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Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: Director without Borders

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Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu: Director without Borders

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and History Unchained

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ALEJANDRO INARRITU
"Amores Perros"

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Youth culture in Mexico City has been greatly affected by the globalization process. Globalization has arguably created a new youth culture where violence and crime especially in males, has begun to occur playing a role in the re-ordering of the urban lifestyle (Canclini 91). As the crime rates rise, those who can afford to attempt to separate themselves from the violence through gating themselves off in enclosed communities. The spaces left outside of the gated spaces are thus inhabited by the equally as left-out youth in Mexcio City. Pansters and Berthier have named violence in Mexico City as a phantom that roams the city (36). The phantom creates insecurity and restricts circulation in public spaces. As a result, the interactions with other social groups becomes extremely limited and often feared. The spaces now occupied by the less fortunate population are reduced to marginal areas coping with the stereotypically violent youth. The youth engaging with this stereotype by revolting against the institutional dominant power, like the police, and create an even further divide (Murrieta 823). These youth create what Murrieta refers to in her article as preference structures that tie them to the street (823). They rely on others around them on the street to create a new sense of belonging in the community. The film Amores Perros explores the youth culture as they engage with their neighbourhood or 'barrio', encountering violence and the competition for power and respect.
This montage sequence highlights the crime and violence present in the characters lives in their 'barrio'. It also shows the illegal gain and exchange of money and power between these men in the streets of Mexico City.
The director of Amores Perros, Alejandro González Iñárritu emphasizes the fear and destruction associated with spontaneous encounters in the city. He comments on the social divide by centering his film around a terrible car accident where all parties come from separate social classes yet are equally affected by the accident. The car crash forces, under a crime situation, a collision of others and thus reinforces the negatives associated with the awkward divide (but still possible) spaces and their interactions. These violent stereotypes associated with especially young males further reiterates the social segregation. Pansters and Berthier state that the young low-income youth (generally male) are associated with aggression and violence and this converts the individual into a negatively valued prototype (46). The characters in Amores Perros both display the stereotypical qualities, and show what effects the stereotypes can place on youth.

The dog fighting culture, which Octavio joins for money, is Iñárritu's representation of gang stereotypes in the barrios of Mexico City. Octavio's involvement in the dog fighting world is the only way he sees possible to gain access to quick money in the city to help free his love interest from her abusive relationship. Octavio is ultimately the one who is most affected in the car accident as the director shows him fleeing the scene in attempts to escape the crimes he was involved in. He cannot escape the crime, regardless of his motivations and causes the car crash in the pivotal point of the film.

Anxieties stemming from the fragmentation of space and the weakening of social cohesion in public space (Pansters and Berthier 46) are challenged in Amores Perros. The strategies youth culture develops for self-defense and their own feeling of presence in the city can been seen through the character Octavio's fight for his own monetary freedom in the dog fighting arena, while the outcome of it can been seen in the crucial car crash moment.

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Amores Perros: youth culture and violence in the city

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Youth culture in Mexico City has been greatly affected by the globalization process. Globalization has arguably created a new youth culture where violence and crime especially in males, has begun to occur playing a role in the re-ordering of the urban lifestyle (Canclini 91). As the crime rates rise, those who can afford to attempt...

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Wayne Pacelle's Blog
The practice, put on display years ago in the movie Amores Perros whose leading actress, Vanessa Buche, has supported the anti-dogfighting campaign.

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In a groundbreaking victory for countless dogs caught up in Mexico's animal fighting trade, the nation's Senate has put the final stamp of approval on a comprehensive law that bans all dogfighting in the country and establishes tough penalties, including imprisonment and fines, for anyone involved in dogfighting activities like organizing fights, owning or trading a dog, and attending a fight as a spectator. The practice, put on display years ago in the movie Amores Perros - whose leading actress, Vanessa Bauche, has supported our anti-dogfighting campaign - has been a persistent and widespread animal welfare problem in Mexico, and this new national policy is a signature success for the burgeoning animal protection movement in one of the world's largest nations and one of America's biggest trading partners.

