Ennio Morricone Calls Quentin Tarantino a ‘Cretin’ Whose Movies Are ‘Trash’

“The man is a cretin,” Morricone said. “He just steals from others and puts it together again. There is nothing original about that. And he is not a director either. So not comparable to real Hollywood greats like John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock or Billy Wilder. They were great. Tarantino is just cooking up old stuff.” He goes on to admit he isn’t a fan of Tarantino’s films, calling them “trash”; Tarantino was present when Morricone received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in February 2016.

Part of the problem stems from their working relationship: “He calls out of nowhere and then wants to have a finished film score within days, which is impossible. Which makes me crazy!” Morricone said. “Because that’s just not possible. And I do not go there anymore. I told him that last time. But next time I will be tough. Then he can kiss me.”

Every word he said is true.

Go, Signor Morricone!

The Maestro is correctamundo. Tarantino is a rip-off artist and unoriginal. Decent writer but a lazy lazy lazy director.

Truer words have never been spoken.

I love a good catfight.

He's right

It was his 90th birthday yesterday.

I guess when you get to be a certain age, you stop giving a shit.

Agreed

How can anyone argue with the man who wrote this:

So refreshing.

Imagine sitting in Piazza San Marco and listening to this:

Overall, they are trash, with maybe one or two exceptions. And those are...meh.

R15 He was an original.

Look, I think this was a bitch move on his part. Tarantino went on and on about his dream since he was a teen was to someday have EM compose a score for his films. He said that EM was his favorite all time composer even over the classic maestros.

Unless Tarantino failed to pay him the agreed amount or something similar, he should have smiled and felt flattered that a relevant director was singing his praises. FWIW I hated the movie, but Jackie Brown is my all time favorite, so I am a little biased.

Inglorious Basterds is absolute trash

Yes he basically won Oscar because Tarantino campaigned for him

Apart from Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction, Tarrantino's movies are indeed trash.

[quote] “And I do not go there anymore. I told him that last time. But next time I will be tough. Then he can kiss me.”

Good luck on being called again. He may be a great composer, but it took scoring a Tarantino film to win one. I don't personally like his movies all that much, but I can't imagine why he would go to the effort to be that nasty.

On top of which, if Tarantino is a cretin and his movies are trash, doesn't that make Morricone some sort of whore or at least a sellout for agreeing to score it - clearly, only for the money?

R22 He couldn’t really tell it was trash until he seen the finished product

[quote][R22] He couldn’t really tell it was trash until he seen the finished product

He was referring to Tarantino's entire body of work as trash, including the specific movie. He took the job with that opinion of Tarantino's directing ability.

His movies are unwatchable except by idiots.

I only like Kill Bill. Couldn’t bear to watch Pulp Fiction anymore.

Did he lie? Tarantino hasn’t made a decent movie since Jackie Brown. The rest of his films are simple exploitation movies with sophomoric humor and non-linear narrative structures that owe more to crime novels from Elmore Leonard than the French New Wave that he often steals his other techniques from.

Hollywood thinks of him as a genius, but there really aren’t that many smart writer-directors in Hollywood anymore—or at least those who are well-read in literature like the old school writer-directors like Orson Welles, John Huston, Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, Joseph Mankiewicz. Tarantino is someone who consumed too much trash cinema, pulp novels, kungfu flicks, comic books and Saturday morning cartoons to create movies beyond that framework.

Tarantino is overrated for sure. His movies are mediocre at best.

Exactly r27.

I couldn't get through Kill Bill. All that girl-on-girl violence is a splattered misogyny parade. He's diseased.

This is not news.

Ennio Morricone soured on film after he scored Mrs Patrick Campbell's epic masterpiece "Daddy's Big Dump."

He says it's all lies. LIES!

"It has come to my attention that Playboy Germany has come out with an article in which I have stated extremely negative comments about Tarantino and his films, and the Academy," a rep for the composer said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

Morricone added, "I have never expressed any negative statements about the Academy, Quentin, or his films — and certainly do not consider his films garbage. I have given a mandate to my lawyer in Italy to take civil and penal action."

It's like that strange dust up about a in-flight magazine with a fake interview with Drew Barrymore.

Something about the story is off. No one has heard a peep out of Morricone in 60 years. He completely avoids the limelight. Either the story is fake or something really serious went down.

I think he's lying. He made those statements and Tarantino's people probably pounced on him quickly to retract them.

I agree with R34

R12 That soprano is a beautiful woman.

