SALON

Saturday, Dec 29, 2012 12:30 AM UTC

Tarantino: “I find the criticism ridiculous”

The director opens up to Henry Louis Gates Jr. about race, the n-word and his controversial "Django Unchained"

By

Topics: AlterNet, The Root, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., django unchained,

Tarantino:
This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet A wide-ranging three-part interview on The Root with Quentin Tarantino conducted by its editor, the Harvard Prof and cultural critic Henry Louis Gates Jr., offers the public a chance to hear Tarantino’s thinking about slavery, race, use of the N-word and the making of his latest film, “Django Unchained.” Prominent figures including Spike Lee have attacked Tarantino in recent days for being disrespectful and exploitative of America’s racial past and present in “Django.” The following are excerpts of some his most interesting remarks:

On working with Jamie Foxx to build the character of the hero, Django:

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: I watched Jamie Foxx recently on Leno. He said that he was playing Django with too much self-confidence and bravado at a time when Django had not evolved and that you sat everyone down and said we have to go back in a time machine and be slaves and imagine what that’s like. And he said it was a profound moment for him. Were there any awkward moments with the cast about what you were doing? Did they ever say, “This is too much”?

Quentin Tarantino: Nothing during the making of the movie at all — and only when it came to just Jamie’s arc, at the first day of rehearsal … Frankly, it was a situation where Jamie, being a strong, black male, wanted to be a strong, black male. But we’re dealing with the first 15 pages of the movie.

But the more it went on, we kind of just worked all day, and when it was over with, I got together with Jamie, by ourselves, and I said, you know, we don’t have a story if Django is already this magnificent heroic figure who just happens to be in chains.

There is also a reality that you need to play here in this opening scene, which is just before this movie has started, you’ve been walking from Mississippi to Texas. So when we see you, you’re half-dead from this walk. There will be people in the opening credit sequence who aren’t on that chain gang when we pick it up in the first scene — so there’s this just survival aspect. And they only had so much food, just so you know, for the trip. So they had a little bit of food for you at the beginning, but after that if they don’t find an apple tree, you don’t eat, and that’s just the deal. So you’re weak and all this.

I actually took a piece of paper and I made seven X’s on it. And I took the little legs of the X’s and connected them with little loops, like chains. And I circled the sixth one, in the back. And I go, this is who Django is when we first meet him. The sixth from the seventh in the back. He is not Jim Brown. He is not a superhero. You want to be Jim Brown too soon. It’s just that simple. You gotta grow into the jacket. You have to express a lifetime of slavery. You have to express a lifetime lived on the plantation.

Henry Louis Gates: And Jamie said it was a transformative moment immediately.

Quentin Tarantino: Well, he realized that I wasn’t asking him to be meek. I wasn’t asking him to give up his strength. We have to build it in front of the audience’s eyes.

***

On use of the N-Word:

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Spike Lee‘s on your ass all the time about using the word “nigger.” What would you say to black filmmakers who are offended by the use of the word “nigger” and/or offended by the depictions of the horrors of slavery in the film?

Quentin Tarantino: Well, you know, if you’re going to make a movie about slavery and are taking a 21st-century viewer and putting them in that time period, you’re going to hear some things that are going to be ugly, and you’re going see some things that are going be ugly. That’s just part and parcel of dealing truthfully with this story, with this environment, with this land.

Personally, I find [the criticism] ridiculous. Because it would be one thing if people are out there saying, “You use it much more excessively in this movie than it was used in 1858 in Mississippi.” Well, nobody’s saying that. And if you’re not saying that, you’re simply saying I should be lying. I should be watering it down. I should be making it more easy to digest.

No, I don’t want it to be easy to digest. I want it to be a big, gigantic boulder, a jagged pill and you have no water.

***

On whether Tarantino cut out any scenes while editing:

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Were there any scenes left on the cutting room floor that are just too graphic or depressing to include in the film? And if so, will we ever see them, and what were they?

Quentin Tarantino: Nothing that was too graphic. But there were versions of the movie, getting to the version that we have now, where both the Mandingo fighting [male slaves fighting to the death for sport] and the dog scene [were] even worse … even more violent. I can handle rougher stuff than most people. I can handle more viscera than most. So to me it was OK.

But you know, you make your movie and you get it to a certain point where we’ve seen it ourselves enough — now we have to see it with an audience. And this movie has to work — all my movies have to work this way — but this one kind of even more so had to work on a bunch of different levels.

The comedy had to be able to work. The horrific serious scenes have to work. I have to be able to get you to laugh at a sequence after that to bring you back from [the horrific scene]. We have to be at the right place in the story where the big suspense scene at the dinner table happens so that it will pay off.

Now, I’ll talk a little bit in code, but you’ll know what I mean, and I don’t think it will spoil anything. But by the way, I actually don’t mind people knowing that Django triumphs at the end.

But there’s that moment where Django turns to Broomhilda and has that kind of punky smile that he does. If I’ve done my job right, modulating this movie and doing it the right way, then the audience will burst into applause. They’ll clap with Broomhilda. They’ll laugh when Django and his horse do the little dance. That means I’ve done it the right way. The audience is responding exactly the way I want them to.

More AlterNet Staff.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 21 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from AlterNet, an award-winning news magazine and online community that creates original journalism and amplifies the best of hundreds of other independent media sources.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
FBI reportedly joins Bachmann campaign finance probe
228 points229 points | 14 comments
vote
Paul Krugman’s right: Austerity kills. "In an economy where we’re all in the same boat, one person’s spending is another person’s income. So when the government cuts spending, it reduces people’s income, leading to less business, more unemployment, and a vicious spiral of slowing down the economy."
222 points223 points | 177 comments
vote
Jon Karl makes things worse: He regrets “inaccurate” Benghazi email but says his story based on it “still entirely stands.” Really. ABC News?
205 points206 points | 30 comments
vote
“Jodorowsky’s Dune”: The sci-fi classic that never was.
80 points81 points | 16 comments
vote
Austerity Kills: Brian McArdle, a 57-year-old man who had had two strokes and could barely walk, was found "fit for work" by a government subcontractor, and had his benefits stopped. He died the next day.
60 points61 points | 3 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations