1. When Filmmakers Attack
Everybody knows that actors and writers are constantly abusing each other. After
all, gossip and insults are always flying in Hollywood. What many don't know,
however, is that like actors and musicians, filmmakers also carry around gigantic
egos and don't mind showing it. Directors usually have a good deal to say about
their peers, and their insults can be every bit as entertaining as the movies they
make.
Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs), is no stranger to being under
fire. The content in Tarantino's movies is known to flirt with the line, and at least
three of the film director's peers have thrown insults his way.
French director Jean-Luc Godard (All the Boys Are Called Patrick, In Praise of
Love) openly criticized Tarantino for naming his production company, A Band
Apart, after one of his own films. "Tarantino named his production company after
one of my films," Godard said. "He'd have done better to give me some money."
Harmony Korine wrote the screenplay for Kids, a critically-acclaimed film released
in July 1995. He also had a few negative things to say about Tarantino's films.
"Quentin Tarantino seems to be too concerned with other films. I mean, about
appropriating other movies, like in a blender. I think it's, like, really funny at the
time I'm seeing it, but then, I don't know. There's a void there. Some of the
references are flat, just pop culture," Korine said.
Nick Broomfield (Biggie & Tupac, Ghosts) stated that watching Tarantino's films
was "like watching a schoolboy's fantasy of violence and sex, which normally
Quentin Tarantino would be wanking alone to in his bedroom while this mother is
making his baked beans downstairs," he said. "Only this time, he's got Harvey
Weinstein behind him and it's on a million screens."
Accomplished African American director Spike Lee (Inside Man, Malcolm X) got
vocal about Tarantino's excessive use of the N-word in many of his films. Yes, that
N-word. Considering the circumstances, Lee wasn't as angry as one might expect.
"I'm not against the word," he said, "and I use it, but not excessively." Spike Lee
also asked, rhetorically, if Tarantino was trying to be made an "honorary black
man." What Spike Lee didn't say, however, was that although he may use the word,
he doesn't do so in the same context as Tarantino, whose movies have serious
racial implications.

2. This criticism isn't without validity: Tarantino's films frequently portray characters
who are outwardly racist against African Americans. In many instances, the N-
word is used by many of Tarantino's characters as a general reference to anything
stupid, unorganized or undesirable. The director defended his use of the word by
saying that it was not his responsibility to take the power out of the word.
Tarantino also said that the N-word was true to many of his characters, and he
claimed that not using it would have been a lie. Samuel L. Jackson, a popular
African American actor, stood up for Tarantino, alleging that Tarantino had "lived
a black lifestyle for a while."
Of course, Tarantino is not the only person that Spike Lee has grappled with. "We
got a black president, and we going back to Mantan Moreland and Sleep 'n' Eat?"
Lee said of Tyler Perry, another successful African American director whose
credits include Meet the Browns (2008) and Madea Goes to Jail (2009). Perry had
a somewhat unfriendly reply for Lee:
"Spike can go straight to hell," Perry said. "You can print that. Spike needs to shut
the hell up."
Spike Lee also lashed out at film legend Clint Eastwood, openly criticizing him for
not including African Americans in scripts like Letters From Iwo Jima and Flags
of Our Fathers. Spike Lee called himself a "student of history," and mentioned the
million or so African Americans who contributed to the Ally victory in World War
II. Eastwood suggested that Spike Lee knew nothing about American history. He
noted that the U.S. military was segregated during World War II and pointed out
that the only African American battalion on Iwo Jima was a small munitions
supply unit on the beach. "The story was about the men who raised the flag,"
Eastwood said, "and we can't make them black if they weren't there."
There were some who speculated that by attacking Eastwood, Lee was simply
trying to promote his own movie, Miracle at St. Anna, which was about African
American soldiers in World War II. This doesn't come as much of a surprise to
anyone, since many people have expressed the belief that Spike Lee is racially
motivated. "A guy like him should shut his face," Eastwood said.
Ingmar Bergman, a famous Swedish director, was born in July 1918 and worked as
a filmmaker from 1944-2005. He died on July 30, 2007. During his career,
Bergman insulted an assortment of other famous directors. Eventually, Bergman
suffered an arrest for income tax evasion, the shame of which led him to a nervous
breakdown.

3. "I've never gotten anything out of his movies," Bergman said of Jean-Luc Godard.
"They've felt constructed, faux intellectual and completely dead. [Godard's work
is] cinematographically uninteresting and infinitely boring. Godard is a fu**ing
bore! He's made his films for the critics. One of the movies, Masculin, Feminin,
was shot here in Sweden. It was mind-numbingly boring."
Michelangelo Antonioni (Eclipse, Red Desert) also received an insult from
Bergman. "Fellini, Kurosawa and Bunuel move in the same field as Tarkovsky," he
said. "Antonioni was on his way but expired, suffocated by his own tediousness."
Bergman also criticized Orson Welles and his hit film, Citizen Kane. "For me, he's
just a hoax," Bergman said. "It's empty, uninteresting and dead. Citizen Kane,
which I have a copy of, is all the critics' darling. [It is] always at the top of every
poll taken, but I think it's a total bore. Above all, the performances were worthless.
The amount of respect that movie got is absolutely unbelievable."
Of course, no filmmaker is innocent, and Orson Welles is no exception. Welles
harshly insulted Jean-Luc Godard's intelligence. "His gifts as a director are
enormous," Welles said. "I just can't take him seriously as a thinker, and that's
where we seem to differ, because he does. His message is what he cares about
these days, and, like most movie messages, it could be written on the head of a
pin."
French filmmaker Francois Truffaut (Fahrenheit 451, The Woman Next Door) also
took a shot at Michelangelo Antonioni. "Antonioni is the only important director I
have nothing good to say about. He bores me; he's so solemn and humorless."
Although there are plenty of mouthy filmmakers out there, some are mouthier than
others. Jacques Rivette (Gang of Four, The Nun) is surely one of the worst. He has
openly mocked directors Stanley Kubrick, James Cameron and Steven Spielberg:
"Kubrick is a machine, a mutant, a martian," Rivette said. "He has no human
feeling whatsoever, but it's great when the machine films other machines, as in
2001."
Jacques Rivette even managed to insult two well-known directors, James Cameron
and Steven Spielberg, in a single strike. "James Cameron isn't evil," he said. "He's
not an asshole like Spielberg. He wants to be the new De Mille. Unfortunately, he
can't direct his way out of a paper bag."

