Quentin Tarantino accused Rosanna Arquette of chasing headlines after she denounced his use of the N-word in “Pulp Fiction.”
Tarantino slammed Arquette as having a “lack of class” for sharing her criticism after she “took the money.” Arquette played a small role in “Pulp Fiction” as the wife of Eric Stoltz’s character.
“It’s iconic, a great film on a lot of levels,” Arquette told The Times. “But personally, I am over the use of the N-word — I hate it. I cannot stand that [Tarantino] has been given a hall pass. It’s not art, it’s just racist and creepy.”
Tarantino fired back at Arquette in a letter, according to Variety. Tarantino questioned Arquette’s timing and motives, arguing she benefited from the project before publicly condemning it.
“I hope the publicity you’re getting from 132 different media outlets writing your name and printing your picture was worth disrespecting me and a film I remember quite clearly you were thrilled to be a part of?” he wrote.
“Do you feel this way now? Very possibly,” Tarantino continued. “But after I gave you a job, and you took the money, to trash it for what I suspect is very cynical reasons, shows a decided lack of class, no less honor. There is supposed to be an esprit de corps between artistic colleagues. But it would appear the objective was accomplished.”
However, Arquette also took issue with her earnings in her interview.
“I’m the only person who didn’t get a back end [a share of the takings],” she told The Times. “Everybody made money except me.”
Tarantino’s defense of his movies isn’t new. In 2022, he had brutal advice for people who have criticized his filmmaking.
“You talk about being the conductor and the audience being the orchestra,” Chris Wallace told Tarantino during a conversation for his HBO Max talk series. “So when people say, ‘Well, there’s too much violence in his movies. He uses the N-word too often.’ You say what?”
“You should see [something else],” Tarantino answered. “Then see something else. If you have a problem with my movies, then they aren’t the movies to go see. Apparently I’m not making them for you.”
Samuel L. Jackson and Jamie Foxx, who have both starred in Tarantino’s films, have also defended the prolific director.
“It’s some bulls—,” Jackson once told Esquire about the backlash. “You can’t just tell a writer he can’t talk, write the words, put the words in the mouths of the people from their ethnicities, the way that they use their words. You cannot do that, because then it becomes an untruth; it’s not honest. It’s just not honest.”
Jackson doubled down in the Tarantino documentary “QT8: The First Eight.”
“You take ’12 Years a Slave,’ which is supposedly made by an auteur,” Jackson said. “Steve McQueen is very different than Quentin. When you have a song that says [the N-word] in it 300 times, nobody says s—. So it’s OK for Steve McQueen to use [the N-word] because he’s artistically attacking the system and the way people think and feel, but Quentin is just doing it to just strike the blackboard with his nails. That’s not true. There’s no dishonesty in anything that [Quentin] writes or how people talk, feel or speak [in his movies].”
Foxx, who portrayed Django in “Django Unchained,” said he had no issue with the script.
“I understood the text,” he said, according to Yahoo Entertainment. “The N-word was said 100 times, but I understood the text – that’s the way it was back in that time.”
