Why did Quentin Tarantino choke two actors while on set?
The on-set practices of Quentin Tarantino are well-documented. We know via Brad Pitt that the director does not allow mobile phones to be brought anywhere near his production, and when one of his crew or cast acts up in any capacity, like a man with an iron fist, he lets them know with full force that such actions will not be tolerated.
For instance, it was once revealed, by both Uma Thurman and the director himself, that Tarantino punishes his on-set sleepers with a giant dildo called ‘Big Jerry’. But amazingly, the Kill Bill and Pulp Fiction filmmaker’s on-set exploits do not end just there; they get much further into the realm of the rather disturbing.
The truth is that Tarantino has, on more than one occasion, been known to perform some rather shocking actions on his actors, including allegedly choking them almost to the point of suffocation. Claims were made that Tarantino strangled Diane Kruger in a scene in his 2008 war movie Inglorious Basterds.
Kruger told Parade in 2009: “I get strangled, which was especially weird because you feel it when someone is choking you, so it was an interesting day at the office. The funny part is that Quentin’s hands are in the close-up”. Evidently, Kruger did not feel uncomfortable with the director’s actions, even though others might have.
She added: “Quentin said, ‘He’s not going to do it right; it’ll either be too much or too little. I know exactly what I need, and I think I should just do it’. I have to say it was very strange being strangled by the director”. Perhaps it might not have come as too much of a surprise, though, because Kruger was not the first of Tarantino’s ‘chokes’.
He’d also wrapped his hands around the throat of Uma Thurman during Kill Bill. However, according to Tarantino, the scene had actually been Thurman’s suggestion. Tarantino once told Deadline: “Frankly, I wasn’t sure how we were going to shoot that scene. Wrap a chain around the neck; you’ve got to see choking. I was assuming that when we did it, we would have maybe a pole behind Uma that the chain would be wrapped around so it wouldn’t be seen by the camera, at least for the wide shot.
He continued: “But then it was Uma’s suggestion. To just wrap the thing around her neck and choke her. Not forever, not for a long time. But it’s not going to look right otherwise. I can act all strangle-ey, but if you want my face to get red and the tears to come to my eye, then you kind of need to choke me.”
In that same interview, Tarantino opens up on his questionable practices of repeatedly spitting in the face of Thurman rather than having actor Michael Madsen do it. Of course, it was Kill Bill that threw a spanner in the works of the relationship between Thurman and Tarantino.
However, it appears that, although the choking and the spitting might be perceived as excessive and somewhat sadistic, both Thurman and Kruger have defended the director from any suggestion that he forced them to do something they didn’t want to.
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