Quentin Tarantino isn't done protesting police brutality: "I want to go further with this" after "The Hateful Eight" opens

The filmmaker spoke to the Guardian about feeling "vindicated" after his protest and the backlash from cops

Published December 8, 2015 8:28PM (EST)

 Quentin Tarantino (AP/Virginia Mayo)
Quentin Tarantino (AP/Virginia Mayo)

It’s been a minute since filmmaker Quentin Tarantino came to New York to participate in Rise Up October’s anti-police brutality protests, during which, you might remember, Tarantino told families of police brutality victims, “I’m on the side of the murdered.”

And since the ensuing backlash from the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association—whereby cops threatened to boycott Tarantino’s forthcoming “Hateful Eight”—fizzled out of the news cycle in early November, Tarantino’s kept a pretty low profile, as far as headlines are concerned.

Tarantino explained his hiatus from activism during a press event in Beverly Hills over the weekend.

“Right now, [promoting the “Hateful Eight”] is my job,” Tarantino told The Guardian. “But when this is over, I want to go further with [anti-police brutality activism].”

Far from dejected by calls to protest his latest film, scheduled to hit theaters Christmas Day, Tarantino said he felt energized by the pushback.

“I actually felt kind of vindicated,” Tarantino said. “By them making such a big deal about it, the subject ended up being in the press and on television – and people had to start making their own minds up about it in a way that wasn’t happening before.”

Tarantino also responded to a bizarrely mafia-esque threat made by Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation’s largest police union. “The right time and place will come up and and we'll try to hurt him in the only way that seems to matter to him, and that's economically,” Pasco told The Hollywood Reporter last month.

Asked if he expected such a dramatic response from the FOP, Tarantino said Sunday, “The fact that they would overreact to such a degree, and single me out to such a degree, and then get so carried away that they literally get out over their skis, and actually, are indulging in theoretical threats of a private citizen, no, I did not expect that at all.”

(h/t NY Daily News)

Tarantino's


By Brendan Gauthier

Brendan Gauthier is a freelance writer.

MORE FROM Brendan Gauthier