Quentin Tarantino Shades Ava DuVernay, Says 'Selma' Deserved an Emmy -- Not an Oscar

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Well, this should make for future awkward encounters at the Oscars.

Quentin Tarantino seemingly dissed director Ava DuVernay in his recent New York Times Style Magazine profile. Interviewer and author Bret Easton Ellis brought up Selma and how it was snubbed by the Academy last year, to which Tarantino responded, ‘‘[DuVernay] did a really good job on Selma, but Selma deserved an Emmy.”

The critically acclaimed Martin Luther King, Jr. biopic was actually nominated for Best Picture, but not in any acting categories and DuVernay was passed over for Best Director. Common and John Legend did win an Academy Award for Best Original Song for “Glory.”


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Ellis then proceeds to explain why he thinks Tarantino’s Django Unchained is more “shocking” and “forward-thinking” than Selma, before turning the conversation to Tarantino’s history of controversy when it comes to race in his movies.

‘‘If you sift through the criticism, you’ll see it’s pretty evenly divided between pros and cons. But when the black critics came out with savage think pieces about Django, I couldn’t have cared less,” Tarantino said.

Then, the director tries to turn the tables, explaining, “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 color 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.’’


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The Weinstein Company

Meanwhile, Tarantino is ramping up to release his next movie, The Hateful Eight, and boy, does he want that release to be a spectacle. The western will be released two weeks early in traveling roadshow-style, presented in 70mm, with a running time of over three hours.

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

Speaking of The Hateful Eight, the cast promises there will be blood, guts, and everything else you love about Tarantino movies:

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