Tarantino: 'Anything I Say Now Will Sound Like Crappy Excuse'

He wishes he'd taken a stand against Weinstein
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 20, 2017 5:36 AM CDT
Tarantino: I Should Have Done More About Weinstein
Director Quentin Tarantino, left, and Harvey Weinstein pose together after the premiere of "Grindhouse" in Los Angeles, on March 26, 2007.   (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)

Quentin Tarantino has spoken out against his longtime friend and collaborator Harvey Weinstein—but he admits that it's too little, too late. Tarantino tells the New York Times that he "knew enough to do more than I did" and he now wishes he had stepped up and refused to work with the producer. Tarantino says he heard numerous allegations against Weinstein and knew there was "more to it than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip," but that he continued to make movies with him. "I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard," he says, but "if I had done the work I should have done then, I would have had to not work with him." He says that after he started dating actress Mira Sorvino, she told him how Weinstein had sexually harassed her on multiple occasions, once chasing her around a hotel room.

"What I did was marginalize the incidents," Tarantino says, adding: "Anything I say now will sound like a crappy excuse." All of Tarantino's movies, starting with Reservoir Dogs in 1992, were made through Miramax or the Weinstein Company, Deadline notes. Tarantino tells the Times that it's time for other men to acknowledge there was "something rotten in Denmark" and for Hollywood to stop operating under "an almost Jim Crow-like system that us males have almost tolerated." He says he has no explanation for Weinstein's behavior. "I don't have an answer for why he could do this and be stripped of his entire legacy," he says. (The latest rape allegation against Weinstein falls within the statute of limitations.)

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