On today’s episode of “Which Guy Was Being a Dick?”, Quentin Tarantino snaps at a reporter who asks him about violence in his movies, telling the reporter, in either an apt or unfortunate metaphor, depending on your perspective, “I’m not your slave.” Then, “I’m shutting your butt down!” Something I wish someone could do for me, incidentally. I’ve farted so much I’ve given myself an anal fissure. Can’t someone make it stop? It’s like I’ve fracked my own bowels!
Anywho, you can read the transcript below and decide for yourself who you think the dick in this situation was. I know people think I’m a Tarantino apologist, but I have to imagine that it gets annoying to get asked this same question every five seconds. Yes, he brings it on himself by making violent movies, but you’ll notice he doesn’t actually get bitchy until the interviewer (Krishnan Guru-Murthy) asks him “But why are you so sure…” Which is a bullsh*t reporter move. You can’t just re-ask the same question because you don’t like the subject’s answer and then act surprised when he gets annoyed. “What’s your favorite book?” “Moby Dick!” “…but how can you be so sure?”
[transcription via HollywoodElsewhere]
Krishnan Guru-Murthy: Let me ask you about violence. You said, you know, everyone knows you make violent movies, you like violent movies. Why do you like making violent movies?
Quentin Tarantino: Uhm… I don’t know. It’s like asking Judd Apatow, “Why do you like making comedies?”
KGM: You just get a kick out of it? Or you just enjoy it? Or…
QT: It’s… It’s… It’s a… I think… I think it’s good cinema. I consider it good cinema. You know, it’s… You sit there in a movie theatre when these cathartic, violent scenes happen… I’m talking about the cathartic violence scenes. Then there’s the cathartic violence of Django paying back blood for blood.
KGM: Is that why you think people like watching violent movies – people who are not violent people or twisted people in any way, but why it’s OK to go into a movie and enjoy the violence?
QT: Yeah, well, it’s a movie. It’s a fantasy. It’s a fantasy – it’s not real life. It’s a fantasy. You go and you watch. You know, you watch a kung-fu movie and one guy takes on 100 people in a restaurant. That’s fun!
KGM: But why are you so sure that there’s no link between enjoying movie violence and enjoying real violence?
QT: I don’t…I’m going to tell you why I’m so sure? Don’t ask me a question like that – I’m not biting. I refuse your question.
KGM: Why?
QT: 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.
I’m not your slave! I’m not your monkey! You’re not my puppet master! I don’t dance when you tell me to like a Jack in the Box, or a square dance… uh… person! You’re not my boss at the call center! You don’t get to tell me how to sell Time Life books! You’re not a football coach! You don’t get to just roll in here wearing weird tight shorts and start telling me my helmet’s not a chair! You think this is Fifty Shades of Grey and I’m some horny college student who you get to tie up and play weird f*ck games with? Well guess what, Christian Grey, I’m not signing your fisting contract!
KGM: I can’t make you answer anything. I’m asking you interesting questions.
QT: And I’m saying… and I’m saying I refuse.
KGM: OK. I was just asking you why. That’s fine. But you see, Jamie Foxx has said: “We can’t turn our back and say that violence in films, that anything that we do…”
QT: Then you should talk to Jamie Foxx about that. And I think he’s actually here, so you can!
KGM: I’d love to, but, I mean, you know… It’s interesting that you have a different view, and I’m just trying to explore that.
QT: And I don’t want to! ‘Cause I’m here to sell my movie. This is a commercial for the movie – make no mistake.
KGM: So you don’t want to talk about anything serious?
QT: I don’t want to talk about what you want to talk about. I don’t want to talk about the implications of violence. I haven’t wanted… because… The reason I don’t want to talk about it: 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. But I haven’t changed my opinion one iota.
KGM: No, but you haven’t fleshed it out.
QT: It’s not my job to flesh it out.
KGM: No, it’s my job to try and ask you to.
QT: And I’m shutting your butt down!
Some internet wiseacres have suggested mashing up the end of this interview with Al Roker saying he pooped himself, which I think is a perfectly bully idea.