Parts Unknown star Anthony Bourdain has made his disdain for Harvey Weinstein and his enablers well known since the latter’s enormous sexual assault scandal went public. He even went so far as to call out former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for her delayed response to the news. This is all understandable, of course, because Bourdain’s girlfriend, Asia Argento — the Italian actress and director — has accused Weinstein of raping her. At Saturday’s New Yorker festival, however, Bourdain stepped into it yet again when he called out Quentin Tarantino for his admitted “complicity.”
According to Variety, Bourdain was discussing a lucrative business deal he ultimately turned down “because he and his longtime producing partners did not feel comfortable with the person offering the deal”:
Despite the fact that “it was a lot of money,” Bourdain and his partners Lydia Tenaglia and Chris Collins decided immediately after the meeting that the deal “would have been a slow-acting poison that would have nibbled away at our souls until we ended up like Quentin Tarantino, looking back at a life of complicity, shame and compromise.”
The celebrity chef refused to offer any more details regarding the comment during his New Yorker festival session with the magazine’s Patrick Radden Keefe. When Variety later asked him if his Tarantino comment was a reference to the Weinstein scandal, however, Bourdain responded simply: “One might think.” Nearly two weeks prior, the acclaimed director and frequent Weinstein collaborator told the New York Times, “I knew enough to do more than I did”:
“There was more to it than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip. It wasn’t secondhand. I knew he did a couple of these things. I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard. If I had done the work I should have done then, I would have had to not work with him.”
Considering Bourdain’s past comments regarding Weinstein and his supporters, past and present, and his brief response to Variety, it’s fair to say his Tarantino jab was probably about the embattled Hollywood mogul. After all, not long after the entertainment trade’s story went live, Argento shared it on Twitter with the caption, “One might think we all need to slam Tarantino’s complicity with Harvey Weinstein.”
https://twitter.com/AsiaArgento/status/924298878173753344
(Via Variety)