The lessons of Quentin Tarantino's interview with Terry Gross on NPR? He has a high tolerance for "viscera" and a low tolerance for questions that attempt to connect Sandy Hook and other incidents of actual violence to the kind found in movies. The Django Unchained director became audibly peeved when Gross asked him the question that every reporter feels compelled to ask filmmakers in the wake of the Connecticut shootings. more »
In the wake of the Newtown, Conn. massacre, the national conversation has included no lack of conjecture that the media we consume is to blame for the violence. Most famously, NRA second-in-command Wayne Lapierre's Dec. 21 speech in Washington, D.C. featured a lengthy segment in which he pointed the finger at video games and movies and singled out a number of decades-old films as particularly culpable. Lapierre was roundly mocked for his tone-deaf diatribe, but he was hardly unique. Numerous public figures on the right and left have gone out of their way to make certain we spend more time talking about Quentin Tarantino and Natural Born Killers than about access to assault weapons. more »
