Quentin Tarantino explains his alleged foot fetish
One thing that Quentin Tarantino has never been able to escape from is the discussion surrounding his alleged foot fetish. Several of Tarantino’s movies see the director capture the ugly beauty of most people’s least favourite body part, although more often than not in the realm of Tarantino, the particular foot is found on the end of a woman’s leg.
Perhaps the most iconic of Tarantino’s “foot shots” is at the beginning of Kill Bill Vol. 1, where he captures Uma Thurman’s foot while her character, The Bride, tries to regain control of her body. Then we also see The Bride’s foot squish Elle Driver’s eye in Vol. 2. Yet there is also a scene in Pulp Fiction in which Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega discuss the intricacies of a foot massage, amongst several other feet scenes across the Tarantino catalogue.
Tarantino responded to his supposed foot fetish with defiance during an interview with GQ. “I don’t take it seriously,” he said. “There’s a lot of feet in a lot of good directors’ movies. That’s just good direction. Like, before me, the person foot fetishism was defined by was Luis Buñuel, another film director. And Hitchcock was accused of it and Sofia Coppola has been accused of it.”
In one of the most memorable (of many) scenes in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Margaret Qualley plays a member of the Manson family who puts her dirty feet up on the dashboard of Cliff Booth’s prized car. Interestingly, Qualley has initially been sceptical about having Tarantino shoot her feet.
She told IndieWire: “I genuinely was like, ‘Quentin, this is a bad idea. I don’t have good feet. I was in pointe shoes for far too long to have toes that can be shown to the world. We had a big debate about it, me, Quentin, and Brad, with them trying to be like, ‘You’re fine,’ and me being like, ‘No, guys, really, look, these are not good.'”
These comments show that Tarantino isn’t necessarily bothered by portraying “good feet” on screen, but rather just feet at all. Perhaps there is even the sense of “the worse, the better”. Eventually, Qualley, of course, performed the scene, and it seemed to give her a newfound confidence with her feet. “I used to actually be pretty mortified with my feet,” she added. “Maybe I can finally just give up that now.”
When Brad Pitt picked up a supporting actor award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2020, he cheekily paid his respect to Tarantino’s “fetish”. Pitt said: “I want to thank my costars, Leo, Margot Robbie, Margot Robbie’s feet, Margaret Qualley’s feet, Dakota Fanning’s feet,” he said. “Seriously, Quentin has separated more women from their shoes than the TSA.”
Never Miss A Take
The Far Out Quentin Tarantino Newsletter
All the latest Quentin Tarantino content from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.