People are still dissecting Quentin Tarantino’s T Magazine interview – I covered it yesterday, which you can see here. Some people are upset about his comments about Kathryn Bigelow, as in… he made it sound like she was the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar because she was just a girl who made a good war movie. I honestly don’t think he meant to throw shade on Bigelow (although he definitely threw shade at screenwriter Mark Boal). Some people are still pissed about QT’s discussion about race and the critical “think pieces” written about Tarantino’s whiteness and whether he should be writing stories like Django Unchained. And still more people are pissed at QT for what he said about Ava DuVernay and her film, Selma. Here is that passage in context from T Magazine, written by Brett Easton Ellis:

We touch on this year’s Oscars and the supposed Oscar snubbing of Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King movie ‘‘Selma,’’ which caused a kind of national sentimental-narrative outrage, compounded by the events in Ferguson, and which branded the Academy voters as old and out-of-it racists — despite the fact that ‘‘12 Years a Slave’’ had won Best Picture the year before. Tarantino shrugs diplomatically: ‘‘She did a really good job on ‘Selma’ but ‘Selma’ deserved an Emmy.’’ ‘‘Django Unchained,’’ with its depictions of antebellum-era institutionalized racism and Mandingo fights and black self-hatred, is a much more shocking and forward-thinking movie than ‘‘Selma,’’ and audiences turned it into the biggest hit of Tarantino’s career. But it was also attacked for, among other things, being written and directed by a white man.

[From T Magazine]

Ellis then transitions to Tarantino’s discussion about black critics, etc. Some thought Tarantino was insulting DuVernay by, like, dismissing Selma as a TV movie, like it was “only” worthy of Emmys, not Oscars. Well, Tarantino heard that criticism and he would like to clarify. He sent a letter/email to IndieWire about what he was trying to say about Selma:

I’m writing you to pass on that the quote from the NY Times piece about “Selma” is wrong. I never saw “Selma.” If you look at the article, it was Bret who was talking about “Selma,” not me. I did say the line “it deserved a Emmy,” but when I said it, it was more like a question.

Which basically meant, “it’s like a TV movie?” Which Bret and myself being from the same TV generation, was not only understood, but there was no slam intended. Both Bret and myself come from the seventies and eighties when there were a lot of historically based TV movies: the King mini-series written by Abby Mann staring Paul Winfield; “Crisis at Central High” with Joanne Woodward. And “Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys.” These were great TV movies. I’d be honored to be placed next to those films. However, I haven’t seen it. Does it look like a seventies TV movie? Yes. Does it play like one, I don’t know, I haven’t seen it.

Q

[From IndieWire]

Do you believe him? He’s saying that he didn’t mean to be dismissive or come across as patronizing toward DuVernay and her film. Did he honestly think Selma was a TV movie? Hm. The thing is – and this is what I said yesterday too – if they had released Selma as a TV movie on HBO, it would have gotten so many Emmys. But I still think he was being dismissive, and his email kind of shows that too – in Tarantino’s mind, the movies about civil rights and serious racial issues belong on TV. As in, if you want to talk about slavery or civil rights in a historical context rather than, say, making slavery into a spaghetti western, you belong on TV and in Tarantino’s mind, TV will also be profoundly “less than” film.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet.