Quentin Tarantino has made amends over Uma Thurman’s account of the physical trauma she suffered on the Kill Bill by owning her car crash as his own “horrendous mistake.” He did blame “mostly Maureen Dowd’s prose” for the controversy that erupted over him personally choking and spitting upon Uma during those respective parts of the script, but there isn’t really anyone that Tarantino can blame for some newly resurfaced 2003 audio footage of him defending Roman Polanski on The Howard Stern Show.
Despite the fact that Polanski pleaded guilty to having unlawful sex with a minor in 1979, Tarantino responds to a Stern question about Hollywood’s embrace of Polanski in the most unsavory of ways. First, Tarantino insisted that Polanski did not rape 13-year-old Samantha Geimer (after drugging her) but only “had sex with a minor” while ignoring the definition of statutory rape, which means that the victim has not reached the age of consent, meaning that they cannot legally consent. Still, Tarantino is offended that people “throw the word rape around” like this, even though Robin Quivers interjects to assert that the girl didn’t want to have sex with Polanski. Then this happened:
Tarantino: “No, that was not the case at all. She wanted to have it and dated the guy.”
Quivers: “She was 13!”
Tarantino: “By the way, we’re talking about America’s morals, not talking about the morals in Europe and everything.”
Stern: “Wait a second. If you have sex with a 13-year-old girl and you’re a grown man, you know that that’s wrong.”
Quivers: “Giving her booze and pills.”
Tarantino: “Look, she was down with it.”
At that last line, both Stern and Quivers audibly recoiled with the latter branding Tarantino “so crazy.” Yet the director was not deterred. He proceeded to blame Polanski’s prosecution upon a “technicality,” and Tarantino suggested that the victim had only come forward to appease her mother. Overall, it’s an unhinged rant (even by QT standards of wordiness), and the arguments within will ensure that the current #MeToo backlash against him won’t go away anytime soon.
Listen to a longer clip of Tarantino’s 2003 Stern interview below.
(Via The Howard Stern Show)