Quentin Tarantino says he beat a taxi driver in a Tarantino-esque fight more than a year ago that included the driver biting his nipple.
Tarantino described the fight on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” Tuesday. No, it wasn’t an homage to Travis Bickle. Tarantino says he challenged the driver after he insulted his date.
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Here’s how it went down, according to Tarantino, who didn’t say exactly when it happened.
He and his date were in the back of the cab in New York, and the driver was “a big guy, and he was a real jerk.” Tarantino was so annoyed that he asked him to pull over, and gave him $5 on a $4.50 fare.
“He’s such a jerk I didn’t even want to give him 50 cents tip,” said Tarantino, who demanded his change. As the driver handed him two quarters, he allegedly insulted the “Django Unchained” director’s date.
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“‘Use it to buy her a new face,’” Tarantino recounted him saying. “Talk about my date like that, in front of me?”
He says he sprung from the cab to “attack” the driver, and had a “moment of clarity” as he did — he had already had to pay out two $30,000 settlements for past fights — “just the price of doing business when you’re famous and you punch somebody.”
But the driver was ready to fight, so Tarantino acquiesced. He punched the driver so hard he fell back on the cab, then kept punching, according to Tarantino.
“I grab him by his Afro,” he told Leno. “Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.”
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Bouncers from a nearby club pulled him from the driver, but the driver took advantage of his being restrained to bite him on the nipple, Tarantino said. The bouncers let him go to defend himself, and he hit the driver some more, he said.
When it was over, Tarantino decided he couldn’t pay out yet more money — so he resolved to tell no one, in the hopes the driver would never realize he had been beaten by a millionaire filmmaker. He kept silent for a year.
“And it went away,” said Tarantino.
Until he told the story on TV.
“Well we have that cab driver — come on out,” joked Leno.
Watch the video: