When all of the initial Harvey Weinstein allegations were coming out late last year, going back decades and decades and involving near enough every woman working in the film industry, the producer’s frequent collaborator Quentin Tarantino, the director of movies like “Reservoir Dogs” and “Inglourious Basterds,” among just about every other Weinstein collaborator in Hollywood, was asked if he was aware that all of these things were going on.
Tarantino revealed that yes, he “knew” about what Weinstein was up to all along. The whole time, he was aware of this.
But as long as Weinstein was throwing $70 million at his darkly comic World War II alternate history action movie and $100 million at his funny, gimmicky spaghetti western about the atrocities of slavery, he kept his mouth shut. So, that’s how he managed to get such creative control on his movies this whole time.
Director describes Thurman car crash as ‘just horrible’
But now, things have gotten even worse for Tarantino, as his so-called “muse” Uma Thurman – the star of his films “Pulp Fiction” as Mia Wallace and “Kill Bill” as Beatrix “The Bride” Kiddo – has revealed not only her story of sexual abuse at the hands of the predatory Weinstein, but also a story of being forced to do a dangerous stunt she didn’t want to do by none other than Tarantino himself.
As Thurman describes it, she insisted that she didn’t want to do the stunt, which involved driving a car at a high speed, and requested that a stunt person be brought in to do it for her. Tarantino was very adamant that it be Thurman who did the stunt, so he kept pushing and pushing. He promised that it was a straight road and that the car was completely safe.
So, trusting her director, Thurman got in the car, which she described as completely unsafe and a “death box,” with the seat barely screwed into place, and he told her that they would keep doing the shot again and again until she hit 40 mph.
So, Thurman started driving and did the scene, but while she was driving on this road – which was not straight, as Tarantino had described it, and it was covered in sand, which makes it almost impossible to drive on – she lost control of the car and crashed it.
Now, the director has described the crash as “just horrible,” and insists that he was nothing but helpful when Thurman came to him and asked for the footage of the crash.
Two other details from the story: Tarantino choked Thurman and spat in her face
In addition to the car crash, the Maureen Dowd story about Thurman in the New York Times details two other incidents involving Tarantino: the time that he choked her with a chain on the set of “Kill Bill” and the time that he spat in her face on the set of “Kill Bill.” In the original story in the Times, none of this comes from Thurman’s quotes – it’s based on stories from other people working on those sets.
So, they came out of context, and Tarantino has provided that context.
The spitting was for a scene where Michael Madsen’s character spits in The Bride’s face. The director apparently “didn’t trust” Madsen to do the spitting, so he decided to shoot it differently and do the spitting himself, from off-screen. This has brought Tarantino’s treatment of women and respect for women into question, since it clearly implies an aggression against Thurman on his part.
Tarantino also clarified that the “choking” was “Uma’s suggestion,” as a scene that involved her character getting choked with a chain needed to look real. According to the director, he planned it so that she would be safe and she asked him to do it. Exactly how true this is, only time will tell. The director added, “I’m kind of left representing everybody,” since all of the other Hollywood power players who Thurman named as “culprits” got their lawyers to have the Times redact their names, leaving only Tarantino’s moniker behind in the print.