UPDATED 3:00 p.m. ET:Despite the reports, Ennio Morricone has now denied criticizing his close collaborator. The composer gave a statement to the Hollywood Reporterdistancing himself from the comments and praising Quentin Tarantino. Read it in full below.
See the original story below.
During an interview for Playboy's German edition, famed film composer Ennio Morricone attacked the originality of his once-collaborator, award-winning director Quentin Tarantino. Morricone, who scored 2015's The Hateful Eight, said his known reuse of other filmmakers' material doesn't make him a director.
"The man is a cretin. He only steals from others and puts stuff back together again. There’s nothing original about that. That doesn’t make him a director," the 90-year-old composer told the publication. "He is nothing compared with the Hollywood greats, such as John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock or Billy Wilder. They had class. Tarantino simply recooks old dishes."
Morricone also described Tarantino's work ethic as "absolutely chaotic."
"He talks without thinking, he does everything at the last minute. He has no idea," Morricone explained. "He calls up out of the blue and wants a complete score in just a few days. That’s not possible. It makes me so mad. I’m not going to put up with this. And I told him so last time."
This is not the first time Morricone has ragged Tarantino. After his work appeared in 2013's Django Unchained, the Italian composer told at Rome’s LUISS University that he "wouldn’t like to work with him again, on anything,” because Tarantino, "places music in his films without coherence."
Morricone pulled no punches this time, though. He also went on to criticize both the U.S. and the Oscars (he won Best Original Score in 2016 for The Hateful Eight).
"I was in pain from sitting down for so long, on the plane and at the ceremony. If I looked happy, it was because I knew I would soon be getting away from that boring ceremony," Morricone said.