Quentin Tarantino Rips Reporter: ‘I’m Not Your Slave’
Quentin Tarantino lashed out at an interviewer on England’s Channel 4 yesterday when the reporter, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, tried to ask the director why he was sure there’s no link between violence in movies and in real life. “Don’t ask me a question like that – I’m not biting. I refuse your question,” Tarantino said.
When Guru-Murthy asked why the Django Unchained director wouldn’t answer, a visibly peeved Tarantino responded: “Because I refuse your question. I’m not your slave and you’re not my master. You can’t make me dance to your tune. I’m not a monkey.”
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Like many of his movies, Django – which stars Jamie Foxx as a freed slave out to rescue his wife, while inflicting some vengeance along the way – is filled with rampant violence, which has become a particularly charged subject in the wake of the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. When asked why he thought audiences enjoy watching such bloodshed, the director simply said: “Yeah, well it’s a movie, it’s a fantasy, it’s not real life.”
“I don’t want to talk about the implications of violence,” Tarantino added later, after again refusing Guru-Murthy’s question. “The reason I don’t want to talk about it is because I’ve said everything I have to say about it. If anyone cares what I have to say about it they can Google me. And they can look for 20 years what I have to say about it. I haven’t changed my opinion one iota.” In fact, Tarantino told NPR’s Terry Gross more or less the same thing during an interview last week, adding that blaming movies for something like the Newton massacre is “disrespectful.”
Though Guru-Murthy explained to Tarantino it was his job to get the director to flesh out his opinions, he replied with a cackle: “And I am shutting your butt down.” Watch the entire interview below.