In a new documentary, an executive producer who first collaborated with Quentin Tarantino on Pulp Fiction reveals that a character in one of the famed director’s later works was based on Harvey Weinstein.
During her segment on QT8: The First Eight, Stacey Sher said Tarantino wove Weinstein’s misogynistic characteristics into John Ruth in The Hateful Eight. Kurt Russell portrayed Ruth in the film. “If you read it on the page it was a little more accurate,” Sher said in the documentary. “Kurt is the most charming person on the planet.”
In the script for the film which was penned in 2013-14, Tarantino wrote Ruth’s character as a grizzled bounty hunter who has no issue with brutalizing his female prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
The Hateful Eight was released in December of 2015 by The Weinstein Company, almost two years before the avalanche of sexual harassment allegations against Weinstein went public.
After the allegations came out, Tarantino admitted he was aware of Weinstein’s behavior in an interview with The New York Times.
“I knew enough to do more than I did,” Tarantino said. “There was more to it than just the normal rumors, the normal gossip. It wasn’t secondhand. I knew he did a couple of these things. I wish I had taken responsibility for what I heard. If I had done the work I should have done then, I would have had to not work with him.”
Weinstein was involved with the release of every Tarantino film up until his latest, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
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