Quentin Tarantino and Bret Easton Ellis Have a Bitch-Fest

Less Than Zero Dark Thirty…

What happens when two notorious provocateurs get together for a chin-wag? Well, when the two in question are noted trash-talking champion Quentin Tarantino and one-time literary wunderkind Bret Easton Ellis, you know that things are going to get deliberately controversial. The New York Times commissioned Ellis to do a sit-down with Tarantino in a glossy Sunday magazine interview that should in no way be read as just another promotional puff-piece for The Hateful Eight. Tarantino and Ellis talked about the state of modern movies, race relations, female directors, and television, in a far-reaching, bitchy conversation.

Tarantino disses Ava DuVernay‘s Selma as a TV movie that just happened to be in movie theaters. ‘‘She did a really good job on Selma but Selma deserved an Emmy.” He is still smarting from the drubbing he took in the press over Django Unchained. “The bad taste that was left in my mouth had to do with this: It’s been a long time since the subject of a writer’s skin was mentioned as often as mine. You wouldn’t think the color of a writer’s skin should have any effect on the words themselves.’’ And five years later, Tarantino is still not over Inglourious Basterds losing the Oscar to The Hurt Locker, even though he sort of praises [read; delivers bitchy, sexist backhanded compliment to] director Kathryn Bigelow.‘‘The Kathryn Bigelow thing — I got it. Look, it was exciting that a woman had made such a good war film, and it was the first movie about the Iraq War that said something. And it wasn’t like I lost to something dreadful. It’s not like E.T losing to Gandhi.’’