That footage of the Kill Bill crash, is pretty incriminating. Worse than Friedkin? Well, maybe -- word is that he had Ellen Burstyn yanked backwards by grips holding a rope, for an Exorcist scene until he literally broke her back(and yet, the woman STILL sought and had a romantic sexual relationship with him AFTER that. Hollywood!) QT appears near the end of the clip and certainly looks solicitious, but it is clear that no REAL stunt coordinators or safety personnel were available to help Uma. She is helped by hapless assistants offering her bottled water!
We also have the famous story of director John Landis' reckless direction of a Twilight Zone helicopter crash decapitating Vic Morrow and also killing two young Vietnamese children in his arms. Landis EVENTUALLY lost his film directing career, but it took years(and other directors defended the deaths as "an industrial accident.")
The Weinstein stuff is sadly the same old stuff -- patterns emerge for possible criminal prosecution except he is rich and slippery -- but I was pleased to at least read that QT confronted Weinstein over his harassment of Uma, and that Uma's estranged husband, Ethan Hawke, confronted QT about that car crash.
I've already been sorely tested in my regard for QT over the sometimes gross and perverse content of his films; now I'm tested about his behavior OUTSIDE of those films.
Its a toughie, but not that tough. I will still see his films. The world is in many ways, a tough and cruel place, and it seems to me that if a product of that cruelty are films that reflect it -- its part of the mix of being a human being, placed here to survive and to occasionally enjoy an entertaining cinematic reflection of that world. I have liked QT movies(and dialogue, and acting) for too long, I'd be a hypocrite to boycott them now.
I do recall, however, one dissenting review of Pulp Fiction when it hit so big, by the LA Times rather benign and erudite critic Kenneth Turan (paraphrased) about the bloody comic violence and male rape in the film: "If this is where the future of movies is going, I'm not sure I want to go along for the ride."
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
I haven't read of Hitchcock being as callous physically towards his actors as Friedkin, Landis, and QT were, but there are two borderline examples:
The first is subjecting Tippi Hedren to those birds attacking her for the climactic attack in the upstairs bedroom. She wasn't physically injured, but a bird almost pecked her eye and she was hospitalized for exhaustion. My issue with this is that I recall back in 1963(I really do, kid though I was) that Hitchocck AND Hedren went on the Today show to promote The Birds by talking about that grueling bird attack scene. Its as if the dangers were "over-hyped" and then sold by the actress who underwent them(Hedren also claimed that broken glass almost hit her eye in the phone booth scene.) Hedren later opined that one reason Hitchcock used an unknown(Hedren) for the lead in The Birds was that "no established actress would have submitted herself to those physical attacks." Maybe.
The second incident is Martin Balsam's staircase fall in Psycho. Assistant Director Hilton Green said that Balsam hurt his back doing that scene. I'm guessing he hurt it when the 40-year old actor fell backwards onto the foyer floor -- in the Van Sant version, a trained younger stuntman took that fall for William H. Macy. It is also possible, however, that Balsam may have twisted his back in some way gyrating in that chair in front of the process screen.
One assumes a certain disregard for the health of character guy Balsam on Hitchcock's part, and a calculated willingness to put Hedren at risk in The Birds(even as director and star later promoted the film by talking about those risks.)
In any event, I just can't put Hitchcock in the same category as Freidkin, Landis, and now QT in this regard.
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swanstep (2615)
6 years ago
Reading around on twitter, lots of people are mad as hell about the QT side of Uma's story, e.g., here's a tweet from Judd Apatow:
Tarantino also ignored Daryl Hannah’s complaints when she was harassed by Harvey Weinstein.They kicked her off the press tour.Nobody helped her. And now Tarantino is going to make a movie about Polanski. Why is someone financing this? This is why Weinstein wasn’t stopped. $$$$
There's definitely going to be some fallout for QT from this. Some actors are going to boycott him at the very least (I mean the list of actresses whose problems with Weinstein QT knew about and covered up is getting stupidly long at this point - he's on every feminist's shit-list forever for that alone). And a chunk of his audience and of critical goodwill is gone for good. I don't yet see this ending his studio career, but I suspect that Sony will end up getting QT's services rather more cheaply than they thought. Leo notwithstanding, the extra risk now involved with this next shoot means its pricetag's coming down.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
Tarantino also ignored Daryl Hannah’s complaints when she was harassed by Harvey Weinstein.They kicked her off the press tour.Nobody helped her. And now Tarantino is going to make a movie about Polanski. Why is someone financing this? This is why Weinstein wasn’t stopped. $$$$
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There's definitely going to be some fallout for QT from this.