Jackie Brown is a fine film. KB1&2 sort of pop cultural diversions (with some clever nods to other cult films).

Over time, I lost interest in seeing Inglorious Bastards and his other recent films, probably because it feels cheap and formulaic “oooh, slaughter the bad guys”. Maybe I’m being reductive.

"The Hateful Eight" is Tarantino's worst film.

Nah, R37, that would be "Death Proof" followed by "The Hateful Eight."

I thought "Death Proof" was entertaining. If nothing, the stunts were cool.

The dialogue passages in "Death Proof" was ridiculous and exposed the fact that Tarantino doesn't know how women really speak in conversations among themselves. It came off as bad imitation of Tarantino's 90s films rather than a film where he grew as a writer-director. I wasn't all that upset that a large number of female characters were killed; most of them were extremely annoying.

Trantino is an amateur who regurgitates the rubbish of American Trash culture.

word is the manson movie is pure shit

I doubt Morricone said anything detrimental. That would be completely unprofessional, something a lifetime in film would have taught him above all else.

His movies are good.

That's the brilliance of Tarantino, using original musical works and compiling them together to make a fluid story/soundtrack of a new story. Nobody does this better than Tarantino....it's an art!

Spy magazine called him "Cretin Tarantino" DECADES ago.

[QUOTE]I think he's lying. He made those statements and Tarantino's people probably pounced on him quickly to retract them.

Find another instance where Ennio spoken such inflammatory statements.

Tarantino's an ass but I doubt he's anywhere near the top ten worst directors to work with. His influences are lowbrow and he's been coasting for a while, but he's made some great movies. I can't imagine he of all people provoked such a reaction from Morricone, who's had such a long career and worked with his share of hacks and asshole.

He should have won for this imo:

Who else is out there complaining about how terrible it is to work with Tarantino?

And if he’s so bad then why does he have the same core group of actors who have been working with him for decades?

R50 Stockholm syndrome?!

R50 What actors?

Ennio is totally right, if he actually said it. Like his contemporaries, Wes Anderson and that fuckface who later did Magnolia, their first films were the best films they ever made. The rest has been diminishing returns for all involved

Spot on. Bravo.

So what's going to come out now that we know Ennio Morricone did not even give an interview to Playboy, let alone say all this stuff? Unfortunately the court case that he's pursuing probably won't get a whole lot of media attention here in the United States, because I'd love to find out what happened. Did they just make it up out of whole cloth or did someone pretend to be him?

Years ago on Howard Stern Vincent Gallo called Tarantino an unoriginal burned out collage-artist filmmaker who smokes weed all day and all night.

I have only paid to see one of Tarantino's films (I was forced to go on a date). It was that one which was subsidised by the German Tourist Board.

He breaks the cardinal rule of film-making — don't bore the audience.

The second rule is that film is NOT a photographed stage-play.

R27 try days moping on couch watching Mtv pop up videos!

About fucking time.

I don't care what anybody says, I loved The Grand Budapest Hotel.

I want Tilda Swinton to be my imaginary ancestor. A European aristocrat who chucked it all after 150 years in order to start a Bowie cover band. And not just the Life on Mars stuff. They do all the tracks up to and including the Scary Monsters album and a sweet glockenspiel version of "I'm Afraid of Americans."

I like Nino Rota

accurate

It's taken 26 years but finally a man who gives no fucks told the truth about the emperor's clothes.

R49 Didn’t Uma Thurman get injured in a vehicle on the set of Kill Bill2 and accuse Tarantino of stonewalling her when she wanted footage of the injury occurring? I thought I saw a long article in The NY Times about that.

Magnificent clips r12.

Maybe EM is saying something true but it's vulgar to trash the art of the artist who helped you win an Oscar. If Tarantino is an asshole or a deadbeat, OK, say that.

Publisher stands by content of Morricone interview:

I’m waiting for TMZ to shove a mic in Tarantino’s face, ask about Ennio’s comments, and for Tarantino to then take a swing at the reporter.

LOL read the comments hysterical stuff

Morricone says he never gave the interview, but the magazine says he did?

What the hell is even going on?

[quote] word is the manson movie is pure shit

They just finished filming and maybe still filming some things, you can't possibly know that at this point. You clearly don't know how films are made.

[quote] Morricone says he never gave the interview, but the magazine says he did?

Often it is a freelance reporter who gets an interview and then sells it to a media venue like Playboy. So IF there actually was an interview maybe EM didn't know where it would be published.

I hope we're not talking about some off hand remarks EM made thinking they were private. Is there a recording of the alleged interview? Was it over the phone?

