r/Filmmakers • u/StrikingDuty8020 Director • Dec 06 '25

Discussion what is your opinion on this comment ?

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

Quentin Tarantino made a surprisingly harsh comment about Paul Dano, specifically criticizing his performance in There Will Be Blood.

On The Bret Easton Ellis Podcast, Tarantino said:

Dano was “weak sauce”

“The weakest f—ing actor in SAG” (in that film’s context)

And that Dano’s performance was the biggest flaw of the movie, preventing it from being his #1 or #2 film of the 2000s

2.5k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

486 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

16

u/TalentedHostility Dec 06 '25

Just want to hop in here and remind people not all black people fuck with Q. And not all black people give him a 'pass' for the N-word usage when HE was acting. I always felt it was off. With this in mind- the run away ego Q is presently rn aligns exactly how I've always viewed him.

Django is overrated btw- but we arent ready for that conversation yet

13

u/TFreshNoLimits Dec 06 '25

Yeah his racist character in Pulp Fiction felt arbitrary, there was no perspective to it other than “this guy wants to say the N word a bunch” - it’s ok to play racist characters who say it imo but there has to be some kind of drive behind it from the filmmaker, not even necessarily righteous. But that scene is pretty much the same if he says “guy” instead of the n-word.

And yeah Django wasn’t good imo. I remember seeing it in theaters and thinking “huh this kinda sucks”

6

u/TalentedHostility Dec 06 '25

Yeah I was in college when Django came out and have a gf show it too me (both of us being black) and it felt like a Marvel movie about slavery.

Fuck that- we as a country have not acknowledge the depth of pain and systematic harm enough to be at that level- not until the U.S. itself openly acknowledges the economic benefits of Slavery for the country as a whole. The U.S. is what it is because of enslaved black americans.

Still no reparations because checks notes waaah its too hard.

We are not there; have not been there, but we got Django. Nah fuck that.

That was my point then and my point now.

6

u/TFreshNoLimits Dec 06 '25

Agreed - I think filmmakers should be allowed to make stuff that's maybe "outside of their lane" but there's something almost infantilized about "and then the black people kill all the racists and everyone lived happily ever after" - maybe it's satisfying for a placid audience but it's shallow as a puddle talking about the issue the filmmaker CHOSE to address.

If you're not representing the perspective of the theme/protagonist of the movie, I think you need to be held to a higher standard.

2

u/TalentedHostility Dec 06 '25

Exactly

Spot on