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I would say so. Judd Apatow has some respect in town as a maker of comedies and a strong political bent that QT has generally avoided.
By coincidence, I got a "big book of Tarantino" for Xmas(recommended, its like a coffee table book on all his films to date), and there is irony all through it -- big photos of him with "best pal and sponsor" Weinstein, and this quote from QT(paraphrased): "I am not a Hollywood outsider now. I earned my way in and I have many friends there."
Well, now, maybe not so much.
Apatow has brought up that the new movie, if about Manson in some ways, will be about Roman Polanski in others. And suddenly Polanski isn't the exiled hero he was for a number of years(there's nice, embarrassing footage of Meryl Streep and others rising to a standing O when Polanski won his exile Oscar for The Pianist.)
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Some actors are going to boycott him at the very least (I mean the list of actresses whose problems with Weinstein QT knew about and covered up is getting stupidly long at this point - he's on every feminist's shit-list forever for that alone).
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QT gave a rather honorable statement along the lines of "I knew enough that I should have done something," but...well...so much for "QT the radical rebel."
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
And a chunk of his audience and of critical goodwill is gone for good.
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That was starting to happen already. The Hateful Eight didn't do too well at the box office, nor with the critics. (It did do well with ME, for reasons I've articulated in the past.)
The movie before it -- Django Unchained -- was a big hit and won QT an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Awarded to him --interestingly enough -- by presenter Dustin Hoffman. At the time, I thought it was cool that a great actor like Hoffman would be handing the Oscar to QT. Now, they're both tainted.
And that remains an issue. I still think that QT wrote and directed some great movies. I still think that Hoffman, at his best, was one of our great "movie star actors." (I just caught his 1978 crime story, Straight Time, the other night on TCM for the first time and found it magnificent in its gritty 70's way.) What to do?
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I don't yet see this ending his studio career, but I suspect that Sony will end up getting QT's services rather more cheaply than they thought. Leo notwithstanding, the extra risk now involved with this next shoot means its pricetag's coming down.
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Yes, probably. Though Leo sat next to QT for "Django" press where they were both questioned about its violence in light of the recent elementary school massacre. They've taken heat before (QT was quite disingenuous, I thought, saying his movie was "just a Western." No, it was a very ultra-violent and sadistic Western.)
Luckily for QT in terms of these new scandals, he rather "pre-built his escape hatch." He says he will only make two more films, and retire. The Manson film is the first of the two. Then he'll like make us wait another three years for the next one -- allowing the controversy to die down further.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
And I'm reminded. I think Woody Allen has been embroiled in all matter of sex scandals for decades now, often with an underage angle -- and he keeps working. A movie a year, with fairly notable leads(hey, a job is a job in a business that doesn't have all that many.) I would say that most of those movies aren't seen by anyone -- but he DID score a hit a few years back with that time travel in Paris movie. So he cannot be stopped.
Its hard to think about how sexually corrupt the movie business is, and always has been. And how nasty.
I recall some notable producer saying "all directors are sociopaths. They have to be." I don't know about that, but a lot of them have bad reputations for brow-beating and punishing their actors. John Ford was reportedly very mean to his actors and often very drunk. Hitchcock reportedly picked one lesser actor per movie to pick on in front of the rest of the cast. (John Gavin on Psycho.) Otto Preminger screamed at pretty much everybody, non-stop, except Jimmy Stewart(Anatomy of a Murder) and John Wayne(In Harm's Way.) Friedkin was a monster.
And now it looks like QT put Uma Thurman at physical risk on KIll Bill even as it was a dream project for an actress who was box office poison everywhere else(Batman and Robin; The Avengers based on the old TV version.)
And yet, I've enjoyed listening to the off-stage stories of such raconteurs as Michael Caine and David Niven back in the day. THEY seemed civilized. Paul Newman, too. (Steve McQueen, reportedly not so much.)
I guess Hollywood is a mixed bag and always will be. Some nice people are there, some not so nice people are there, the money and fame corrupts all of them. And they have to withdraw from fans as a matter of safety.
And this: it is a business that is always hyping its stars as "great," "Legendary," and rather above the rest of us. Recall Hitchcock scolding Eva Marie Saint for getting her own coffee -- "we have people to do that for you." This HAS to mess with the minds of those who work there. I think it was screenwriter William Goldman who wrote: "All movie stars are crazy. The miracle is that they aren't MORE crazy."
Directors, too.
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swanstep (2615)
6 years ago
And now it looks like QT put Uma Thurman at physical risk on KIll Bill even as it was a dream project for an actress who was box office poison everywhere else(Batman and Robin; The Avengers based on the old TV version.)
