Last week, movie fans were polarized over reports that landmark movie composer Ennio Morricone was insulting Quentin Tarantino to a class of media studies students in Italy. Morricone, whose work can be heard in such iconic films as The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly and Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, had said he would never work with the outrageous auteur again, and had been offered the chance with Django Unchained, but turned it down because he says, "[Tarantino] places music in his films without coherence….you can't do anything with someone like that."
Some of you felt Morricone was out of line with these comments, considering Tarantino is generally praised for his genre-bending use of music. Others decided that with as many decades as he has in the business, it must be Tarantino who is at fault. Well, this hubbub has gotten back to the 84-year-old composer, and he says it's neither. In fact, he claims he was taken out of context. In a statement to EW, he writes:
"What I read about my statements on Quentin Tarantino is a partial writing of my thoughts which has deprived the true meaning of what I said, isolating a part from the rest. In this way my statement sounds shocking, penalizing me and bothering me a lot.I have a great respect for Tarantino, as I have stated several times, I am glad he chooses my music, a sign of artistic brotherhood and I am happy to have met him in Rome recently. In my opinion, the fact that Tarantino chooses different pieces of music from a work in a film makes the pieces not to be always consistent with the entire work.The risk for me, when I compose, is not to be consistent with the film work and my desire is that the director accepts my consistency.Tarantino proposed me to work for Inglourious Basterds, which I consider a masterpiece, but I could only had two months to work since I had to compose the soundtrack for “Baaria” directed by Giuseppe Tornatore and it was not possible.Regarding Django, the thing is that I cannot see too much blood in a movie due to my character, is how I feel and impress me especially with a film that is made very well and where the blood is well shot. But this has nothing to do with my respect for that Tarantino which remains great."
It should be noted, the excerpts we covered last week were translated from Italy's news sources by THR, so it is possible that something got lost between the classroom Q&A to the Italian press to translation.
This statement speaks to every point of his seemingly incendiary claims. He is pleased that Tarantino included "Ancora Qui," in Django Unchained. The pair have different musical styles, so Morricone felt—even though he is a icon in the spaghetti western genre—that he was not fit for Tarantino's vision of Django Unchained. The short two months he had to score Inglourious Basterds was not Tarantino's fault, but rather a limitation of Morricone's own busy schedule. And yes, ultimately, he found Django Unchained too bloody, but that—he insists—is not a criticism of the film, but a reflection of his own personal tastes.
So, it was all a misunderstanding. In fact, the meeting in Rome that Morricone mentioned was actually a special event where Morricone awarded Tarantino a lifetime achievement award. Now we can all go back to liking Morricone's music and Tarantino's movies without feeling torn.
