In a sad turn of events, Quentin Tarantino, the mastermind behind classics like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, and Inglorious Basterds (among many more) has come forward saying that he knew about Harvey Weinstein.
I knew enough to do more than I did. There was more to it than just the normal rumours, the normal gossip. It wasn’t secondhand. I knew he did a couple of these things.Quentin Tarantino
As more and more allegations of sexual abuses are coming up on Weinstein, it was becoming difficult for Tarantino to keep his thoughts to himself. These, Tarantino says, stems from a deep sense of guilt that he did not do much to put an end to such behaviour. Unfortunately for Tarantino, this guilt stems from the fact that his own former girlfriend, Mira Sorvino, confided in Tarantino about unwanted sexual advances from Weinstein. Tarantino also mentioned that he knew about the settlement Harvey reached with Rose McGowan.
I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard. If I had done the work I should have done then, I would have had to not work with him.Quentin Tarantino
However, Tarantino failed to connect this as a pattern that a lot of women who interacted with Weinstein on the basis of business were subjected to.
What I did was marginalise the incidents. Anything I say now will sound like a crappy excuse.Quentin Tarantino
But it just wasn’t his own girlfriend who spoke about Harvey Weinstein in hushed tones. Tarantino, over the decades, kept hearing of accounts that happened to “a friend’s friend”, rumours about women working at the firm, and did not do much to take these accounts seriously enough. A decision that he now regrets.
I chalked it up to a ’50s-’60s era image of a boss chasing a secretary around the desk. As if that’s OK. That’s the egg on my face right now.Quentin Tarantino
(Source: The New York Times)
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