The law will go into effect following publication in the country's federal register. The move is historic in many ways: it is the first time that animal cruelty has been penalized in the Federal Criminal Code.

Last year, soon after opening an office there and under the guidance of executive director Anton Aguilar of Humane Society International/Mexico, we launched a major anti-dogfighting campaign along with local animal protection organizations. The campaign included a petition for legislators to ban and penalize dogfighting, which was signed by more than 200,000 Mexicans eager to see an end to this scourge. We enlisted celebrities, mobilized our growing constituency there, and lobbied lawmakers about the evils and hazards of dogfighting. More than 40 local organizations helped us add and keep up the pressure through letters, tweetstorms, and calls. With their support, we reached out to the media, held six press conferences and dozens of interviews, wrote op-eds, and got hundreds of stories published on the importance of this reform.

In December 2016, Mexico's House of Representatives passed a reform of the federal criminal code, penalizing various activities related to dogfighting, including organizing fights, owning or trading a fighting dog, possessing a property used to hold fights, and attending a fight as a spectator. In January, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies passed reforms to ban dogfighting and mandated the federation and states to impose penalties on dogfighters within a one-year timeframe. The final - and key - piece of getting dogfighting banned in Mexico was for the Senate to pass the reform to the federal criminal code so that dogfighting is effectively penalized, and that happened yesterday in a unanimous vote.

Right now, many of Mexico's 31 states and Mexico City forbid dogfighting, but there had been no national policy. As a result, criminal rings that organize and participate in dogfighting have been left untouched by the legal system.

Dogfighters sometimes kill the losing dogs, and even winners may die from their wounds. The criminals involved in these activities do not stop at hurting animals: police often discover drugs, guns, and even murders in connection with these spectacles of violence and voyeurism.

The Mexican law will also have a beneficial impact on our work to stop dogfighters here, in the United States, where we have established a strong federal policy on animal fighting over the last 15 years. But for years, American-based dogfighters have trekked to Mexico to avoid law enforcement in the United States where, largely due to The HSUS's work, dogfighting is a felony in every state, and also a federal felony. Now there'll be no refuge in Mexico for these lawbreakers. In coming days, HSI/Mexico will continue to work with states to reform their local criminal codes to penalize dogfighters, and assist authorities in their enforcement efforts through trainings and equipment donation.

Mexico's lawmakers have sent a clear signal: it's time to root out animal cruelty and violence from the country, and bring criminals who profit from animal abuse to justice.

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Breaking news: Mexico adopts felony-level penalties for dogfighting · A Humane Nation

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In a groundbreaking victory for countless dogs caught up in Mexico's animal fighting trade, the nation's Senate has put the final stamp of approval on a comprehensive law that bans all dogfighting in the country and establishes tough penalties, including imprisonment and fines, for anyone involved in dogfighting activities like organizing fights, owning or trading .

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Interviewed with Alejandro G. Inarritu in regard to
Amores Perros a portrait of Mexico City and the "DOGFIGHTING WORLD"

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HUMANE SOCIETY

With Amores Perros, his visceral debut feature, Alejandro González Iñárrito immerses us in a frenetic and fractured portrait of contemporary Mexico City. Travis Crawford talks with the director.

Alejandro González Iñárritu photographed by Richard Kern

A mores Perros (inelegantly translated as Love's a Bitch) brutally thrusts the viewer into its complex narrative with such lacerating visceral impact – dogs, careening cars, blood, smoke, screaming, handheld camerawork and jagged cutting – that it seems odd to refer to this opening as comforting, but, in a way, it's true. Within only minutes, one is able to breathe a sigh of relief, sensing that Amores Perros will be the electrifying work of a dauntless filmmaker, and the remainder of its 154 minutes fully confirms this initial impression. That Amores Perros is a first film makes this confidence even more impressive.

