Pulp Fiction director, frequently criticised for using the N-word in his scripts, says he’s being made out to be a ‘supervillain’

Quentin Tarantino has hit out at “critics in black culture” who have repeatedly taken him to task over the course of his career ahead of the release of his new film, The Hateful Eight.

In a high-profile interview with the novelist and screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis in the New York Times, the Oscar-winning film-maker acknowledged attacks from African American peers over his last film, the race-themed western Django Unchained, but questioned why the colour of his skin should affect the movies he makes.

The Quentin Tarantino race debate isn't black and white Read more

“If you’ve made money being a critic in black culture in the last 20 years you have to deal with me,” said Tarantino. “You must have an opinion of me. You must deal with what I’m saying and deal with the consequences.

“If you sift through the criticism, you’ll see it’s pretty evenly divided between pros and cons,” continued the director, whose bloodthirsty yet darkly comic vision of the antebellum south met with controversy over its depiction of slavery and liberal use of the N-word. “But when the black critics came out with savage think pieces about Django, I couldn’t have cared less. If people don’t like my movies, they don’t like my movies, and if they don’t get it, it doesn’t matter.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The film team review Django Unchained

The Pulp Fiction director has caused controversy throughout his career for using the N-word, and Tarantino questioned why he was singled out for criticism. “The bad taste that was left in my mouth had to do with this: it’s been a long time since the subject of a writer’s skin was mentioned as often as mine. You wouldn’t think the colour of a writer’s skin should have any effect on the words themselves. In a lot of the more ugly pieces, my motives were really brought to bear in the most negative way. It’s like I’m some supervillain coming up with this stuff.”

In the wake of Django Unchained’s release in 2013, director Spike Lee tweeted: “American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.”

However, Tarantino was defended by black film-maker Antoine Fuqua, who said he did not believe Tarantino had “a racist bone in his body”, and Django star Jamie Foxx called Lee’s comments “irresponsible”.

Tarantino also briefly addressed the controversy over the civil rights drama Selma’s omission from the 2015 Oscars, praising Ava DuVernay’s Martin Luther King biopic but suggesting it might have worked better on television. “She did a really good job on Selma, but Selma deserved an Emmy,” he said.

The Hateful Eight trailer is full of snow, spite and typical Tarantino Read more

In other Tarantino news, the film-maker has revealed he cut two different versions of The Hateful Eight, which stars Bruce Dern, Samuel L Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth and Kurt Russell in the story of eight 19th-century travellers trapped in a stagecoach stopover after a blizzard hits Wyoming.

Jennifer Jason Leigh in The Hateful Eight Photograph: Allstar/THE WEINSTEIN COMPANY

The “roadshow” version, released in the US on Christmas Day, utilises Tarantino’s preferred 70mm format. It stretches beyond three hours and features extra scenes that the director feels did not work so well on 35mm. The standard cut will debut two weeks later.

“The roadshow version has an overture and an intermission, and it will be three hours, two minutes,” Tarantino told Variety. “The multiplex version is about six minutes shorter, not counting the intermission time, which is about 12 minutes.”

The Hateful Eight is released on 8 January in the UK, with only a handful of cinemas nationwide expected to screen the 70mm version.