Quentin Tarantino made nine films with Harvey Weinstein. Looking back, he claims he didn’t get the entire picture of his wrongdoings.
On tour promoting his new book, Cinema Speculation, Tarantino told HBO’s Chris Wallace that he heard stories, but not all of them.
“I’d never heard the stories that later came out at all,” Tarantino told Wallace. “I heard the same stories that everybody had heard. What I wish I had done was talk to Harvey about it and say, ‘Harvey, you can’t do this.’ To tell you the truth, I chalked it up to a ‘Mad Men’-era version of the boss chasing the secretary around the desk. I’m not saying that’s ok. That’s how I heard it … in that category. There was never any talk of rape or anything like that.
“The reason I didn’t [say something to Weinstein] was because that’s a real hard conversation to have,” Tarantino admitted. “I felt it was pathetic. I felt what he was doing was pathetic and I didn’t want to deal with his pathetic-ness.”
Tarantino said he didn’t realize how serious Weinstein’s misconduct was.
“I didn’t think it was, ‘Ok, you do this for me or you’re not going to get this movie.’ I never heard any actresses say anything like that,” Tarantino added. “It was just, you know, ‘Don’t get in the back of a limo with him.’ It was easy to compartmentalize that to some degree. Anyway, I feel bad about … what I feel bad about is I feel bad that I did not have a man-to-man talk with him about it.”
Weinstein is now on trial in Los Angeles for allegedly sexually assaulting four weomen. He is aleady serving a 23-year sentence for rape and sexual assault charges in New York.