The directing debut of 38-year-old Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, the film interweaves three separate stories through the metaphorical motif of dogs owned by the protagonists of each tale and with the narrative collision (literally) of a car accident that involves all of the film's characters. The first and arguably most gripping story involves young Octavio's love for his brother's wife and his discovery of the family canine's skill at dogfighting. (The ferocity of these sequences has led some to mistakenly believe that the dogfights are authentic). The film subsequently shifts to Valeria, a model disfigured in the car accident, and her increasingly strained relationship with Daniel, who has just left his wife. The final story is that of El Chivo, an embittered, vagrant hitman estranged from his family who seeks redemption and change.

Iñárritu's interwoven triptych structure has led some critics – including those who should know better – to make the inevitable Tarantino comparisons, but the film's humanism, richness of characterization and insight into Latino culture suggest more of a hybrid of Altman and Buñuel. For a film with such a necessarily nonlinear construction, however, it remains – like Pulp Fiction and Go in previous years – the most narratively engrossing film of the year.

Iñárritu began his career as a DJ and music producer in Mexico, vocations that bear an influence on Amores Perros both directly and conceptually. The film is driven by a forceful soundtrack, with Mexican rap and hip-hop seamlessly blending with acoustic ballads and Celia Cruz classics, interlaced through Gustavo Santaolalla's droning, melancholic score. And Inarritu's stylistic approach mirrors this musical eclecticism, as the film's full-throttle introductory account of Mexico City's impoverished ultimately transforms into a more sober, contemplative treatment when the film looks at the city's privileged classes. These tonal shifts have undoubtedly contributed to the criticism that Iñárritu's creative potency declines sharply after the superlative opening story, but this argument tends to ignore the tender, subtle triumphs of the latter two episodes.

Iñárritu's narrative technique is not without its problems – for example, his decision to incorporate significant elements of the more sedate second and third stories into the first tale occasionally diminishes that section's high-octane momentum – but it's difficult to recall a recent film of such substantial length that utilizes its running time as expertly. Amores Perros had already won two awards – the Grand Prize at the International Critics' Week in Cannes and the Best Director prize at the Edinburgh International Film Festival – by the time of its North American premiere at the 2000 Toronto festival, where Filmmaker spoke with director Alejandro González Iñárritu.

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Photo by Rodrigo Prieto

FILMMAKER: Tell me about your working relationship with writer Guillermo Arriaga.

ALEJANDRO GONZÁLEZ IÑÁRRITU: We became very close friends a few years ago – it was like finding a lost brother I didn't know was in the world. I had read a script that he wrote that was never shot, and I fell in love with the dialogue and the humanity of the characters. Then we wrote a short film that was also never shot, but that became the seed of what happened later. Mexico City has so much going on that it was difficult to capture it all with just one story. So we decided to play with three stories. We had too many things to say, so this structure helped us. The writing process took three years.

FILMMAKER: Were the three stories always designed to interconnect with linking characters, or was there ever a point when they stood as three separate, unrelated tales?

IÑÁRRITU: Well, the idea was to make a movie about love, death and redemption, focusing on the painful process of learning to love somebody. So deciding when and how the characters' paths would cross was a tough decision, because that's what makes the difference between three short films and a whole movie divided into three stories. From the beginning, we decided that the accident would be the main thing, that it would explode in the center of this universe, and the pieces would balance out, even when we would go backward and forward in the structure. The car accident exposes the fragility of life – you make plans, then you go out and a car crash changes everything.

FILMMAKER: At what point did you introduce the canine metaphor? Was that always a part of the story, or did you come up with that later as a linking device?

IÑÁRRITU: No, that was always a part of it from the beginning. The first title of the movie – which I didn't like – was Black Dog, White Dog, but then [Emir] Kusturica's film [ Black Cat, White Cat] appeared. But from the beginning the movie was a metaphor: black dogs, white dogs, rich people, poor people. That element was always there.

FILMMAKER: Was it hard to get this first movie off the ground in Mexico?

IÑÁRRITU: I was very lucky – the producers, from a new company named Altavista, were very brave, and they loved the script. They actually jumped at it and joined together with my company, Zeta Film, and they have a lot of guts to have done that. But you know, the most difficult thing is not the money. It's just getting a good story. Once you have the story, there's money waiting somewhere.

