Quentin Tarantino invents new ways to shock his audiences through his legendary array of films.  In this day and age, that’s a rarity and a treat. He violently attacks controversial subjects on screen with a no holds bar style that’s all his own.

This winter, Tarantino announced his latest passion project, a western called “The Hateful Eight.” The script was leaked and then spread by the website Gawker, resulting in Tarantino’s decision to shelve the script and cancel production. He has every right to put off the project. Tarantino deserves dignity and respect in his decision to shelve the story and sue Gawker because of his high standing status and integrity as a visual artist.

If there’s one thing cinephiles know about Tarantino, it’s that he’s old fashioned. He refuses to shoot digitally and employs other signature eccentric filmmaking practices. To Tarantino, filmmaking the old fashioned way is sacred.  A violation of his art is good enough reason to shelve a project. In addition, Tarantino feels a sense of betrayal from the industry that he helped revitalize in the 1990s.

“The Hateful Eight” began popping up all over the Internet in late January. Tarantino was outraged. In an interview with Deadline Hollywood, he explained that he’d only shared the script with a few trusted actors.  The director’s anger reached its apex when the website Gawker provided a link for readers to download the script.

Tarantino is suing Gawker Media for allegedly leaking the script online. This legal battle has resulted in a series of headlines, generating a firestorm of arguments about who leaked the script and why.

Gawker and its sister sites make a business out of turning gossip, hearsay and irrelevant tidbits into marketable news. Rather than simply reporting that the script had been leaked, they posted a link to the site Defamer, where anyone could download the script.

Gawker’s attempts to defend themselves were childish to say the least. They claimed that Tarantino was spreading the story to garner himself attention. Tarantino has every right to call attention to the leak. It’s an incredibly relevant story to media journalism. It takes on issues like copyright infringement and Internet regulation. The legal battle between Gawker and Tarantino could even set precedent for similar cases in the future.

As a purist and a visual artist, Tarantino should be able to cancel production of his script if he feels like the quality of it has been compromised because of the leak.

In an industry that Tarantino pushed to maintain quality through the twenty-first century, a betrayal like this grants him the ability and creative control to take next steps.

Those next steps will be to publish the script in print, according to a Jan. 23 Deadline Hollywood article.

The whole point of seeing a Quentin Tarantino film is the shock and awe. As a fan, I hope that Tarantino makes “The Hateful Eight” one day. As a writer, I support him in his decision to shelve it and do something else first.

The extreme lack of regulation on the Internet is both problematic and beneficial for artists like Tarantino. On the one hand, fans get to see the work of their favorite artists. On the other, artists are robbed of their integrity and more literally, money. The best hope they have is to date their works and give confidentiality contracts to whoever is reading them. Hopefully, the lawsuit sets a precedent that will protect filmmakers in the Wild West that is the Internet.

Cassie-lee Grimaldi is a senior television, radio and film major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] and reached on Twitter @cassiegrimaldi.

 

 

 

 

Published on February 5, 2014 at 2:36 am