It wasn't quite spelled out in the big interview, but it was implicit: Uma put up with a hell of a lot from both QT and HW (and even just kept her mouth shut for ages) precisely because she knew well what her films with QT meant - in them she's a screen goddess, the immortalized successor to Dietrich in her von Sternberg films and Karina in her Godard films, whereas in everything else she's just some blonde with an odd aura and no box office. She'd make KB3 with QT in a heartbeat even now for the same reasons.
The interview was moving in part because you could feel how compromised Uma felt herself to be: she'd grabbed her main chance and accepted all the Faustian aspects of that deal. As most people would have. As most of us are glad she did. What a mess.
BTW, here's the link to the Colbert interview Uma did two days before the tearful Times interview:
https://youtu.be/hQ5kdejgWGY
Deliberately putting her best face forward I suspect before potentially blowing up her world.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
It wasn't quite spelled out in the big interview, but it was implicit: Uma put up with a hell of a lot from both QT and HW (and even just kept her mouth shut for ages) precisely because she knew well what her films with QT meant - in them she's a screen goddess, the immortalized successor to Dietrich in her von Sternberg films and Karina in her Godard films, whereas in everything else she's just some blonde with an odd aura and no box office. She'd make KB3 with QT in a heartbeat even now for the same reasons.
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All agreed. Though Thurman made a big impact in a black wig and reading QT's great lines in "Pulp Fiction," in other movies, she didn't much register, and the back-to-back disasters of Batman and Robin and The Avengers just about killed her star career. Then QT rescued her with the Kill Bills -- and she STILL didn't much break out after that. Personally, I don't "get" her.
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The interview was moving in part because you could feel how compromised Uma felt herself to be: she'd grabbed her main chance and accepted all the Faustian aspects of that deal. As most people would have. As most of us are glad she did. What a mess.
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All true. I've read the interview again, and you can feel Uma's pain, in that she says not only did Weinstein accost her, she "provided cloud cover" for less important female actresses to walk into Weinstein's web. Why? Because she smiled and hung around with him all the time.
For his part, Weinstein continues his counteroffensive. His reps are distributing tons of photos of Weinstein and Uma together and smiling; he confesses only to "making a pass based on his misinterpretation of Uma's flirtation," etc. Weinstein has been excommunicated from Hollywood, but we can't count him as heading for jail just yet. With Uma he can say: "Look at all the movies she did with me AFTER I supposedly attacked her."
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
Meanwhile, I've been pondering QT's plight. He " voluntarily" turned over that footage of the Kill Bill crash -- after years of refusing to give it to Uma to show to the public. He likely gave it up because "the heat's on" and the press would have come after it.
Word is out that QT personally did some bad things to Uma for Kill Bill scenes -- including spitting on her face (Michael Madsen is doing it in the set-up shot), and pulling the chain round her neck when the Japanese teen assassin is trying to kill her. Jessica Chastain(that feisty, pretty activist) has come down hard on Twitter against QT for doing that.
And after all, Kill Bill is replete with scenes of violence against women -- ironically done BY women, most of the time (its a "girl fight" movie, but a rather sick one.)
And then we have Jennifer Jason Leigh being routinely beaten by Kurt Russell, and eventually being strangled and hanged by two men, in The Hateful Eight.
QT was willing to defend that manhandling of Leigh(hey, LEIGH!) with an iconoclast's glee in 2015; maybe now, not so much.
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From my new coffee table book on QT, this quote from him:
"The way I'll define success when I finish my career is that I'm considered one of the greatest filmmakers that ever lived. A great artist, not just filmmaker."
No small ego, there.
Well, he coulda been/shoulda been, at one time. But now we can figure that QT can figure that his hope to be remembered as a great artist and a great filmmaker may just be forever tarnished, first by his joined-at-the-hip partnership with Harvey Weinstein, but also maybe for his treatment of women.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
My love-hate relationship with QT extends to hating an interview he did where, when asked a touchy question by a young questioner, he rather exploded on the poor guy: "Listen, you're not here to really interview me. You're here to help me sell MY movie!" I remember the sheer arrogance in that explosion -- and I recalled that Hitchcock in his day fielded a lot of taunting questions by his interviewers(in an interview to promote NXNW, Hitchcock had to put up with the questioners saying "the colors and process aren't very good in the Rushmore scene.") Hitchcock would answer the question, debate, concede if necessary.
Not so, QT. He doesn't like being challenged. So we can figure that the egomaniac QT is used to being may well be cowed if this metoo stuff continues on and on.
Can't wait for QTs interviews when the Manson Movie comes out. Though alas, Charlie Rose won't be among those interviewing him.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
What a difference a day makes.
