Quentin Tarantino's upcoming "Hateful Eight" movie is being boycotted by police officer unions in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York after the filmmaker called cops "murderers" at a Manhattan rally on Saturday.
"The irony of protecting cop-haters, particularly wealthy, entitled, elitist cop-haters like Quentin Tarantino, is not lost on the police officers who struggle to support their families in the most expensive city in America," Patrick J. Lynch, president of New York's Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association,
told Fox News.
"New York City police officers regularly find themselves putting their lives on the line to protect the rights of those who wrongfully and often in a very vile manner, criticize the very officers who are ensuring their right to be heard. We are professional police officers. It’s part of the job and we do it with pride."
NYPD Commissioner William Bratton said much of the same in a recent radio interview, adding that Tarantino's comments were particularly appalling just days after NYPD Officer Randolph Holder, 33, was shot and killed in the line of duty by an alleged career criminal.
"Shame on him, particularly at this time when we are grieving the murder of New York City police officer," said Bratton. "There are no words to describe the contempt I have for him."
The Hollywood insider blog
Deadline.com commented that the boycott, which has been issued for all of Tarantino's films, "could hit Tarantino in the box office with the release of the Civil War-set 'Hateful Eight' on Christmas Day."
"This can spread to other unions like firemen and teachers too," veteran crisis expert Howard Bragman
told TheWrap.
Tarantino flew in from L.A. to join activist-academic Cornel West at a rally and march organized by RiseUpOctober, which is affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement.
He told his fellow rally-goers, "When I see murders, I do not stand by. I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers."
Tarantino and the "Hateful Eight" distributor, The Weinstein Company, had not responded to the boycott announcement as of Friday.
The Rev. Al Sharpton was going to attend the funeral of Officer Holder, but pulled out after Holder's grieving fiancée said that when he was alive, he couldn't stand the cop-basher.