4. Vincent Gallo, who wrote and directed Buffalo '66 (1998), The Brown Bunny
(2003) and Promises Written in Water (2010), ruthlessly insulted both Spike Jonze,
the director of Being John Malkovich (1999), Adaptation (2002) and Where the
Wild Things Are (2009), and Martin Scorsese, who is best known for his hit
gangster films like Goodfellas (1990), Casino (1995) and The Departed (2006).
Gallo also cruelly insulted Sofia and Francis Ford Coppola.
"He's the biggest fraud out there," Gallo said of Spike Jonze. "If you bring him to a
party, he's the least interesting person at the party. He's the person who doesn't
know anything; he's the person who doesn't say anything funny, interesting [or]
intelligent. He's a pig piece of shit."
Gallo's comments about Scorsese were not any better: "I wouldn't work for
Scorsese for $10 million. He hasn't made a good film in 25 years. I would never
work for an ego-maniac has-been," he said. Apparently, Gallo doesn't judge the
quality of films or their makers by the awards or recognition they receive; in 2007,
Scorsese received the Academy Award for Best Director, and his film,The
Departed, won the award for Best Picture.
Unlike most directors' criticisms, which mostly pertain to the work of their peers,
Gallo's remarks about Sofia and Francis Ford Coppola were shocking: "Sofia
Coppola likes any guy who has what she wants. If she wants to be a photographer,
she'll f**k a photographer. If she wants to be a filmmaker, she'll f**k a
filmmaker," he said. "She's a parasite just like her fat, pig father was."
Werner Herzog (Ballad of the Little Soldier, Invincible) lashed out at both Jean-
Luc Godard and Abel Ferrara (Ms. 45, King of New York):
"Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is, for me, intellectual counterfeit money when
compared to a good Kung-Fu film," Herzog said. Of Abel Ferrara, he said, "I have
no idea who Abel Ferrara is, but let him fight the windmills. I've never seen a film
by him. I have no idea who he is. Is he Italian? Is he French? Who is he?"
Gallo actually accused Abel Ferrara of doing crack and attempting to steal from
him! "Abel Ferrara was on so much crack when I did The Funeral [that] he was
never on set. He was in my room trying to pick-pocket me."
Steven Spielberg took low blows from both Jean-Luc Godard and Alex Cox (Three
Businessmen, Sleep is for Sissies). When asked about Spielberg, Godard replied, "I
don't know him personally. I don't think his films are very good." Cox said that

5. Steven Spielberg was a confectioner, not a filmmaker.
David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls, George Washington) belittled the work of
Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma). "He kind of created a Special Olympics for film,"
Green said. "They just kind of lowered the standard. I'm sure their parents are
proud; it's just nothing I care to buy a ticket for."
Kevin Smith and Tim Burton (Batman, Sleepy Hollow) also had a heated exchange
of words, which sparked when Smith jokingly accused Burton of ripping off the
ending of Planet of the Apes from one of Smith's comic books. "Anyone who
knows me knows that I would never read a comic book, and I would especially
never read anything created by Kevin Smith," Burton said.
"Which, to me," Smith fired back at Burton, "explains fu**ing Batman." Smith
also made some harsh comments about Paul Thomas Anderson's movie, Magnolia:
"I'll never watch it again, but I will keep it," he said. "I'll keep it right on my desk
as a constant reminder that a bloated sense of self-importance is the most
unattractive quality in a person or their work."
M. Night Shymalan (Unbreakable, The Sixth Sense) took a tongue lashing from
David Cronenberg (The Fly, Eastern Promises). Of Shymalan, Cronenberg said, "I
hate that guy! Next question."
In reference to Sir Richard Attenborough (A Bridge Too Far, In Love and War),
Ken Russell (Dante's Inferno, Prisoner of Honor) said, "Sir Richard 'I'm-going-to-
attack-the-establishment-50-years-after-it's-dead' Attenborough is guilty of
caricature, a sense of righteous self-satisfaction and repetition, which all
undermine the impact of the film."
Michael Bay (Armageddon, Bad Boys) found himself under fire by Uwe Boll
(Alone in the Dark, Rampage). "I'm not a fu**ing retard like Michael Bay," Boll
said.
Insults in Hollywood, like insults anywhere else, range in both seriousness and
severity. Sometimes, they are simply muttered by a director in retaliation for a
prior criticism. Other times, however, the insults are just plain nasty, and they
make fans aware of some of the many rivalries in the film business. These insults
also shed more than a little light on the egotistical attitudes of filmmakers in
general. Behind all the insults, one thing remains clear: When you get people this

6. arrogant and conceited too close to each other, and sometimes even when you
don't, the results will always be entertaining.