Quentin Tarantino denies Kanye West pitched him the idea for Django Unchained : 'That didn't happen'
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Quentin Tarantino is refusing to let Kanye West take credit as the creative mastermind behind his 2012 action film Django Unchained.
The Oscar-winning director took a moment to deny West's claims that he pitched the idea for the revisionist Western to him and its lead actor Jamie Foxx while visiting Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday.
"There's not truth to the idea that Kanye West came up with the idea of Django and then he told that to me, and I go, 'Hey, wow, that's a really great idea. Let me take Kanye's idea and make Django Unchained out of it,'" he said. "That didn't happen. I'd had the idea for Django for a while before I ever met Kanye."
Instead, Tarantino said, the Donda rapper was interested in creating an ambitious film version of his 2004 debut album, The College Dropout.
"He wanted to get big directors to do different tracks from the album and then release it as this giant movie," he recalled. "Not videos — nothing as crass as videos… They were going to be movies based on each of the different tracks."
The Once Upon a Time in Hollywood director — whose new novel, Cinema Speculation, hit shelves this week — added that the project was the perfect "excuse to meet each other" and noted that West did have an idea for a video at the time.
"I do think it was for the 'Gold Digger' video, that he would be a slave," Tarantino said. "The whole thing was the slave narrative where he's a slave and he's singing 'Gold Digger.' And it was very funny. It was a really, really funny idea."
Steve Granitz/WireImage; Kevin Mazur/Getty Images Quentin Tarantino; Kanye West
When host Jimmy Kimmel questioned the idea of a "funny slave movie," Tarantino clarified his remarks.
"It was meant to be ironic," he explained. "And it's like a huge musical. I mean, like no expenses spared with him in this slave rag outfit, doing everything. And then that was also part of the pushback on it. But I wish he had done it. It sounded really cool. Anyway, that's what he's referring to."
West, who has been dropped from multiple projects due to his recent anti-Semitic remarks, discussed his idea in an interview with Piers Morgan last week.
"Tarantino can write a movie about slavery where — actually him and Jamie, they got the idea from me because the idea for Django, I pitched to Jamie Foxx and Quentin Tarantino as the video for 'Gold Digger,'" West said on Piers Morgan Uncensored. "And then Tarantino turned it into a film."
The movie — which starred Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, and Kerry Washington — was nominated for five Academy Awards in 2013, including Best Picture, and took home two: for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Christoph Waltz's performance.
West's representatives did not immediately respond to EW's request for comment.
Watch Tarantino's interview above.
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