So many questions for a "who cares" topic.

That's from the mouth of an expert, R55.

Has Quentin responded?

Does he need to?

Quentin told the story with PTA and some other geek on a youtube special a few years ago for hateful 8 they were all sitting in quentin's home movie theater ... he said he went to Morricone's gorgeous palazzo in Rome and talked to him about doing a score and Morricone said he couldn't do a song in a day or something so the story that Morricone's quoted is totally true.

Whether he then slandered QT is another matter altogether.

Playboy in Germany has admitted Oscar-winning film composer Ennio Morricone was misquoted in an controversial interview the magazine published in its latest issue.

Playboy initially defended the interview but on Tuesday, the magazine's Editor-in-Chief Florian Boitin acknowledged some of the quotes attributed to Morricone were false.

“Up to now, we have considered the freelancer who conducted the Ennio Morricone interview on our behalf to be a renowned print and radio journalist,” Boitin said in a statement. “In the past, we have had no reason to doubt his journalistic integrity and skills. Based on the information now at our disposal, we must unfortunately assume that the words spoken in the interview have, in part, been reproduced incorrectly. We would like to express our regret should Mr. Morricone have been portrayed in a false light. We are working to clarify this matter and are exploring legal measures.“

German Playboy and the writer thought they could stare down Morricone, but it could only end one way.

That freelancer fucked himself but good with this stunt.

Anyone can just report anything and screechers will use their need to be hateful to justify falling for it...

Calling someone "un cretino" in Italy is a huuuuge insult. Only thing worse that isnt an actual profanity, is "mongoloide".

Woof. Ennio is savage.

Except he never said it

Kill Bill is one of the Top 5 movies of all time

Morricone obviously loves Tarantino. Those are fondly pissed off remarks. Sure he's not a Billy Wilder but he knows QT is a real filmmaker. Or he wouldn't work for this brash young man.

So what's the final verdict?

He said it, he didn't say it?

Either the interviewer has an audio tape or he doesn't.

This was supposed to Tarantino's year, but 1917 and Parasite keep getting in the way. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. He should be in career jail, not winning awards.

Is R59 lost? Not sure what "Grand Budapest Hotel" has to do with either Tarantino or Morricone.

Morricone has written some of the most beautiful soundtracks: Once Upon a Time in America, The Missionary. But surprisingly my favorite is for a cheesy movie that came out shortly after Jaws called ORCA with Richard Harris. It was an awful movie but the music kept you in the theatre. He's brilliant.

"A cretin whose movies are trash." If that isn't a spot on description of Quentin Tarantino I don't know what is. And the man should know, having worked with the cretin.

[quote]Years ago on Howard Stern Vincent Gallo called Tarantino an unoriginal burned out collage-artist filmmaker who smokes weed all day and all night.

Wow, this from Vincent Gallo, a total NOBODY whose single known film is the hardly-seen "Brown Bunny" (if I recall) which features the auteur himself receiving an on-camera blowjob! Yeah, Gallo is practically Vincente Minnelli!

I'm surprised Vincent Gallo wasn't honored along Rush Limbaugh. per Wikipedia:

[quote] Gallo is a supporter of the Republican Party, and has been seen at a New York fashion show with George W. Bush's daughters Barbara and Jenna.[20] He has stated that his fantasy is "becoming more like the stereotype of the Republican Party."[21] He also wishes to look "more like [American conservative journalist] George Will."[21] In his own words, Gallo "considered himself a radical, always, but an extremely conservative radical."[22]

[quote] Gallo is a supporter of current president Donald Trump, stating in an open letter: "I like Donald Trump a lot and am extremely proud he is the American President. And I’m sorry if that offends you."[25]

Ennio is a truthsayer.

Was this the basis for all of the digs against spaghetti westerns in "Once upon a time in Hollywood"?

he (Tarantino) was on Graham Norton years ago bragging about mounting Uma Thurman and full on choking her because he wanted to really see how her face would react for the scene or some crap, I think everyone laughed more in disbelief at the time, don't trust the man, and Morricone was correct about his movies, he's never had any real life experiences himself, he can only steal from people who have.

I have never watched a whole movie of his. Just can’t sit through them. My husband raved about the last one, but I’m sure it’s because it had 1960s bubble gum music in it

I like Ecstasy of Gold, which is used in this scene of Eli Wallace running around like a rodent in a graveyard. Unfortunately the music is now being used in beer commercials & other ads, which kind of cheapens it,