Goya Toleda in Amores Perros

FILMMAKER: To what degree do you see Amores Perros as being a uniquely Mexican story – a portrait of Mexico City and the dogfighting world – as opposed to a more universal story?

IÑÁRRITU: I think it's a very universal story because it's a very local story. That's what makes Amores Perros a story that can touch anybody. I've shown the film at Cannes and here in Toronto, and it's strange how different cultures and sensibilities can connect emotionally to the material. But I never really show Mexico City in the film; you can never recognize it in the movie. To me it's only the battleground for the emotions in the story. I never wanted a scenario that would say, "Look at what's happening in this city!" But people who've been there tell me they could smell Mexico City in the film, they could breathe the same air. The film is an exploration of how and why Mexican society has lost our fraternity and [also] an exploration of parents: the father doesn't exist in the first story, the father leaves in the second story, and the father returns in the third story. We're a society that had been ruled by a 71-year-old party, and the change was a painful process. This picture appeared in Mexico two months ago and was a big box-office success. Why? I think that if this movie appeared only one year ago, people would not have been ready to see ourselves and have the courage to change. But now people have hope and a new attitude. It's a social and political change in Mexico, and it's painful, but it's the only way to confront yourself.

FILMMAKER: There have been rumors that the dogfights in the film are real and resulted in injury to the animals, but the closing credits contain a disclaimer stating that the animals' welfare was monitored. How did you go about achieving those sequences?

IÑÁRRITU: First of all, I have a dog and I love dogs. It was very complex and difficult to reproduce a real dogfight, to achieve a level of realism without hurting the dogs. I hired an American guy who supplies animals for all the feature films in Mexico, and all of the actors were trained to handle the dogs; it was a lot of work. During shooting I tried to construct emotional stress within the dogfight scenes but put very little explicit footage of the actual dogfights.

FILMMAKER: That's true – we only see the dogs connect very briefly, and then you cut to the faces of the actors.

IÑÁRRITU: Exactly, because it's not about that; it's only one element of the first story. I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but I felt I had to show the blood because I wanted to unnerve people, since that's how I felt when I went there to actual dogfights, in order to reproduce them. I thought, "They're going to kill me." But the way I did it was, we took invisible fishing line, painted it the color of the dog's hair and attached it to them. These dogs are also trained for personal security, so they're trained like this, and to them, they're playing. Sometimes they would start making love in the middle of the scene; it was very funny. With the handheld camera and the sound design, it seems real, but if you pause the DVD, you can see the technique. When they were supposed to be dead, we would inject them with a veterinary anesthesia for 20 minutes — their owner was always there, shouting, "No more than 20 minutes!" I treated the actors worse than the animals!

FILMMAKER: The visual design of the film is also very distinctive, very high-contrast, shot through with vibrant colors. Tell me how you collaborated with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto to realize this look.

IÑÁRRITU: I thought the material demanded a very specific aesthetic. The architecture and colors of Mexico City can be so kitsch, but it has a beauty all its own. It has a lot of character, and I wanted to achieve that very vibrant feeling. I love the work of Nan Goldin, so the first meeting I had with Rodrigo, we looked at a book of her work, and I told him, "This is the look I think I need." So we began to make experiments in the lab, and our conclusion was to use this Vision 800 color stock, with a silver-retention process in the negative. It was the second time in the world that anyone used this. In the United States they say they don't want you to do that because it's very risky. But it gave us those electric earthtones, and it was terrific. I think it really helped the movie — it has something you cannot explain, but it makes it different. Maybe we lost our negative, but we'll have it on DVD.

FILMMAKER: Amores Perros is the type of film that displays a real passion for, and knowledge of, cinema. Who were some of your influences when you made the film? I know some critics have postulated Tarantino, which I don't really see.

