Quentin Tarantino may be one of the finest filmmakers in the world, but he has built up quite the reputation over the years as a contentious man. He’s nursed grudges against actors, executives, and film critics; he even slapped producer Don Murphy during a run-in at a West Hollywood restaurant. That said, I know lots of people who’ve worked with Tarantino, and every single one would happily work with him again. He can be intense and exacting to an exhausting degree, but at the end of the day he loves making movies and, according to those I know who’ve collaborated with him, he wants everyone on his sets to love the experience as much as he does.
I do, however, think he had a brat period, and I think it switched on and off between his Cannes coronation in 1994 with “Pulp Fiction” and the lead-up to the making of “Kill Bill.” This was when he seemed on the verge of becoming a professional talk show guest. Tarantino was a first-rate provocateur, and, oftentimes, I got the sense his interviewer might be angling for a part in his next movie (because there were a ton of syndicated talk shows back then, and he did just about all of them).
Everyone wanted a piece of Tarantino around this time, and he was happy to carve off a slice if the money was right. Jerry Bruckheimer was especially enamored of his gift for distinctive dialogue; he could see moviegoers were responding to his pop culture-laden banter, and wanted some of that flavor in his blockbuster action movies. While it wasn’t a seamless blending of sensibilities, the writing was plenty sharp. But there was one case on Tony Scott’s “Crimson Tide” where Tarantino indulged his most troubling tendency, and this set off a long feud with star Denzel Washington.
Debating the color of horses on the cusp of World War III
The scene that offended Washington has never been specifically cited, but I’m fairly certain it’s the exchange between Washington’s XO Ron Hunter and Gene Hackman’s CO Frank Ramsey. Scott’s submarine thriller is an A-plus pressure cooker that hinges on an incomplete order that may contradict a previously sent order to launch the vessel’s nuclear missiles. Ramsey wants to fire, Hunter wants to confirm the second order before starting World War III. Hunter and his backers stage a coup, resulting in a standoff that leaves both men waiting for the completed second order on the newly repaired radio.
While waiting, Ramsey, who’s spent the entire movie needling his XO, broaches the subject of Lippizaner stallions, which are renowned as the most highly trained horses in the world. They are also, Ramsey pointedly notes, all white. Hunter acknowledges this is true, but adds that they’re born black.
“Crimson Tide” takes a weird turn here, and I’m still not sure how I feel about the scene. Prior to this moment, I found Ramsey to be a mean-spirited CO, but also, given what we’re told about the character, worthy of respect. The higher ranks of every nation’s military is riddled with a**holes like this. From a distance, it’s almost endearing.
But when you inject a racial component into the film in the last 15 minutes of the movie, you change the complexion of Hackman’s character and, to a small extent, the thrust of the movie. There was good, pragmatic reason to wait on that second order. Did Ramsey insist on the launch because he couldn’t bear to be proven wrong by a Black man? Probably not, but now it’s on the table for no reason other than Tarantino felt like working a variation on Dennis Hopper’s Silcilians monologue from “True Romance” (which I read as a doomed man delivering the most grievous insult imaginable to a mobster he 100% knows is a racist).
And, hey, maybe Scott, who directed “True Romance” requested this? I have no clue. I just know that I don’t dig the scene, and for a good long while neither did Washington.
Letting old Lippizaners lie
People tend to mellow with age. What felt like an invocation of code duello when you were 25 might feel shrug-worthy when your biggest concern is hitting the early bird discount at Perkins.
This was apparently the case with Washington and his issue with Tarantino. When he revealed to an interviewer at GQ in 2012 that his daughter was working on “Django Unchained,” the reporter expressed surprise. What about all that tsuris that went down on the set of “Crimson Tide?” According to Washington:
“Isn’t that interesting how life goes? But I buried that hatchet. I sought him out 10 years ago. I told him, ‘Look, I apologize.’ You’ve just gotta let that go. You gonna walk around with that the rest of your life? He seemed relieved. And then here we are 10 years later, and my daughter’s working with him. Life is something.”
Washington is right. I still question Tarantino’s instincts here (assuming this was the scene in question, which it has to be unless another racially charged exchange got cut from the movie), but his job as a writer was to subtly raise the emotional stakes while two men quietly wait on an order, and any major revelation — like Ramsey disclosing that he went to Auburn — would’ve completely thrown the film off kilter. The scene bothers me, but mostly because I expect better from Tarantino.
