Tarantino confessed that he 'knew enough to do more than I did.'
Quentin Tarantino admits that he knew about several of the allegations of sexual misconduct against Harvey Weinstein.
In an interview with The New York Times on Thursday, the director, who worked closely with Weinstein for years, revealed that he "knew enough to do more than I did."
"There was more to it than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip. It wasn’t secondhand. I knew he did a couple of these things," he admitted, citing several allegations by well-known actresses. "I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard. If I had done the work I should have done then, I would have had to not work with him."
Tarantino went on to state that he was aware of the allegations his former girlfriend, Mira Sorvino, told The New Yorker about Weinstein, that the producer had massaged her without asking, chased her around a hotel room and even showed up at her apartment in the middle of the night.
“I was shocked and appalled,” Tarantino said of his reaction to Sorvino's accusations. “I couldn’t believe he would do that so openly. I was like: ‘Really? Really?’ But the thing I thought then, at the time, was that he was particularly hung up on Mira.”
“What I did was marginalize the incidents," he added, claiming that he confronted Weinstein after hearing a similar story from an actress friend of his. “Anything I say now will sound like a crappy excuse.”
Tarantino, who said he also knew of the settlement between Weinstein and McGowan (the Charmed star later tweeted that Weinstein had raped her, while Weinstein unequivocally denies allegations of non-consensual sex), reasoned that he “chalked it up to a ’50s-’60s era image of a boss chasing a secretary around the desk. As if that’s O.K. That’s the egg on my face right now.”
“I’m calling on the other guys who knew more to not be scared. Don’t just give out statements. Acknowledge that there was something rotten in Denmark. Vow to do better by our sisters," he said.
Kevin Smith, meanwhile, said in his podcast, Hollywood Babble-On, that he didn't see the side of Weinstein that has become the subject of headlines.
"My entire career is tied up with the man," he said. "It's been a weird, f**king week. I just wanted to make some f**king movies, that's it. That's why I came, that's why I made Clerks. And no f**king movie is worth all this. Like, my entire career, f**k it, take it. It's wrapped up in something really f**king horrible."
"I'm not looking for sympathy. I know it's not my fault, but I didn't f**king help. Because I sat out there talking about this man like he was a hero, like he was my friend, like he was my father and sh*t like that, and he changed my f**king life. And I showed other people, like, ‘You can dream, and you can make stuff, and this man will put it out.' I was singing praises of somebody that I didn't f**king know."
The director also vowed to donate all his future residuals from his Weinstein-produced films to the nonprofit organization Women in Film, and to donate $2,000 per month to the organization for the rest of his life.
"That feels like a start," he said.