Police organizations from New York City to Los Angeles have pledged to boycott Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming movie, The Hateful Eight, for comments he made recently at an anti-police brutality protest. Those organizations said he called police officers “murderers.” Tarantino is now responding, and he says he refuses to be “intimidated.”
Speaking to the LA Times, Tarantino says his words were misinterpreted by the police unions:
“All cops are not murderers. I never said that. I never even implied that … Frankly, it feels lousy to have a bunch of police mouthpieces call me a cop hater. I’m not a cop hater. That is a misrepresentation. That is slanderous. That is not how I feel.”
As a refresher, here’s an excerpt of what Tarantino originally said at the rally: “When I see murders, I do not stand by … I have to call a murder a murder, and I have to call the murderers the murderers.” The New York police union decided to boycott the director’s upcoming film in response, with other precincts around the country following suit.
The criticism gained so much traction that the New York Post ran a story where Hateful Eight producer Harvey Weinstein reportedly told Tarantino to apologize. Now Entertainment Weekly‘s story on Tarantino’s response includes a statement from the Weinstein Company, asserting Tarantino’s right to his own opinion: “We don’t speak for Quentin, he can and should be allowed to speak for himself.”
