Tarantino responds to the 'Kill Bill' crash footage that Uma Thurman posted on Instagram
Quentin Tarantino has addressed Uma Thurman's crash on the set of Kill Bill following her piece in the New York Times and a subsequent Instagram post in which she says she is "proud" of the director.
In an interview with the New York Times, Thurman described being pressured into driving a car which crashed on the set of Kill Bill. She then uploaded the footage of the crash to Instagram, accompanied by a statement about who she finds responsible.
The focus of her statement is not Quentin Tarantino. Although she calls his actions "negligent to the point of criminality," she absolves him of "malicious intent." She also says she is "proud" of Tarantino for giving her the footage in the end (it was originally withheld from her) describing him as "deeply regretful."
Her ire falls instead on Lawrence Bender, E. Bennett Walsh, and Harvey Weinstein -- all of whom were producers on the film. She describes them as "solely responsible." She holds the cover-up to be the more heinous crime, calling it "unforgivable" and saying that it "did have malicious intent."
Tarantino gave an interview to Deadline in response to Thurman's New York Times interview and Instagram post. He said:
“It’s the biggest regret of my life, getting her to do that stunt. I start hearing from the production manager, Bennett Walsh, that Uma is trepidatious about doing the driving shot. None of us ever considered it a stunt. It was just driving. None of us looked at it as a stunt. Maybe we should have, but we didn’t."
He also addresses the fact that the footage was deliberately withheld from Thurman at the time:
"Uma thought I had acquiesced to them not letting her see the footage. I didn’t know any of that was necessarily going on. I knew they weren’t letting her see the footage, but I didn’t know she thought I was part of that. She had just told me they hadn’t let her see the footage."
According to Tarantino, Thurman got in contact earlier this year saying she needed the footage of the crash. The footage was found in a storage facility by Shannon McIntosh (a producer who has worked on multiple Tarantino films).
"I was so happy when we found the crash footage," he says, "because I was going to be able to present it to Uma."
Most significantly perhaps, Tarantino says that Thurman's statement on Instagram allowed her to take direct aim at those she holds responsible, whose names he says were redacted from the New York Times piece.
"Uma in her Instagram today called out the people she felt were the culprits. Harvey, Lawrence [Bender] and Bennett Walsh. Harvey and Lawrence and Ben lawyered up and they seemed to keep themselves from being named in the piece. Their names were actually redacted from the piece. Whenever Uma said Lawrence, The New York Times redacted it out."
Tarantino also addresses details given in the New York Times piece about him spitting in Thurman's face and choking her. He say Thurman consented to have him spit in her face, just as Diane Kruger had agreed to let him choke her in Inglorious Basterds. And he claims the original idea of the choking scene was to have "a pole behind Uma that the chain would be wrapped around so it wouldn’t be seen by the camera, at least for the wide shot," but that Thurman herself suggested actual strangling:
“But then it was Uma’s suggestion. To just wrap the thing around her neck, and choke her. Not forever, not for a long time. But it’s not going to look right. I can act all strangle-ey, but if you want my face to get red and the tears to come to my eye, then you kind of need to choke me.”
Mashable has reached out to CAA, Lawrence Bender, and E. Bennett Walsh. Harvey Weinstein's attorney Ben Brafman has previously stated that Thurman's statements in The New York Times are being "carefully examined and investigated before deciding whether any legal action against her would be appropriate."
Topics Celebrities
