Quentin Tarantino is categorical: the claim of Kanye West who felt he had the idea for “Django Unchained” is false. We tell you.
As Variety reports, Quentin Tarantino has dismissed Kanye West’s claim that the director and Jamie Foxx “got the idea” for the concept for their 2012 film, Django Unchained, thanks to him.
According to Kanye West – who legally changed his name to Ye in 2021 – he floated a similar idea at a meeting to brainstorm the concept of a music video for his 2005 song ‘Gold Digger’, which features Jamie Foxx. The official music video, released in 2009, focuses on a montage of Foxx and Ye dancing with several extras.
Appearing on the set of Jimmy Kimmel Live last Thursday, Quentin Tarantino was asked about the subject by the host who asked him: “Kanye West said he came up with the idea for Django Unchained. He said when he was shooting the music video for ‘Gold Digger’ with Jamie Foxx, he pitched it to you as a music video and then you did it. Is there any truth in that?”
Tarantino replies in a joking tone:
There’s no truth to the idea that Kanye West came up with the idea for Django and told it to me and I was like, ‘Hey, wow, that’s a really good idea. Let me take Kanye’s idea and make it Django Unchained. This does not happen.
“I had the idea for Django for a while before I met Kanye. He wanted to make a giant movie version of ‘The College Dropout’ [son premier album studio] as he had done for the album. So he wanted great directors [s’occupent de] different tracks on the album and then release it as this giant movie.”
Imitating the singer, he continues: “No clips, nothing as crude as clips, it was movies, movies based on each of the different tracks.”
The Weinstein Company
But the director doesn’t stop there and explains why the rapper thinks it could have been his idea:Kanye and I used that as an excuse to meet and so we met, we had a great time. And he actually had an idea for a music video, I think it was indeed for the ‘Gold Digger’ video – that he would be a slave. And the whole thing was the slave’s tale [qui] sings ‘Gold Digger’ and it was very funny. It was a really, really funny idea”.
“It was meant to be ironic. And like a huge musical. I mean no expense spared, with him in that tattered slave outfit that did it all. […] I wish he had. It sounded really cool. Anyway, that’s what he’s referring to.”
Quentin Tarantino has therefore decided: the idea does not come from the singer, he had it long before the latter evoked this concept for his video clip which he ultimately did not use. That is what is said.
Django Unchained is to be seen or re-watched in streaming on Netflix. Also find the excerpt from Quentin Tarantino’s interview below: