Rightwing US commentator Bill O’Reilly warned Quentin Tarantino that he has “ruined his career” after the Oscar-winning film-maker spoke at a protest against police brutality in New York this weekend.
Fox News stalwart O’Reilly criticised Tarantino for appearing at the rally a week after 33-year-old NYPD officer Randolph Holder was fatally shot in the city.
“Last week New York City police officer Randolph Holder [was] shot dead by a long-time drug dealer that a judge refused to incarcerate,” said the commentator. “Tyrone Howard, 28 arrests on his sheet … thus Officer Holder is dead.
“Less than a week after Officer Holder was killed and before his funeral even took place, Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino travelled to New York City to condemn American police officers.”
Speaking on his The O’Reilly Factor show, the conservative commentator, who has been strongly criticised over his coverage of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, highlighted comments by Tarantino about the unarmed 18-year-old black teenager Michael Brown, who was shot by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, last year.
In a subsequent discussion with the University of Baltimore criminology professor Jeffrey Ian Ross, O’Reilly added: “This Tarantino character, I think he destroyed his career, because anybody hearing that’s going to think: ‘You know what? Maybe I’m not going to see his movies’.”
Tarantino also angered New York police with his appearance and comments, with Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch calling for a boycott of the Pulp Fiction director’s films. However, the film-maker has come in for criticism from the right before – notably from O’Reilly, who said 2012’s Django Unchained might encourage sociopaths and psychopaths to commit real-life violence – without suffering at the box office. Tarantino’s blood-spattered, race-themed western was in fact his biggest hit, taking $425m worldwide.
The director’s new film, The Hateful Eight, is released in the US on Christmas Day and in UK cinemas on 8 January. Starring Bruce Dern, Samuel L Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Michael Madsen, Tim Roth and Kurt Russell in the story of eight 19th-century travellers trapped in a stagecoach stopover after a blizzard hits Wyoming, it is tipped to be part of the 2016 Oscars conversation.