IÑÁRRITU: [Laughs.] The Tarantino thing is funny — I think people have credited Tarantino with the invention of the three-story structure, but what about Faulkner and García Márquez? And there have been so many films that have used it too, but suddenly Tarantino gets the credit for that. I don't have anything to do with Tarantino, except for maybe the approach to violence more than the structure. I live in a violent city, and when you live in a violent city, you're not going to make a fairy tale or a comedy about that. Violence has very painful consequences, and that's my statement. But I have a lot of directors that I admire. The classics, like Bergman, Fellini, Buñuel, Tarkovsky, Leone, Scorsese, Cassavetes — I love Cassavetes. I'm a pretty eclectic guy in that sense. But lately, the people that really shake me are Lars von Trier, Wong Kar-wai and Ang Lee — they are approaching films in new ways.

FILMMAKER: Perhaps it's only appropriate for a film called Amores Perros (Love's a Bitch), but your movie has a somewhat bitter take on love and human relationships, and most of the film's main characters wind up pretty unfulfilled at the film's close. Does this reflect your own personal view of relationships, and can you foresee happiness coming to any of the film's characters after the events in the film?

IÑÁRRITU: I think life is an ongoing process of loss — you're losing things all of the time. These characters lose many things by the end of the film: innocence, lust, love, hope. Yet at the same time, learning to love somebody, and learning to love yourself, is a very painful process. Love is a very dominant emotion, and it can be very destructive at the same time — it depends on the way you're using it. Man has a divine nature and an animal nature, and when the animal nature controls you, your decisions are going to have a lot of consequences. For me, this movie is about how these characters that I love — weak characters, not strong characters, people that can really be broken — go through that painful process of learning in which [one gets] a little better. To my point of view, that's life. At the end, even with all the circumstances, there is hope because you can change your life, you're the owner of your destiny. And we can redeem ourselves with love — that's the only way we can be more than flesh and bone.

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HUMANE SOCIETY With Amores Perros, his visceral debut feature, Alejandro González Iñárrito immerses us in a frenetic and fractured portrait of contemporary Mexico City. Travis Crawford talks with the director.

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Fighting To Survive. In some ways the heroes are actually worse. The movie's concluding bloodbath unfolds in the Mississippi manor house of Leonardo DiCaprio's character, a nasty plantation owner.

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As such, "Django Unchained" is obviously a companion to "Inglourious Basterds," in which Mr. Tarantino had the audacity to turn the Nazi war against the Jews into the backdrop for a farcical, ultraviolent caper. He did not simply depart from the facts of history, inventing, in the title characters, a squad of mostly Jewish-American killers led by a United States Army lieutenant from Tennessee; he rewrote the past in the vivid, visceral language of film fantasy.

The point of "Inglourious Basterds" was not to engage in counterfactual speculation about a successful plot to kill Hitler, but rather to carry out a vicarious, belated and altogether impossible form of revenge, using the freedom of cinematic make-believe to even the score.

Like "Inglourious Basterds," "Django Unchained" is crazily entertaining, brazenly irresponsible and also ethically serious in a way that is entirely consistent with its playfulness. Christoph Waltz, who played the charming, sadistic SS officer Hans Landa in "Basterds," here plays Dr. King Schultz, a charming, sadistic German bounty hunter (masquerading as an itinerant dentist) whose distaste for slavery makes him the hero's ally and mentor.

That hero, first glimpsed in shackles and rags on a cold Texas night in 1858, is Django (Jamie Foxx), who becomes Schultz's sidekick and business partner. Schultz is an amoral gun for hire, tracking down fugitives and habitually choosing the first option offered in the formulation "Wanted: Dead or Alive."

Over time the traditional roles of white gunslinger and nonwhite sidekick are reversed, as the duo's mission shifts from Schultz's work to the rescue of Django's wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). After the couple tried to run away from their former plantation together, they were whipped and branded (the horrific punishment is shown in flashback), and Broomhilda was sold.

Django and Schultz's search for her leads them to Candyland, a Mississippi estate whose debonair master, Calvin Candie, is played with almost indecent flair by Leonardo DiCaprio. Candie is assisted in his savagery by Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson), a house slave who may be the most shocking invention in "Django Unchained." He is an Uncle Tom whose servility has mutated into monstrosity and who represents the symbolic self Django must destroy to assert and maintain his freedom.

