Tarantino then referenced an incident that occurred at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where Once Upon a Time in Hollywood received its premiere. When a New York Times journalist asked Tarantino why he gave Robbie’s Tate such little dialogue, Tarantino became agitated, firing back, “I just reject your hypothesis.”
“I had a situation like that where somebody asked me about something, ‘Well, why didn’t you do this like this,’ and I go, ‘Oh, would you have done that?’ ‘Yes, I would have done that…’ OK, but you never would have written that script, and you never would have made the movie, and thus you never would have been at the Cannes Film Festival in the first place, so it’s a moot argument,” explained Tarantino. “But there has become a thing that’s gone on, especially in this last year, where ideology is more important than art. Ideology trumps art. Ideology trumps individual effort. Ideology trumps good. Ideology trumps entertaining.”
Then Maher added, “There are two kinds of movies: virtue-signalers and superhero movies.”
“Yeah,” Tarantino replied.
Look, I love Tarantino’s films, but those clearly aren’t the only two types of movies. And it’s pretty rich that Tarantino is whining about the gentle criticism he received over Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which isn’t even in his top five films, given how he’s artfully dodged answering any tough questions about his relationship with serial rapist Harvey Weinstein—including how he kept making every one of his films with him after he knew he’d assaulted his former girlfriend Mira Sorvino and Rose McGowan—and the time he almost got Uma Thurman killed.