A continuation of the original Harvey W thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=838090&page=7
Says that Weinstein abused her, but just as/even more damning, shares how Tarantino forced her, after she pushed back hard, to drive a bad car which crashed, leaving her with lasting issues.
What a fucked thing to do. Let’s hear what Tarantino has to say about this…
From the information I’ve read, it wasn’t so much Tarantino forcing her as it was him misunderstanding her pushback as something other than final. I would place that incident in an Ansari-like category–pushiness plus obvliviousness plus a complete misunderstanding of what subordinates-and-or-womens’ pushback really means.
Even assuming the best on Tarantino’s part, it shouldn’t take a woman screaming no at the top of her lungs for her refusal to be accepted. This wasn’t her pushing back about wanting to wear a blue outfit instead of a red one, it was for doing a stunt in a movie. She’s a very physically talented actress but she’s not a stuntwoman, her concerns should have been listened to better, just as anyone’s safety concerns should be listened to.
But even giving him the benefit of the doubt, and thinking maybe he misunderstood her pushback, and didn’t realize how unsafe the car or the road or the stunt was, and maybe he was told by safety and stunt coordinators on set that everything was cool, it still doesn’t look good that he wouldn’t let her see the footage. If he thought the stunt would be safe enough for her, then he should have been okay with the footage getting to her and seeing what went wrong. But I’m assuming that everything wasn’t totally fine, and he knew that things weren’t completely safe, but he just didn’t care enough about her safety.
It’s not 100% on him, I would have thought/hoped that there would be safety or stunt people who could be more forceful on saying what’s acceptable, and also Miramax was definitely pushing to keep the footage buried, but if he was truly a good guy and friend to Thurman he could have done a lot of things differently.
I fully expected the complaint about Tarantino to be about forcing his foot fetish into every movie, this is actually worse that i thought.
The video was horrifying. I can’t believe she was forced to do that.
NM
Tarantino seems to care more about his movies than about his cast and crew. Eli Roth saidsome of them were almost burned to death on the set of Inglorious Basterds.
Tarantino is probably an asshole since Hollywood is full of stories of asshole directors who drown, burn, freeze or set wild tigers upon their actors for that perfect reaction shot. I can’t say I feel shocked or disappointed since I already assumed he was a dick. He didn’t seem to have it out especially for Thurman and it doesn’t seem to reflect on “women in Hollywood” like Weinstein but rather on Tarantino being ego-driven and sure that “shut up, it’s fine, this is the way we need to do it”.
Yeah, I’m not quite sure why this gets combined with the Weinstein cases. There have been other instances of actors who’ve been hurt, even killed, while making movies. It’s freaky, but it happens. It’s possible for a director to be an asshole without being a sexist asshole.
I read the article yesterday. If I remember it correctly, Ms. Thurman’s complaint was that the car and road were unsafe, not that she was lacking in skill. If that’s true, then whoever had been in the car would have had the same accident. Would it somehow be more acceptable if Tarantino had had a stuntwoman driving the car, and she’d been injured instead of the actress?
The story about the car doesn’t make sense. Imho
It’s my understanding movie prop cars are kept in very good mechanical condition. Time is money on a set. You can’t have a junker car that doesn’t start or has safety issues. OSHA would have a fit.
The script may say the characters are in a rusted, hunk of bolts. But, underneath that prop body is a very well maintained engine and brake system.
Tarantino’s treatment of actors is totally separate from sexual harassment that #MeToo is exposing.
Safety is relative. An activity can not be either safe or unsafe, instead it has a level of safety that may or may not be appropriate for the situation. Thurman presumably has average driving skills and is quite comfortable driving down a dirt road with caution. A stunt driver has exceptional driving skills and would be comfortable driving in a much wider range of situations. It is not unreasonable for it to be considered unsafe for Uma Thurman to attempt the stunt but acceptably safe for a stunt driver.
might have been just me but the writer made it sound like she was saying Weinstein had the car messed with as payback , and that’s why no one would give her the video…
Two things, I think. One, Tarantino was the director most directly tied with Weinstein - they apparently had a somewhat symbiotic relationship. Two, Tarantino has admitted to being aware of some of Weinstein’s behavior and having blown it off as mostly harmless peccadilloes - something he claims to be ashamed of today. Tarantino doesn’t seem to be a harasser himself, but by his own admission he passively abetted Weinstein by continuing to work with him when he should have known better.
So Tarantino acting poorly towards an actress( his “muse”, no less )who also had suffered abuse from Weinstein at the same time sort of gets caught up in the spiral.
I agree, but the article seemed to sidestep that point. A trained driver and stunt coordinator could have evaluated the risks, taken appropriate precautions, and probably had the skill to complete the drive as planned. Ultimately, maybe it doesn’t matter whether Tarantino put Thurman in an unsafe car, or a safe car that was beyond her capabilities.
In addition to differences in driving skill, I’d expect a stuntperson to be better able to take hits without getting injured. For example, someone without stunt training might tense up in a dangerous situation in a way that would make injury more likely whereas a stuntperson might have the knowledge, experience and self-control under stress to relax and position themselves in the safest way.
Stunt people have chosen a career that’s all about taking on that kind of risk.
From a managerial PoV, a stuntperson getting injured is far less worse than your main star getting injured.
I knew Tarantino was a sicko when I saw “Pulp Fiction” in the theater. Not an experience I ever want to repeat, that’s for sure.
And I’m a big John Waters fan. :o
He made her drive at 40mph on that piece of shit dirt road so her hair would blow back the right way? Fucker.
I’m on record in the Hateful Eight thread that I believe QT enjoys humiliating his actors, and perhaps even to the point of risk of injuring them. And somehow he has the interpersonal skills to convince them that it’s a good thing.
Once you’ve shown the ability to make people appear in the top performances of their career, it’s not difficult to get them to go along even if you give off creepy vibes like Tarantino. I’ve thought of him as a personification of the Id.
In which movies would you say were the earliest examples of this?
I think I mostly agree.
For your question, I’m not sure. I don’t think it was always there, or at least, not always expressed. It’s not something I noticed consciously until H8, and I haven’t seen all his movies.
I never got a “bad vibe” from Pulp Fiction. The vibe I got from it is that QT wished he had been born black.