The plot is, by Mr. Tarantino's standards, fairly linear, without the baroque chronology of "Pulp Fiction" or the parallel story lines of "Inglourious Basterds." But the movie does take its time, and it wanders over a wide expanse of geographic and thematic territory.

In addition to Mr. Tarantino's trademark dialogue-heavy, suspense-filled set pieces, there are moments of pure silliness, like a gathering of hooded night riders (led by Don Johnson), and a late escapade (featuring Mr. Tarantino speaking in an Australian accent) that perhaps owes more to Bugs Bunny than to any other cultural archetype.

Of course, the realm of the archetypal is where popular culture lives, and Mr. Tarantino does not hesitate to train his revisionist energies on some deep and ancient national legends. Like many westerns, "Django Unchained" latches onto a simple, stark picture of good and evil, and takes homicidal vengeance as the highest - if not the only - form of justice.

But in placing his story of righteous payback in the Old South rather than the Wild West, and in making its agent a black former slave, Mr. Tarantino exposes and defies an ancient taboo. With the brief and fascinating exception of the blaxploitation movies and a few other works of radical or renegade art, vengeance in the American imagination has been the virtually exclusive prerogative of white men. More than that, the sanctification and romanticization of revenge have been central to the ideology of white supremacy.

In "Regeneration Through Violence," his classic study of the mythology of the frontier, from colonial times to the eve of the Civil War, the literary historian Richard Slotkin identifies two essential mythic figures: the captive, usually an innocent woman held against her will by ruthless and alien usurpers, and the hunter, who is obsessed with protecting her honor and, sometimes secondarily, securing her freedom. ( "The Searchers," with John Wayne as the hunter and Natalie Wood as the captive, is perhaps the most sophisticated modern version of this narrative.)

Broomhilda and Django certainly fit those roles, and yet the roles, historically, were not intended for them. Some abolitionist works like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" could paint slavery as a form of captivity, but the canonical captives of antebellum American literature were white women kidnapped by Indians, who after the Civil War were often replaced by freed slaves as objects of superstitious terror. The idea that regenerative violence could be visited by black against white instead of the reverse - that a man like Django could fill out the contours of the hunter - has been almost literally unthinkable.

But think about that when the hand-wringing starts about "Django Unchained" and ask yourself why the violence in this movie will suddenly seem so much more problematic, so much more regrettable, than what passes without comment in "Jack Reacher" or "Taken 2." Mr. Tarantino is a virtuoso of bloodshed, that is for sure, and also more enamored of a particularly toxic racial slur than any decent white man should be. But decency in the conventional sense is not his concern, though in another sense it very much is. When you wipe away the blood and the anarchic humor, what you see in "Django Unchained" is moral disgust with slavery, instinctive sympathy for the underdog and an affirmation (in the relationship between Django and Schultz) of what used to be called brotherhood.

So maybe it's not so different from "Lincoln," after all. And if "Django Unchained" is not better, it is arguably more radical, both as cinema and as (fanciful) history. A double feature might be just the thing, if you have five and a half hours to spare. By any means necessary!
"Django Unchained" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Grisly violence (both comical and horrible); vile language (ditto).

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Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained' Stars Jamie Foxx

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As such, "Django Unchained" is obviously a companion to "Inglourious Basterds," in which Mr. Tarantino had the audacity to turn the Nazi war against the Jews into the backdrop for a farcical, ultraviolent caper.

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Interviewed with Quentin Tarantino over Django Unchained violence questions

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Interviewed with Quentin Tarantino over Django Unchained violence questions

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The clearly flustered film maker, who became more heated as the interview progressed, further complained that his Oscar-nominated movie was "good cinema", was "not real life" and was instead "fantasy". It also contained "cathartic violence".

The man behind other violent classics "Reservoir Dogs", "Kill Bill" and "Inglorious Basterds" became enraged when asked why he is so adamant violence in movies was not to blame for real-life killings.

He denied there was a "relationship" with violence in movies to tragic events that occur in real life.

Clips of the interview, which were posted online, have sent social networks into meltdown as people discussed the astonishing diatribe.

