The Quentin Tarantino Movie Spike Lee Boycotted: “Does he want to be made an honorary Black man?”
Sharai Bohannon
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Quentin Tarantino is a filmmaker occasionally known for his unwillingness to hear particular critiques about his work. Because of these habits, he is usually in the middle of a controversy or two. One of the most surprising and infamous grudge matches Tarantino has engaged in has got to be the one with Spike Lee, dating back to sometime in the ’90s.
While the exact birth of this feud is unclear, we know that Quentin Tarantino had a cameo in Lee’s Girl 6, which came out in 1996. It was around then that Spike voiced his thoughts on Tarantino’s excessive use of the N-word in the 1997 film Jackie Brown. In an interview with Variety, he stated, “I’m not against the word…and I use it, but not excessively. And some people speak that way. But, Quentin is infatuated with that word. What does he want to be made – an honorary black man?”
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Tarantino responded to the note with: “As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. And to say that I can’t do that because I’m white… that is racist.” To which Lee clarified, “I never said that he can not use that word — I’ve used that word in many of my films — but I think something is wrong with him… He says he grew up on Blaxploitation films and that they were his favorite films, but he has to realize that those films do not speak to the… African-American experience. I mean the guy’s just stupid.” – Vice
The filmmakers weren’t done there, though. As Far Out UK recently reminded us, Vice asked Spike Lee for his thoughts on Tarantino’s 2012 movie Django Unchained; he told them he was boycotting it. Lee explained, “I can’t speak on it because I’m not going to see it. I’m not seeing it. All I’m going to say is it would be disrespectful to my ancestors to see that film. I can’t disrespect my ancestors, I can’t do it. I’m not speaking on behalf of anyone but myself”.
Watch the full clip right here
Django Unchained stars Jamie Foxx, Kerry Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio, and frequent Quentin Tarantino collaborator Samuel L. Jackson. The film was billed as an action/western that followed a freed slave attempting to save his wife from a plantation.
Watch the trailer for Django Unchained
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Tarantino didn’t take any of this well. In an interview with Playboy, he claimed, “Spike and I bumped into each other once after all that crap was over, and I was all set to kick his ass.” He elaborated:
“Because he’d been talking all this shit instead of talking to me about it. My biggest problem with Spike was the completely self-serving aspect of his argument. He attacked me to keep his ‘Jesse Jackson of cinema” status. Basically, for a little bit of time, before I came along, you had to get Spike Lee’s benediction and approval if you were white and dealing with black stuff in a movie. Fuck that. This destroyed that, and he’s never had that position again. I wasn’t looking for his approval, and so he was taking me on to keep his status. I hated it because a celebrity feud is one of the most tasteless, trite, trivial things somebody in my position can engage in, to be drawn into something so beneath you. – Playboy via Scrap the Loft.
While we can assume Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino are not brunch buddies, it seems like the bizarre feud has calmed down in recent years. Were you aware of this decades-long beef between the two filmmakers? Or is this a surprising revelation for you? Let us know @DreadCentral.
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