Quentin Tarantino On Harvey Weinstein: “Wish I Had Taken Responsibility For What I Heard”
No filmmaker is more closely associated with Harvey Weinstein and his companies than Quentin Tarantino, and today the double Oscar winner is speaking out about the sexual abuse and harassment scandal that is rocking Hollywood. In a long conversation with The New York Times, Tarantino admitted he “knew enough to do more than I did” and called on “the other guys who knew more to not be scared. Don’t just give out statements.”
“There was more to it than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip,” he told the paper. “It wasn’t secondhand. I knew he did a couple of these things. I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard,” he added. “If I had done the work I should have done then, I would have had to not work with him.”
He added: “What I did was marginalize the incidents. Anything I say now will sound like a crappy excuse.”
All of Tarantino’s movies have been made through Weinstein’s Miramax or The Weinstein Company — starting with 1992’s Reservoir Dogs and Palme d’Or winner Pulp Fiction two years later (2004’s Death Proof was released through the Bob Weinstein-founded Dimension Films). Last week, Tarantino’s friend Amber Tamblyn posted on Twitter a statement he made about the scandal, saying in part, “I need a few more days to process my pain, emotions, anger, and memory, and then I will speak publicly about it.”
That was today.
“What was previously accepted is now untenable to anyone of a certain consciousness,” he told the NYT about his longtime friend. “I don’t have an answer for why he could do this and be stripped of his entire legacy.”
The New York Times, of course, broke the Weinstein scandal wide open two weeks ago with its damning report about decades of allegations of sexual abuse and harassment by the Oscar-winning producer. The New Yorker followed suit days later with a piece quoting more women about their encounter with Weinstein. Since then, a slew of actresses and other women in the industry have come forward with more lurid tales about him.
Last week, Amazon Studios chief Roy Price also was caught up in a sexual harassment scandal that led to his resigning from the company Tuesday
The LAPD today confirmed that it is investigating Weinstein for rape.
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