Tarantino shuts down ambitious interviewer

I recently had an argument about this Channel 4 interview in which Tarantino is facing someone who appears clueless and he makes a good point about the fact that the question "do violent movies influence violence in life" has been asked and answered for 20 years and people could google his opinion. I would say that the "link" issue could have been brought out in the pre-interview. It is obviously a sore spot. If this interview is for the UK where they are stricter on violence in films than the States, then an interviewer pushing for a spoon-fed reason WHY there is no link between screen violence and real-world violence is actually counter to the purpose of promoting the movie. If he indulged the interviewer, he could have said that his violence has CONTEXT and the audience can have empathy for certain characters and make judgments of others, whereas video games especially singe-person shooter games and Grand Theft Auto 4 involve only scoring points regardless of a target's humanity. The CT killer and the Aurora killer, as well as the Colmbine kids were known to be "gamers." This doesn't mean a gamer can't be benign either, but the stimulation is different and the discussion of a "link" to real word violence would be valid in that case. Not so much with movies. We want to have a catharsis with a movie like Django, and I think by the end the viewer leaves pacified and amused by the story's closure. He could also have argued that guns CAUSE trouble for characters that have them in his movies and have not until Django solved problems for the gun owner. In Reservoir Dogs, Freddie "Mr. Orange" suffers a stomach wound from a gun and shoots back in reflex despite being an undercover cop and has to live with that collateral damage. The kidnapped uniform cop after all his own suffering is unceremoniously shot by Nice Guy Eddie. The other Dogs confront Mr. Blonde for killing people during the heist. The Mexican stand-off is also a negative portrayal of guns and intransigence and cock-wagging. In Pulp Fiction, a hidden and forgotten character cowers as his friends are killed and then - as the hit men turn to leave - he springs out to shoot them both but his gun solves no problem and inexplicably misses them completely and all he has done is reveal himself and provoke his death. Later, an accidental misfire kills an ally of Travolta causes an entire segment is about the aftermath. In the key Cafe sequence, Jules is unarmed and at the mercy of a twitchy robber and has to reason his way out of the mess verbally. Travolta's character eventually leaves his own gun sitting unguarded on a counter of his target's apartment and the gun is his downfall. Butch ends up under a gun shop in the movie's most harrowing scene, where guns are used only by pure scum and the other weapon Butch uses to free his ENEMY from torture is a sword. So there are a lot of beats about honor and responsibility and Pulp Fiction is no love letter to guns or gun owners. In True Romance, the hero's decision to confront the pimp in his den and try to kill him alerts more danger underworld figures to his existence when he could have just skipped town with his new girlfriend and nothing would have happened, including his father getting shot by an underworld figure. Interesting that in the script for Natural Born Killers the media and penal system are portrayed as just as dangerous as the central characters who are irredeemable and evil and manage to escape at the end. Hard to comment since Tarantino disowned the Oliver Stone rewrites and claims he has never seen the film itself. Kill Bill has its protagonist shot in the head and later after her recovery shot with buckshot, and I don't think The Bride handles a gun. Bill and the little girl BB when we finally get to them "play guns" and play dead for The Bride but her only scene with a gun is during the negotiation with her own contractor to walk away because she is pregnant. Those movies have lots of martial arts and over-the-top jeopardy, but again they are not at all a love letter to guns. Inglourious Basterds is a wild card. It has the usual strong female characters but it does have gun use. I'd say Samm Levine's short and short tempered character is reprimanded for prematurely shooting a Nazi prisoner, and the most focused "Basterd" is the Bear Jew Eric Roth whose weapon of choice is a baseball bat. When he finally shoots Hitler in the face while the Fuhrer is on fire, it is clearly a huge fantasy, but even that I wouldn't count as an ode to guns in general. Everyone wants to kill Hitler. The Nazis are the real threats with guns throughout. Ultimately, by the time of the CT massacre, there would be no line to draw between Tarantino's body of work and that loner killing his parents and innocent kids. If this reporter is indeed Mr. Responsible Journalist and concerned about news and taking this seriously, then he would know the points I have made above. There are plenty of movies from the A-Team on down where people fall like flies and car chases where people are injured in the periphery and violence is in a bubble. Even the silliest of Tarantino's movies are not casual with guns. In Django Unchained with an overseer is shot and his blood mists across the cotton, any reviewer who calls that image gratuitous needs to retire. I obviously side with Tarantino in this interview even though perhaps he should have "acted" more calm -- although I think this is consistent with the way he talks when passionate about something. I say there should have been a pre-interview and the "link