Tarantino: No Truth To Kanye’s “Django” Claim

By
Garth Franklin
-
The Weinstein Company

Quentin Tarantino has dismissed rapper Kanye ‘Ye’ West’s claim that Ye came up with the concept of Tarantino’s 2012 smash hit film “Django Unchained”.

Last week came the interview with Piers Morgan in which Ye claims he had pitched a similar idea when initially brainstorming the music video for his song “Gold Digger” featuring Foxx.

Ye released the official music video in 2009, which ended up being just Foxx and Ye dancing with various pin-up models. Tarantino, appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday, was asked by Kimmel about the claims to which he offered a lengthy explanation:

“There’s no truth to the idea that Kanye West came up with the idea of ‘Django’ and then he told that to me, and I go, ‘Hey, wow, that’s a really great idea. Let me take Kanye’s idea and make ‘Django Unchained’ out of it.’ That didn’t happen.

I’d had the idea for ‘Django’ for a while before I ever met Kanye. He wanted to do a giant movie version of ‘The College Dropout’ [Ye’s debut studio album] the way he did the album – so he wanted to get big directors to do different tracks from the album and then release it as this giant movie – not video, nothing as crass as videos, it was movies, movies based on each of the different tracks.

We used it as an excuse to meet each other, and so we met each other we had a really good time. And he did have an idea for a video. I do think it was for the ‘Gold Digger’ video, that he would be a slave. And the whole thing was the slave narrative where he’s a slave, and he’s singing ‘Gold Digger’. And it was very funny. It was a really, really funny idea.

It was meant to be ironic. And it’s like a huge musical. I mean, like no expenses spared with him in this slave rag outfit, doing everything. And then that was also part of the pushback on it. But I wish he had done it. It sounded really cool. Anyway, that’s what he’s referring to.”

This follows Ye making headlines for his racist and anti-Semitic statements earlier this month, and the ensuing global outrage has seen him losing multiple high-profile contracts and endorsements.

Source: Twitter