Quentin Tarantino is in the news this week, after Uma Thurman told the New York Times about a car crash she had on the set of Kill Bill (caused because Tarantino wouldn’t let her use a stunt double) and how the director also spit on her in one scene and choked her in another.
Shortly after the Times piece came out, the following 2003 Howard Stern interview resurfaced in which Tarantino defended Roman Polanski for raping a 13-year-old girl back in the 1970s, saying the girl “was down with” it.
The mind reels.
Listen to the whole interview below.
Tarantino: I don’t consider [Polanski] to be a rapist…
Howard Stern: See I don’t understand this. How can you defend… Why is it that Hollywood embraces this mad man, this director who raped a 13-year-old…
Tarantino: “He didn’t rape a 13-year-old. It was statutory rape…he had sex with a minor. That’s not rape. To me, when you use the word rape, you’re talking about violent, throwing them down—it’s like one of the most violent crimes in the world. You can’t throw the word rape around. It’s like throwing the word ‘racist’ around. It doesn’t apply to everything people use it for. He was guilty of having sex with a minor…”
Robin Quivers: That she didn’t want to have!
Tarantino: No, that was not the case AT ALL. She wanted to have it and dated the guy and—
Quivers: She was 13!
Tarantino: And by the way, we’re talking about America’s morals, not talking about the morals in Europe and everything.
Stern: Wait a minute. If you have sex with a 13-year-old girl and you’re a grown man, you know that that’s wrong.
Quivers: …giving her booze and pills…
Tarantino: Look, she was down with this.
Yeah, you know you’re on shaky moral ground when Howard Stern is the voice of reason.
(via Jezebel; Top photo: Pacific Coast News)
