Defiant Tarantino: ‘I Want to Go Further’ with Anti-Police Activism

Quentin Tarantino’s feud with law enforcement is far from over, the director said on Monday.

Tarantino plans to go further with his involvement in anti-police violence activism after he is finished promoting his upcoming film The Hateful Eight, the director said in an interview with The Guardian.

Speaking to the paper about a nationwide law enforcement boycott of his film, Tarantino said the criticism he has faced since calling police officers “murderers” at an October rally in New York has not changed his resolve to take on the issue of police brutality.

“Right now, [promoting The Hateful Eight] is my full-time job,” he told The Guardian. “But when this is over, I want to go further with this.”

During an appearance at a New York City anti-police brutality rally organized by the group RiseUpOctober, the filmmaker told demonstrators, “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.”

He added: “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.”

Tarantino maintains he is not against law enforcement, telling The Guardian, “Just because I was at an anti-police brutality protest doesn’t mean I’m anti-police.”

Of a nationwide police boycott, the director said he was shocked to learn his anti-police comments had drawn so much attention.

“I was actually wrapping,” said Tarantino, “and this stuff is coming out everyday, with the media capitalizing on it. I was like: ‘What the hell is going on?’”

In November, Fraternal Order of Police executive director Jim Pasco told The Hollywood Reporter that his organization has a “surprise” in store for Tarantino and his film.

“Something is in the works, but the element of surprise is the most important element,” Pasco said. “Something could happen anytime between now and [the debut of The Hateful Eight]. And a lot of it is going to be driven by Tarantino, who is nothing if not predictable.”

Pasco clarified his words were not a threat of violence.

Tarantino responded this week to the cryptic message, saying, “People ask me, ‘Are you worried?’ And the answer’s no, I’m not worried, because I do not feel like the police force is this sinister black hand organization that goes out and fucks up individual citizens in a conspiracy sort of way.”

The director told The Guardian that he was surprised by Pasco’s warning:

The fact that they would overreact to such a degree, and single me out to such a degree, and then get so carried away that they literally get out over their skis, and actually, are indulging in theoretical threats of a private citizen, no, I did not expect that at all.

But Tarantino now feels that he’s won the argument:

I actually felt kind of vindicated, at least by the people I wanted to be vindicated about. If they had just said: ‘Ah, Quentin’s an ass, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about, he’s an out-of-touch celebrity, who gives a fuck what he says?’ I mean, that would have been that.

Tarantino added, “By them making such a big deal about it, the subject ended up being in the press and on television – and people had to start making their own minds up about it in a way that wasn’t happening before.”