Tarantino speaking about the police controversy with Bill Maher in November. Thumbnail image via Flickr user Sir Mildred Pierce
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The New York Police Department recently launched a sort of rhetorical vendetta against Quentin Tarantino after the director spoke out against police brutality during a rally in Manhattan.
Now the fine folks over at the New York Post have joined in.
The NYPD initially called for a Tarantino movie boycott after the filmmaker (sort of) called cops who kill unarmed people of color “murderers,” and then the largest police union in the country followed up with some vague threats about how they had a “surprise” in store for him.
Enter the Post, which, as usual, is pretty blatantly on the side of the police. The paper published a story on Sunday alleging that Tarantino has been lying for years about doing jail time in his 20s to look like a “tough guy.”
The director has long discussed a week-long stint in lock-up for unpaid tickets stemming from minor traffic violations, and his accounts have varied a bit over the years. But the Post claims the whole tale—which is allegedly “key to his creation myth”—to be a complete fabrication.
The tabloid cited the LA County Sheriff’s Department, which couldn’t find any “evidence that Mr. Tarantino was ever incarcerated” in their jail system. Of course, “no evidence” doesn’t necessarily mean Tarantino was full of shit—he’s yet to comment on the Post story. But hey, at least the paper got a good pun in, calling the director’s jail story “Pulp Fiction.” Zing!