between movies and violence" should have been anticipated and vetoed since it has been getting on his nerves. I agree with people who say Tarantino was honest, the interview was agreed upon to promote the film, and the reporter pushed for something more to boost his career. Some claim he is all about superficial trappings and that Roger Avery was the genius behind Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Well, Avery only wrote the radio chatter in Dogs. . . . With all due respect to Avery, I have not seen an annotated version of the scripts or stories to know what he contributed. I did see Killing Zoe, written and directed by Avery and produced by Lawrence Bender. That was a good chance to shine, but not memorable at all. He was also involved with co-writing the Robert Zemeckis version of Beowulf, which I may have at arm's length but I don't know how that script evolved either. For me - all the way through Tarantino's work I see heart and skill. The hip-hoppy imitation or co-option or homage he has copped to all along isn't an issue for me because I was not actually a fan of the films that he reportedly cites. If I saw a moment of Kung Fu it was in passing someone else' TV set. I saw enough to get it but not enough to be addicted. Blacksploitation I am only aware of because documentaries about film discuss it and I did end up seeing Badasss by Mario Van Peebles and then Melvin's original film that led to it. Roots and Amistad pretty much sum up my exposure to and interest in slavery, the former being something I saw as a child when it first aired. Blazing Saddles is pretty much my education in westerns with a black protagonist. I figure I'm seeing it fresh. The other Jango with a silent D who cameos in this film represents something I had no interest in until Tarantino's latest primer on this aspect of grindhouse cinema. Actually my only memory of the word Mandingo comes from a parody segment in Kentucky Fried Movie, directed by John Landis and written by Abrahams, and the Zucker Brothers. When I saw Reservoir Dogs, I only recognized the use of colors as aliases (Mr. Brown) from The Taking of Pelham 1,2,3, and that was given an amusing spin by showing reactions to the names. I like what Tarantino ends up with. Do the girls chit-chat way too much in Death Proof? Yes. But I still found it interesting and it had some genuine scares and later some amusing table-turning. I do wonder if the Dogs are dressed the way they are because of the scene in Blues Brothers where they speak to a landlady and mistakenly call her Mrs. Toronto, and she corrects, "Tarantino." But I had forgotten that bit by the time his name became famous. I think the perspective of the underdog video clerk geek is far more interesting and unpolished and edgy than some of the more academic old farts full of restrictive prejudice about the moral obligations of the artist (which means it is wrong to depict Hitler or slavery unless in a dry and aloof documentary). I think Tarantino has a sure grasp on which buttons are being pushed. Even the scene he is in, where Michael Parks is under-used, which people attack for opening up the locale of the story when it should be narrowing, at least allows Django to purely use his wits and talk his way into a power position which I think is vital to the movie. There are plenty of "original" movies in which we can guess very plot point, and yet in Tarantino movies that are reputed to be derivative anything can happen. his fascination with Pam Grier and The Bride as survivors in their own styles is said to have come from his single-parent mother and her attitude. I'd say that came to the fore in the second half of Death Proof; the first half involved superficial women who ended up being victims and the second group were filmmaking, active and victorious over the villain. Then two strong women were the heart of Inglourious Basterds despite the male screen time. Women are absent from Reservoir Dogs, and lack of that in their psyche leaves everybody dead. Rather than do a domestic drama about making toast, he is using genre to often bring his personal views gradually forward. I think Tarantino makes serious films but it's like Lex Luthor says in Superman: The Movie, "Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story and others can unlock the secrets of the universe from a chewing gum wrapper." So to each his own. In Django, Broomhilda seems to have a smaller role, but she is constantly shown in flashbacks and as daydreams, obviously his guiding light and motivation to move forward. It is kind of sad that during the Golden Globes Tina Fey joked and nailed QT's place in the minds of women when she referred to him as "the star of my worst sexual nightmares." Because even though he is crass and plays up the twitchy egotist with a quick meaningless peace sign as his wave, the movies I feel show that he has compassion for women and respect for them. This is my defense of Q.T. against his detractors who find him only about superficial homage, pop culture and violence without something to say: I say Tarantino (raised by single mother) centers his movies on women. They would be the code key: strong women. Dogs may seem like the exception that proves the rule because the final cut only has one woman, the anonymous shooter of Freddy who herself is collateral damage. But she is the only female element in the zeitgeist of the film and its psyche kills itself. And SHE is prime mover of the central emotional and ethical crisis/wound in Freddy's gut. Looking closely at the female characters in Tarantino flicks will prove this.