His latest film, which features Tarantino's trademark style of extensive graphic and bloody violence, along with dark humour, was released just days after the Newtown school massacre, in which 20 children were killed in Connecticut.

Its world premiere was cancelled in the wake of the school shooting, which occurred just days earlier.

He has launched attacks on his critics who blame violence blockbusters such as his for the massacres, insisting such comments are disrespectful to the victims.

Yesterday, Tarantino, who did not walk out of the interview, insisted he did not have to take "any responsibility to you to explain anything I don't want to".

Asked why he believed there is no link between movie violence and shooting massacres, he shouted: "It's none of your damn business what I think about that.

"I'm saying no, and I'm shutting you down... I don't have any responsibility to you to explain anything I don't want to...

"I've explained this many times in 20 years but I just refuse to repeat myself over and over again because you want me to - for you and your show and your ratings."

He added: "I'm going to tell you why I'm so sure? Don't ask me a question like that - I'm not biting. I refuse your question.

"I refuse your question. I'm not your slave and you're not my master. You can't make me dance to your tune. I'm not a monkey.

"I don't want to talk about what you want to talk about. I don't want to talk about the implications of violence. I haven't wanted... because... The reason I don't want to talk about it: because I've said everything I have to say about it."

He continued: "I have explained this many times in the last 20 years. I just refuse to repeat myself over and over again because you want me to for you and your show. And your ratings.

"I invite you to explore some serious themes but not things I've already been on the record talking about."

After the interview was aired last night, he told a visibly shocked co-presenter Jon Snow that his rear was "in tact".

Guru-Murthy, 42, later told The Daily Telegraph: "I was surprised about his reaction to the questions, which were very gentle. I love a lot of his work - I wasn't looking for a fight.

"I would have thought if you invite somebody to interview you it is better to try to answer the questions rather than not.

"No interviewee has ever said "I'm not your slave...I'm not a monkey" to me before."

He said that the programme had not heard any feedback from the film's producers since the interview went to air.

"It was fine afterwards - I was pretty surprised to be honest," he said.

"He didn't storm off or walk out. It was just a bit of an eruption."

In a blog, posted Guru-Murthy added: "The trouble for me is not the minor "tantrumtino" at a movie junket, it is the inconsistency.

"The director was happy to talk about slavery as an issue, the debate on slavery now going on in America, he says thanks to him. He will even accept that he enjoys what he calls "cathartic violence" in movies.

"But is there a relationship between enjoying movie violence and enjoying real violence? Cathartic or not? That's where he stops - or "refuses".

Yesterday it was announced that the movie is up for five Oscars including best original screenplay and best film.

This week it has also won five Bafta, including best director, and the same number of Golden Globe nominations.

At the film's London premiere in Leicester Square last night, he told reporters: "It's been a good week. Five Oscar nominations today, five Bafta nominations yesterday."

Christoph Waltz is nominated for best supporting actor for his role as Dr King Schultz in the film but Tarantino missed out on a nomination for best director.

The film tells the story of a bounty hunter (Waltz) who frees a slave (Jamie Foxx) and partners up with him to liberate his wife (Kerry Washington) from the hands of a fearsome plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio).

The film has kicked up a fierce row in the United States, where African-American director Lee said he would not be watching because it would be "disrespectful to my ancestors".

The title of his latest film is a direct reference to Corbucci's "Django" from 1966 and the lead actor of that film, Franco Nero, plays a cameo role.

Django Unchained opens in cinemas on January 18.

THE FULL "SHUTTING YOUR BUTT DOWN HERE" EXCHANGE (begins at 4.20 in the video above)

Krishnan Guru-Murthy (KGM): Let me ask you about violence. You said, you know, everyone knows you make violent movies, you like violent movies. Why do you like making violent movies?

Quentin Tarantino (QT): Erm... I don't know. It's like asking Judd Apatow: "Why do you like making comedies?"

KGM: You just get a kick out of it? Or you just enjoy it? Or...

QT: It's... It's... It's a... I think... I think it's good cinema. I consider it good cinema. You know, it's... You sit there in a movie theatre when these cathartic, violent scenes happen... I'm talking about the cathartic violence scenes.

