Jamie Foxx recalling Quentin Tarantino shouting at him on the Django Unchained set doesn't go where you'd think
'A thousand times.'
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Your support makes all the difference.In an age of heightened sensitivity, we're used to hearing stories of voices being raised on set and immediately seeing it as a negative. There is, of course, no place for verbal abuse in any workplace, but impassioned criticism and instruction? Absolutely.
Describing what it was like to work with director Quentin Tarantino on Django Unchained, Jamie Foxx told The Howard Stern Show: "He was a tyrant, like: 'Do not fuck my film up.'
"But that's what you want. You want a director who, even if you're going off the cliff, you know that you're going off the fucking cliff."
Tarantino notoriously likes dialogue to be performed exactly as it is in the script, with little room for improvisation.
Stern suggested to Foxx that surely he wanted more freedom.
"Not with this director," he enthused, before offering a pretty sensational Tarantino impression mid-anecdote.
"The first day of rehearsal I'm reading my lines like [says gibberish with a kind of bravado and swagger] and he said 'Cut, can I talk to you for a second?'
"Closes the door: 'Uhhh, what the fuck is that?!' I said, 'What you mean?'
"[He said] 'I knew I was going to have this problem. Listen, all of this shit - you have to be a fucking slave! Okay? He's a slave! He's not cool, he's a fucking slave! He doesn't know how to read, you come in with your fucking Louis bag and your fucking Range Rover and your just 'I'm so fucking... you're not Jim Brown! He's a fucking slave!
"'...And then, and then, he becomes the hero. But lose that shit!' Door swings open, he walks out."
It must have been a pretty intense telling off, but asked if he would work with Tarantino again, Foxx said without a pause:
"A thousand times."
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