad that I did not have a man-to-man talk with him about it.”
The director has signalled that his tenth project will also be his last, and speaking as someone who has enjoyed most of his films despite my better judgement; Tarantino’s retirement may well be for the best.
Image credit: Stephane Cardinale – Corbis / Getty Images