Tarantino weighs in on Oscars race criticism

ABC
Jan 19, 2016, updated Jan 19, 2016

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For the second year in a row, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has nominated an all-white group of actors.

The move pushed aside films like Concussion and Creed which feature black actors Will Smith and Michael B Jordan in the lead roles.

The nominations were announced last week, sparking a social media uproar, using the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite.

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The Academy drew a strong backlash last year as well, after it selected an all-white group of acting nominees, notably bypassing David Oyelowo who played Martin Luther King Jr in Selma.

Click here for the list of nominations

“My only guess, frankly, is that they take him (Oyelowo) for granted. That would be my only guess,” Tarantino said.

Samuel L. Jackson stars in Tarantino’s latest film — an American Western mystery about eight strangers who escape a blizzard in a stagecoach stopover.

“I actually think dealing with the race relations between white and black in America is one of the things I can offer to the Westerns genre that maybe the other great Western directors didn’t do,” Tarantino said.

“This kind of conversation is something I think I have to offer to the genre.”

He also said it was important to make films that mattered, not to win awards, but recognition was always important.

“If you make a movie this cynical, this bleak, about America and Americans all of a sudden decide they don’t like that message … OK, well that’s not so surprising,” he said.

“I’ve been making movies for a long time … my last couple of movies were hits and it’s not really important that this is a hit.

“It’s important that I make it and it’s important that it plays for years and people see it down the line.”

Tarantino hinted Hateful Eight would not be his last film, saying he could make 11, but “it’s not going to be 13 or 14”.