Tarantino: Kanye West’s Claim of Originating Idea for ‘Django Unchained’: ‘That Didn’t Happen’
West — who legally changed his name to Ye in 2021 — said he pitched a similar idea when initially brainstorming the music video for his 2005 song “Gold Digger,” which features Foxx. Ye released the official music video in 2009, which centers on a montage of Foxx and Ye dancing with various pin-up models.
Tarantino appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Thursday and the host asked him: “Kanye West said that he came up with the idea for Django Unchained.’ He said that when he was making the ‘Gold Digger’ video with Jamie Foxx, he pitched it to you guys as a video and then you made it – is there any truth to that?”
“I’d had the idea for ‘Django’ for a while before I ever met Kanye. He wanted to do a giant movie version of ‘The College Dropout’ Ye’s debut studio album the way he did the album – so he wanted to get big directors to do different tracks from the album and then release it as this giant movie – not video, nothing as crass as videos, it was movies, movies based on each of the different tracks,” Tarantino added.
“We used it as an excuse to meet each other and and so we met each other we had a really good time. And he did have an idea for a video. I do think it was for the ‘Gold Digger’ video, that he would be a slave. And the whole thing was the slave narrative where he’s a slave and he’s singing ‘Gold Digger.’ And it was very funny. It was a really, really funny idea,” Tarantino said.
Kimmel interjected: “It was a funny slave video, I mean…”
Tarantino responded: “It was meant to be ironic. And it’s like a huge musical. I mean, like no expenses spared with him in this slave rag outfit, doing everything. And then that was also part of the part of the pushback on it. But I wish he had done it. It sounded really cool. Anyway, that’s what he’s referring to.”
Ye is currently facing a massive backlash after his recent antisemitic comments.