Uma Thurman Was Injured Filming ‘Kill Bill’ and People Who Missed the Point Are Attacking Quentin Tarantino for It

Quentin Tarantino is one of the greatest directors of all-time. When we look back at the all-time greats of cinema, Tarantino is a name you’ll hear alongside Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa, Woody Allen and Ingmar Bergman. Much like acclaimed author Michael Chabon, Tarantino combines genre films with the cinematic brilliance you’d expect from a Palm d’Or winner at Cannes.

Despite Tarantino’s obvious brilliance, he’s been continually snubbed by the Oscars, where despite winning best screenplay twice, he’s been snubbed for Best Director, in recent history losing to the directors of ultimately forgettable films like The Hurt Locker, Life of Pi and The Revenant when he put out Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight. If you needed more proof that Hollywood awards are political, military propagandist Katherine Bigelow won Best Director and Best Film for The Hurt Locker, while Tarantino was passed over for Inglourious Basterds.

Tarantino has also courted controversy his entire career. At pretty much every turn, Tarantino has been the center of controversy because he pushes whatever boundaries he wants and listens to no one but his own instincts on what he should write. When Spike Lee accused him of being racist for the use of the n-word in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino famously told Charlie Rose, “As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are, all right?” I don’t think a film he’s done before or since has been without controversy, but he’s stuck by those words and has done what he wants, and the result was some of the best movies ever made.

Tarantino’s latest controversy is that Uma Thurman was injured on the set of Kill Bill in a stunt she wanted to use a double for but Tarantino insisted she do it herself. She did, and she crashed the car into a palm tree, which resulted in a concussion and some lasting injuries for the actress.

Tarantino should have just let Zoë Bell do the stunt, the road wasn’t as straight as he thought it was and Thurman was obviously not up for the stunt. I’m sure nerves had as much to do with it as anything. It lead to a strain in the relationship between the two, and is probably why we’re not going to get a Kill Bill sequel.

But wait, if this happened while filming Kill Bill, why is everyone talking about it now? This must have happened 15 years ago. Well, Uma Thurman gave an interview with The New York Times about how she was sexually assaulted by Harvey Weinstein, and how The Weinstein Company kept the film of the incident from her to try to pressure to sign a liability waiver, so of course Hollywood immediately labeled Quentin Tarantino the bad guy.

Thurman doesn’t see Quentin as the bad guy. She describes their falling out as “a horrible mud wrestle with a very angry brother” and uses the incident to highlight the Weinstein Company’s attitude of covering their own collected asses above all else. She made a post on Instagram saying Tarantino has been remorseful about the crash since it happened and that he gave her the tape of the incident “with full knowledge it could cause him personal harm, and I am proud of him for doing the right thing and for his courage.”

She goes on to say “THE COVER UP after the fact is UNFORGIVABLE. for this I hold Lawrence Bender, E. Bennett Walsh, and the notorious Harvey Weinstein solely responsible.” That seems pretty cut and dried. Tarantino made a mistake, but he never should have been allowed to make that mistake by the producers, and they’re ones who covered it up. Of course, this was met on social media by righteous indignation directed at Tarantino, a favorite target of people with barely a fraction of his talent.

Who the f**k is Asia Argento and why do we care what some glorified character actor thinks anyway? And before you run to the comments and say “So why put this tweet in your story if you don’t care?” it’s because it was in The Hollywood Reporter and Business Insider a million other places.

When violence against women is used as a plot device to make the characters stronger then we have a problem. It is not empowering to be beaten and raped, yet so many films make it their 'pheonix' moment for women. We don't need abuse in order to be powerful. We already are.

— Jessica Chastain (@jes_chastain) February 4, 2018

Oh, Jessica Chastain wants to get in on it too. Yes, violence against women is bad. Also, you know movies aren’t real, right, Jes? Didn’t you win a Golden Globe for a movie with the central theme of “torturing prisoners of war is good, actually?” Do you think that before Jessica Chastain goes to bed she secretly prays Donald Trump commits some war crimes so she can get another Golden Globe for glorifying them?

Tarantino also ignored Daryl Hannah’s complaints when she was harassed by Harvey Weinstein.They kicked her off the press tour.Nobody helped her. And now Tarantino is going to make a movie about Polanski. Why is someone financing this? This is why Weinstein wasn’t stopped. $$$$ https://t.co/WlSVFEoVN4

— Judd Apatow 🇺🇦 (@JuddApatow) February 3, 2018

Oh, Judd Apatow. When Spike Lee said Tarantino was racist, Quentin told Howard Stern that Lee would have to “stand on a chair to kiss my ass.” Apatow would turn the chair over and have Amy Schumer or Lena Dunham comment about how the legs look like dicks or something.

Oh yeah, that’s the other “scandal” around Tarantino; his movie about the murder of Sharon Tate will feature Roman Polanski as a character. Obviously, this is just more of old woman-hating Tarantino apologizing for a rapist, I mean, why would Roman Polanski even be a character in a movie about the murder of Sharon Tate? What other movies about a murder have featured the victim’s spouse as a character?

Yes, Roman Polanski was married to Sharon Tate when she was murdered by the Manson Family, so of course he’s going to be in the movie. This one is just stupid. But frankly, people have been waiting with baited breath to finally get Tarantino for his entire career. Every movie he makes is released to some controversy or another. Too Violent. Racist. Tarantino Hates Women. Akin To Holocaust Denial (an actual quote about Inglourious Basterds). If the fact that there’s been a rush to make Quentin Tarantino the villain in a piece about how Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted Uma Thurman doesn’t prove to you that none of this rational, I don’t know what to tell you. Tarantino, for his part, is going to do what he’s always done, and that’s make movies on his own terms.