Quentin Tarantino: I Won't Be Intimidated on Cops Issue

Director Quentin Tarantino isn't apologizing after all, instead saying he won't be intimidated into silence over calling some police officers "murderers."

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Tarantino said he never said all police officers were murderers and went after the police unions who have vowed to boycott his upcoming film "The Hateful Eight."

"What they're doing is pretty obvious," he told the Times. "Instead of dealing with the incidents of police brutality that those people were bringing up, instead of examining the problem of police brutality in this country, better they single me out."

The message is "to shut me down. It's to discredit me. It is to intimidate me," he went on. "It is to shut my mouth, and even more important than that, it is to send a message out to any other prominent person that might feel the need to join that side of the argument."

It had been reported that Tarantino, the director of such films as "Pulp Fiction" and the "Kill Bill" movies, would apologize, likely in the form of an op-ed piece, but he told the Times he won't be intimidated.

"Frankly, it feels lousy to have a bunch of police mouthpieces call me a cop hater," he said. "I'm not a cop hater. That is a misrepresentation. That is slanderous. That is not how I feel."

But he said he won't take back what he said at a recent rally against police brutality.

"What I said was the truth," he said. "I'm used to people misrepresenting me; I'm used to being misunderstood. What I'd like to think their attack against me is so vicious that they're revealing themselves. They're hiding in plain sight."

Meanwhile, Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, told The Hollywood Reporter the boycott would continue.

"The damage from Quentin Tarantino's hateful comments about police officers has already been done," Lynch said. "If he doesn't want to face a backlash, he should choose his words more carefully in the future. Meanwhile, police officers will continue to express their own outrage at the box office."

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