(...)

..Then there's the cathartic violence of Django paying back blood for blood.

KGM: Is that why you think people like watching violent movies - people who are not violent people or twisted people in any way, but why it's OK to go into a movie and enjoy the violence?

QT: Yeah, well, it's a movie. It's a fantasy. It's a fantasy - it's not real life. It's a fantasy. You go and you watch. You know, you watch a kung-fu movie and one guy takes on 100 people in a restaurant. That's fun!

KGM: But why are you so sure that there's no link between enjoying movie violence and enjoying real violence?

QT: I don't... I'm going to tell you why I'm so sure? Don't ask me a question like that - I'm not biting. I refuse your question.

KGM: Why?

QT: Because I refuse your question. I'm not your slave and you're not my master. You can't make me dance to your tune. I'm not a monkey.

KGM: I can't make you answer anything. I'm asking you interesting questions.

QT: And I'm saying... and I'm saying I refuse.

KGM: OK. I was just asking you why. That's fine. But you see, Jamie Foxx has said: "We can't turn our back and say that violence in films, that anything that we do...

QT: Then you should talk to Jamie Foxx about that. And I think he's actually here, so you can!

KGM: I'd love to, but, I mean, you know... It's interesting that you have a different view, and I'm just trying to explore that.

QT: And I don't want to! 'Cause I'm here to sell my movie. This is a commercial for the movie - make no mistake.

KGM: So you don't want to talk about anything serious?

QT: I don't want to talk about what you want to talk about. I don't want to talk about the implications of violence. I haven't wanted... because... The reason I don't want to talk about it: because I've said everything I have to say about it.

If anyone cares what I have to say about it, they can Google me and they can look for 20 years what I have to say. But I haven't changed my opinion one iota.

KGM: No, but you haven't fleshed it out.

QT: It's not my job to flesh it out.

KGM: No, it's my job to try and ask you to.

QT: And I'm shutting your butt down!

KGM: That's entirely your... that's entirely your right.

QT: This is a commercial for my movie.

KGM: No, but it's my job to try and explore some serious themes as well.

QT: Well, I... I invite you to explore some serious themes, but not things that I haven't already been on the record for talking about.

KGM: Well, violence is such a big part of all of your movies, and it's, you know, it's an enjoyable part of your movies for so many people.

And that's why I'm talking about this, because, as you know, it's a very sensitive time at the moment. I mean, the vice-president is talking to people in the movie industry today about violence in response to...

QT: And you know where I stand on it.

KGM: Which is that there's no relationship.

QT: Yes.

KGM: But you haven't said why you think there's no relationship.

QT: It's none of your damn business what I think about that!

KGM: Well, it's my job to ask you why you think that because...

QT: And I'm saying no! And I'm shutting you down.

KGM: But you have a responsibility as a filmmaker, surely, to explain a little bit about...

QT: No, I don't have any responsibility to you to explain anything I don't want to.

KGM: Not to me but to your viewers, to your fans. You know, to people who care about what it is that you're doing.

QT: They know, they know where I'm coming from. And I have explained it. And I have explained even what you're talking about. I'm just not giving it to you.

KGM: Why?

QT: Because I don't want to because I've done it already.

I have explained this many times in the last 20 years. I just refuse to repeat myself over and over again because you want me to for you and your show. And your ratings.

KGM: Well, no, it's not about our ratings. It's...

QT: No, no, it is. It's about you want me to say it for you, for your show - this show, right here, right now.

KGM: Well, look, this is a news programme, it's not a film programme, so we explore serious themes. That's the difference.

QT: Exactly. But you want me to do what I've already done before and I am refusing.

KGM: Fine. That's your right.

Source: Channel 4 News.

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Quentin Tarantino in furious rant over Django Unchained violence questions

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The clearly flustered film maker, who became more heated as the interview progressed, further complained that his Oscar-nominated movie was "good cinema", was "not real life" and was instead "fantasy". It also contained "cathartic violence".

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Django Unchained (2012)

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ALEJANDRO INARRITU
"Amores Perros"