The TV icon Quentin Tarantino threatened to beat to death: “I’m going to kill you”
Anyone who’s been following Quentin Tarantino, his career, or his offscreen antics for more than five minutes wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest when he launched an unprompted attack on cinematic “weak sauce” Paul Dano, because he’s been doing it for years.
He also seized the opportunity to shit on Owen Wilson and Matthew Lillard, adding them to his ever-expanding list of actors he can’t stand. While it caused some ripples in the pop culture landscape, it wasn’t the first time the filmmaker’s mouth has created backlash, and it probably won’t be the last.
Nobody wants Hollywood to be populated exclusively by yes-men and media-trained robots who never cause a shred of controversy or conversation with anything they say, but a professional with 30 years of experience still shouldn’t be denigrating people who’ve been working just as long and as hard as they have, not that Tarantino gives a fuck.
His motor-mouthed reputation has been following him around since the early 1990s, when he introduced himself as cinema’s newest wunderkind, one with a voracious appetite for cinema and unfiltered opinions on anything and everyone that surrounded him, for better and worse. However, when he came for David Letterman, that mouth wrote a cheque that he never cashed.
Multiple generations grew up and grew old with Letterman as a fixture on television, with the late-night stalwart kicking off his legendary run in February 1982, when he hosted the first episode of Late Night with David Letterman, and ending it 33 years later when he fronted the finale of Late Show with David Letterman in May 2015.
Not only does he have over 6,000 shows as a host under his belt, but he’s the longest-serving late-night compere in the history of American television, an eight-time Emmy winner and 52-time nominee, and the altar at which his spiritual successors, including Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Kimmel, and Seth Meyers, all worship.
In the mid-1990s, when Tarantino was in a relationship with Mira Sorvino, the Academy Award winner appeared on Letterman’s show, and he innocuously asked her “about how this glorious movie star is dating this little squirrelly guy.” It was a joke, as tends to be the case with any late-night TV series, but the Pulp Fiction writer and director took it personally, calling him up to unleash a tirade.
“He starts screaming at me, ‘I’m going to beat you to death, I’m going to kill you. I’m coming to New York, and I’m going to beat the crap out of you. How can you say that about me?'” Letterman recalled, describing the auteur as “full-blown, clinically goofy.” Naturally, he asked Tarantino, “How do you want to do this? Bat or fists?” He chose the latter, so he could “beat the hell” out of him.
Shockingly, Tarantino did not murder one of American TV’s most popular figures, either with his fists or a bat. It was incredibly awkward when he appeared on the Late Show to promote Inglourious Basterds, though, but they did at least manage to resolve their differences without resorting to violence.
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