Is Quentin Tarantino's New Movie a #MeToo Nightmare?

Reservoir Dogs director Quentin Tarantino has been the focal point of plenty of accusations of bad behavior toward women, but it's his tendency to make excuses for other men who treat women badly that's in focus on his new project. Tarantino is opening himself to allegations that he's providing a safe haven for abusers, and that doesn't seem wise in today's climate. Read on for the whole story.

Via the Daily Beast.

On the night of January 25, 2015, Emile Hirsch settled into a VIP booth at Tao, a pop-up nightclub situated at the base of Main Street in the mountains of Park City, Utah. Several hours—and drinks—later, eyewitnesses say that two people had to physically pull the 29-year-old actor off of a female film executive whom he’d choked unconscious.

The occasion, as it were, was the Sundance Film Festival, an annual showcase of the year’s best independent cinema offerings. Over the years, it’s hosted the debuts of Blood Simple, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Reservoir Dogs, The Usual Suspects, Whiplash and Get Out, among others, launching the directorial careers of everyone from the Coens and Soderbergh to Tarantino and Peele. In the eyes of many aspiring actresses, however, it’s seen as something far more sinister: the hunting ground of Harvey Weinstein, who is alleged to have assaulted several women during the fest, including Rose McGowan.

Hirsch, the star of such films as Into the Wild and Lone Survivor, was there to promote Ten Thousand Saints, wherein he plays a straight-edge, closeted punk rocker heavy into Hare Krishna.

Sundance has long suffered from a kind of cultural bipolar disorder. By day, it’s swarmed with beanie-sporting cinephiles so eager to indulge in the latest experimental films they’ll trudge through feet of snow; at night, it transforms into a boozy bacchanalia, where attractive guest list-approved scenesters rub shoulders with A-list stars (and partake in snow of a different kind).

I was at Tao that night and, along with a friend, observed Hirsch in the bathroom line just before 2 a.m. He was stumbling about, his shirt drenched with booze. We decided that was our cue, and left. We had no idea that the actor would soon unleash a paroxysm of violence.

According to police records, Hirsch claimed that he’d had three or four drinks and his memory of the night was fuzzy. He further alleged that the aforementioned film exec, Paramount VP Dani Bernfeld, provoked him. “She started kind of causing a ruckus and I sort of started getting intervening and this happened,” said Hirsch. “I don’t think it was much more than that to be honest... I think she had a go at me and I probably defended myself.”

Bernfeld, 31, and eyewitnesses painted a very different picture. She said that Hirsch, whom she’d never met before, repeatedly got in her face when she refused his advances, asking why she looked “so tough” and branding her a spoiled party girl who’s “never done anything” with her life. “Your parents are rich and you don’t know what it’s like,” Bernfeld recalled him saying. She then pushed him away from her, telling the actor that she was in fact a studio executive and the daughter of a school principal. A waitress seemed to corroborate Bernfeld’s version of events, informing police that an inebriated Hirsch was making Bernfeld uncomfortable, pawing her and grabbing her hair.

Get the rest of the story at the Daily Beast.

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