Academy Award-winning director Quentin Tarantino revealed on a recent podcast that he does not give his mother Connie Zastoupil any financial assistance or buy her any gifts because of an argument the pair had when Tarantino was 12 years old.
“My mom was b****ing at me about [writing screenplays] … and then in the middle of her little tirade, she said, ‘Oh, and by the way, this little writing career’ — with the finger quotes and everything — ‘This little writing career that you’re doing? That s— is over,’” Tarantino recalled, speaking on a recent episode of “The Moment” podcast, hosted by “Billions” co-creator Brian Koppelman.
“I go, ‘Okay, lady, when I become a successful writer, you will never see one penny from my success. There will be no house for you. There’s no vacation for you, no Elvis Cadillac for mommy. You get nothing. Because you said that,'” the director continued.
And Tarantino apparently stuck to his word. The only time he gave his mother any financial assistance was one time when she was in a “jam with the IRS,” the 58-year-old said.
“There are consequences for your words as you deal with your children,” Tarantino asserted. “Remember there are consequences for your sarcastic tone about what’s meaningful to them.”
According to a 2003 article published in The New Yorker, Tarantino, as a child, used to write his mom stories for Mother’s Day wherein Zastoupil would die at the end — a piece of the story he said he felt bad about:
Tarantino as a child was preoccupied with movies, and he was always writing. He wrote a screenplay called “Captain Peachfuzz and the Anchovy Bandit,” and each year for Mother’s Day he would write a little story for and about his mother in which she died at the end (he would assure her that he felt bad about the way things turned out).
“He’d always kill me and tell me how bad he felt about it,” Zastoupil told Entertainment Weekly back in 1994. “It was enough to bring a tear to a mother’s eye.”
Back in June, Tarantino made headlines for pushing back against Hollywood’s preference for virtue signaling over entertainment. He made the remarks after he was hit with liberal backlash for apparently not giving actress Margot Robbie a big enough role in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” The Daily Wire reported:
[HBO host Bill] Maher was among the first to broach the subject of political correctness dominating Hollywood. He asked the famed director of “Reservoir Dogs,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Kill Bill,” and a number of other modern classics about an encounter he had with a reporter at the 2019 Cannes film festival when she complained that actress Margot Robbie’s part in “Once Upon a Time Hollywood” wasn’t big enough. Tarantino replied that he rejected that hypothesis.
“I’ve always really appreciated the way you’ve pushed back when everyone’s tried to stifle you, shut you up, shame you, bully you, corral your artistic license — they tried it with the last one, with ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,’ some bullsh** about Margot Robbie doesn’t have enough lines,” said Maher. “You do what I wish other people would do: instead of apologizing like a little pu*** you say, ‘I don’t agree with your assessment.’ What’s so hard about that?”
The eight-time Oscar winner responded by lamenting how important pushing political agendas has become in the entertainment business these days.
“There has become a thing that’s gone on, especially in this last year, where ideology is more important than art,” Tarantino said.
“Way more. Certainly to the awards,” Maher agreed.
Tarantino went on, “Ideology trumps art. Ideology trumps individual effort. Ideology trumps good. Ideology trumps entertaining,” Tarantino said as the audience applauded.
“There’s two kinds of movies—virtue signalers and super hero movies,” Maher summed matters up. Tarantino agreed and said that he believes Hollywood’s current woke obsession won’t last forever. “Just looking at the ’40s, even though it was wartime, that was also when you had film noir. Even with the Hays Code! You had these dark, dark stories being told.”