QT came on out and gave a long DETAILED response to all of this; there's no keeping that loquacious auteurist egotist down. What's funny about it is that, at a certain point, he DOES admit to spitting on Uma Thurman for a Kill Bill scene, and helping strangle her a bit with the chain pulled on screen by the Japanese teen girl assassin. And he goes further: for the "Frenzy"-like scene in Inglorious Basterds in which Diane Kruger is strangled by Christoph Waltz, QT ACTUALLY strangled Kruger for two 30 second stretches. QT wanted the "real" effect of a woman's face turning red and eyes bugging out.
And of course, QT says that both Uma and Diane agreed to have these things done to them. It was for the love of making a good, realistic film. Kruger even said QT could strangle her "one more time" and he declined.
What to make of this? I dunno...QT is QT. Much as Weinstein is Weinstein(he'll still be saying "it was all consensual or misjudged passes" til they turn the key in the lock of the cell door.) QT's pictures have been resolutely gory from the get-go(less Jackie Brown, which still has killings in it). He has as much as said he sees himself as a Heavy Metal filmmaker. So truly -- its going to be hard judging him against the New Bluestocking standards of the PC brigade. He refuses to conform. Its like Ed Sullivan versus Jim Morrison, back in the day.
QT gets into great detail about the car crash. "It wasn't a stunt," he contends, "it was just a scene of her driving a car." QT takes responsibility for testing the car personally to "test the scene," but in the wrong direction - the curve was not visible to him. He also says the car was built wrong by "the transpo guy" and adds "writer/directors don't deal with defective cars, that's for the production manager."
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
Side-bar: in this , the age of the Twitter attack, QT was attacked by some small names(Asia Argento) and a couple of big names: Judd Apatow and Jessica Chastain.
But as he comes back at 'em, you're reminded: in filmmaking circles, QT is seen as a much bigger deal than Judd Apatow(who makes successful comedies with Seth Rogan, that's all) and Jessica Chastain(a beauty who has elected to take on this righteous stance even as her movies don't do all that well at the box office -- but wait, I think "Molly's Game" is my favorite of 2017. But wait: it wasn't a big hit.)
Anyway, counting QT out is never the best bet; assuming he will back down or change his ways is likely the wrong way to go.
So he'll just have to see how film history treats him. The landmark "Pulp Fiction"? Or the political sexual wars of the late 2010s?
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
I have been pondering -- particularly reading some of the vicious attacks on QT over at his board -- if the current scandals will indeed mess up QT's plans for his next movie.
Granted, Diane Kruger has put out a message that QT was a great, swell guy she would work with again -- even after he strangled her for Inglorious Basterds -- but his "brand is hurt" by all this bad gender-based press, I think. And he can never escape the fact that he was practically joined at the hip to Harvey Weinstein as a matter of career ascent(though I think eventually QT stuck with Weinstein out of loyalty, he didn't NEED him anymore.)
Anyway, no real word on casting on the next film. Leo was in, and Tom Cruise and Al Pacino were being sought but...do they want to sign on NOW? They'd have to skip promotional interviews to avoid getting hammered for "being with" the evil QT.
And as Apatow noted, the movie has the Manson murders of Sharon Tate in it so...Roman Polanski has to be at least MENTIONED. And his name is mud again.
QT doesn't strike me as a guy who backs down or runs or hides. But he has to be concerned. He has a big head and a big belief in his greatness. To see it all collapse near the end of his run must be upsetting to him.
And yet: anybody remember how the women get killed in "Death Proof?" To say that QT didn't have a bloodlust for female dismemberment is to be disingenuous (even if some OTHER women beat killer Kurt Russell to death at the end.)
I'll always support QT's great, wild-ass, flowing dialogue sequences. He didn't steal the speeches of Samuel L. Jackson and Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction or Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken in True Romance. They are genius. And there are some pretty damn good speeches in Kill Bill(David Carradine's at the end) and Inglorious Basterds(for Waltz and for Pitt) as well.
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ecarle (14979)
6 years ago
Hell, no less an authority than the Motion Picture Academy gave QT the Oscar for his scripts of Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained. And Waltz won two Oscars for speaking QT scripts.
Its probably fitting that QT has these problems today...with only two films left to make, he swears. The content of his films got more problematic with each film after Jackie Brown. (And "something must have happened" in the six years between that movie and Kill Bill.) But QT swears he's a Heavy Metal Rebel of Sickness as well as a witty writer of words. The confrontation is here.
It will be interesting to see if his next movie stars Leo, Cruise and Al....or Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern and Chris Walken.
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