The Patriot Post® · Bashing Cops to Sell Movie Tickets
Professional filmmaker and world-class jackass Quentin Tarantino continues to defy the first rule of self-inflicted character assassination: When you’re in a hole, stop digging. Yet his continuing effort to paint himself as a victim can no longer been seen as either what he insists is a principled stand, or as a tiresome act of perpetual adolescent defiance. Oscar Wilde said it best: “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” In short, Tarantino is doing nothing more than promoting his newest movie, “The Hateful Eight” slated for a high-profile Christmas release.
Tarantino’s publicity tour began when spoke at an anti-cop rally in Brooklyn on Oct. 24, only two days after black NYPD officer Randolph Holder was murdered, allegedly by a career thug with 28 previous arrests. “I’m a human being with a conscience,” Tarantino declared at the rally. “And if you believe there’s murder going on then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I’m here to say I’m on the side of the murdered. When I see murders, I do not stand by. I have to call a murder a murder, and I have to call the murderers the murderers,” he said in reference to police.
Cops all over the country were outraged, called for a boycott of the aforementioned movie, and demanded an apology from the filmmaker. For a couple of days the media assured us Tarantino would do exactly that. How naive. An apology, no matter how insincere, would have lessened the heat and light considerably, and Quentin wasn’t about to let that happen.
Last Tuesday, his anger morphed into victimhood. After admitting to the Los Angeles Times that “all cops are not murderers,” he gave us a dose of the poor, poor, pitiful me shtick. “What they’re doing is pretty obvious,” he said of his critics. “Instead of dealing with the incidents of police brutality that those people were bringing up, instead of examining the problem of police brutality in this country, better they single me out. And their message is very clear. It’s to shut me down. It’s to discredit me. It is to intimidate me. It is to shut my mouth, and, even more important than that, it is to send a message out to any other prominent person that might feel the need to join that side of the argument.”
One is left to wonder how an interview with one of the nation’s largest newspapers constitutes shutting Tarantino down, especially since the very next day the reliably leftist MSNBC gave Tarantino yet another opportunity to spew his venom on the “All In with Chris Hayes” show. Tarantino obliged, talking about various incidents involving police he “believed” were murders, including those where police were exonerated. He claimed to be surprised by the vitriol directed at him. “I was under the impression I was an American and that I had First Amendment rights,” he blathered, “and there was no problem with me going to an anti-police brutality protest and speaking my mind. And just because I was at an anti-police brutality protest doesn’t mean I’m anti-police.”
When asked how he got involved with the rally in the first place, the filmmaker explained that #RiseUpOctober “got in touch with me, because I had made statements in some interviews, you know, along the way, that had suggested that I’m on their side when it comes to this issue of, you know, ultimately what I feel is a problem of white supremacy in this country.”
One might wonder how Quentin moved so seamlessly from murderous police to white privilege. Perhaps he could explain his line of “logic” to officer Holder’s family. As for his First Amendment rights, Tarantino apparently takes the typically progressive position that speaking one’s mind should engender no consequences. Perhaps he might consider that what he characterizes as an attempt to intimidate him, or shut him down, is nothing less than his critics exercising their First Amendment rights.
In a surprisingly naive take, a New York Post editorial rightly notes Tarantino is “looking for controversy and headlines, a guaranteed box-office boost.” But the paper’s editors wonder when movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who has produced several of Tarantino’s films, including the upcoming one, will speak out against Tarantino’s “calculated” marketing strategy. “If Harvey Weinstein wants to show he’s not playing along with Tarantino’s macabre marketing ploy, he’d best speak up now — loudly,” the Post states.
He already has. “The Weinstein Co. has a long-standing relationship and friendship with Quentin and has a tremendous amount of respect for him as a filmmaker,” a Weinstein Co. representative told The Hollywood Reporter in a statement. “We don’t speak for Quentin; he can and should be allowed to speak for himself.”
A few weeks ago, conservative radio host Mark Levin dedicated part of his show to telling the story of Hollywood stars who served during WWII. He spoke of major luminaries like Robert Mitchum, Jonathan Winters, Henry Fonda, Lee Marvin, Robert Montgomery, Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson, Robert Ryan, William Holden, Fess Parker, Jason Robards and a host of others, many of whom risked their lives in combat, and all of whom served their nation with honor and dignity.
Does anyone think a self-piteous weasel like Quentin Tarantino could make it through a single patrol shift many of the nation’s cops deal with on a daily basis without soiling himself? It is almost impossible to understand how Hollywood devolved from an industry populated with genuine heroes who loved this nation to one populated with self-absorbed, pampered egomaniacs who rarely miss an opportunity to denigrate the same nation that made them rich and famous beyond their wildest dreams. Some of whom are willing to slander police if it sells movie tickets.
“Tarantino is no stranger to controversy,” explains Phil Contrino of BoxOffice.com. “At the end of the day, this publicity only has people talking about the film more. I don’t think it will negatively impact the box office.” Perhaps not. But if that’s truly the case, it says as much about the current state of America itself as it does about an ungrateful opportunist like Quentin Tarantino.