beefs

Training Day Director Calls Out Spike Lee for Publicly Trashing Django Unchained

Christoph Waltz, left, and Jamie Foxx star in Columbia Pictures'
Christoph Waltz and Jamie Foxx in Django Unchained. Photo: Andrew Cooper

Django Unchained may be one of Quentin Tarantino’s highest-grossing openers ever, but it’s certainly not without its critics. Last week, Spike Lee suggested that the gory revenge fantasy was insulting to black Americans by tweeting, “American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western.It Was A Holocaust.My Ancestors Are Slaves.Stolen From Africa.I Will Honor Them.†Now, Training Day director Antoine Fuqua has come to Tarantino’s defense by calling out Lee for taking his objections public. “If you disagree with the way a colleague did something,†he said at the Capri Film Festival today, “call him up, invite him out for a coffee, talk about it. But don’t do it publicly.†As for whether he found Django Unchained’s take on sensitive racial issues offensive, Fuqua said, “I don’t think Quentin Tarantino has a racist bone in his body. Besides, I’m good friends with [Django star] Jamie Foxx and he wouldn’t have anything to do with a film that had anything racist to it.†As for Tarantino, he has yet to respond publicly to Lee, though he did recently tell Harvard literary critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. that he absolutely despises early Western directors like John Ford, who killed off “faceless Indians […] like zombies.â€

Directors Duke It Out Over Django Unchained