Director Quentin Tarantino is under fire for comments he made about director Roman Polanski and the rape of a 13-year-old child in the 1970s.
If you don’t know, Polanski was arrested in 1977 for rape by use of drugs, perversion, sodomy, and lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under 14. Polanski plead “guilty,” but fled the country.
Now, a 2003 Howard Stern interview with Tarantino has resurfaced, and his quotes about the victim are causing controversy.
“She wanted to have it,” Tarantino said.
“He didn’t rape a 13-year-old,” he said. “It was statutory rape. That’s not quite the same thing. … He had sex with a minor, all right. That’s not rape. To me, when you use the word rape, you’re talking about violent, throwing them down.”
“Throwing the word ‘rape’ around is like throwing the word ‘racist’ around. It doesn’t apply to everything that people use it for. He was guilty of having sex with a minor…She wanted to have it and dated the guy,” Quentin continued. “And by the way, we’re talking about America’s morals, we’re not talking about the morals in Europe and everything.”
Howard then interjected, “Wait a minute. If you have sex with a 13-year-old girl and you’re a grown man, you know that that’s wrong.”
Tarantino replied, “Look, she was down with this…She’s talked about it since, ‘No, he didn’t really do anything to me. It was a technicality for being 13.’”
“Would you ever seduce a 13-year-old with pills and booze?” Howard asked the director.
“No, no, no, again you’re killing him with the pills and booze thing,” Tarantino responded. “But the situation was not that she was against all this. She was down to party with Roman.”
You can listen to the interview here.
Tarantino has been in the news this week after Uma Thurman came forward about a stunt the director made her do for Kill Bill where she said she almost died.
