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Did composer Ennio Morricone call Quentin Tarantino’s movies “trash” or didn’t he? That is the burning question lighting up the social media sphere after Playboy Germany posted an interview with the legendary film composer in its December 2018 issue. Morricone is quoted as saying, “He [Tarantino] calls out of nowhere and then wants to have a finished film score within days. Which is impossible. Which makes me crazy!”
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Then, Morricone, who ironically won his first and only Oscar for his work on Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, got personal, “The man is a cretin. He just steals from others and puts it together again. There is nothing original about that. And he is not a director either. So not comparable to real Hollywood greats like John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock, or Billy Wilder. They were great. Tarantino is just cooking up old stuff.”
Shortly after the article made the online rounds, Morricone issued a statement vehemently denying the quotes: “This is totally false. I have not given an interview to Playboy Germany and even more, I have never called Tarantino a cretin and certainly do not consider his films garbage. I have given a mandate to my lawyer in Italy to take civil and penal action.”
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Looks like we’ve got a good old-fashioned Mexican standoff on our hands because Playboy Germany came back with a statement of their own after taking down the story for a couple of hours before re-posting it. “We are surprised that composer Ennio Morricone denies giving an interview to German Playboy. In fact, the conversation took place on June 30, 2018, at his estate in Rome.” The publication has since said that some of the composer’s quotes were “reproduced inaccurately.”
Okay, first of all: who reads Playboy for the articles? Seriously though, these quotes seem too detailed to be blamed as “lost in translation,” but then again, Morricone is 90 years old, so maybe he really did forget. Or is this another case of #FakeNews? Tarantino for his part has yet to comment. It will be interesting is to see if Morricone will work on the famed director’s next film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which will be released on July 26, 2019.
