Quentin Tarantino says that Kanye “Ye” West did not come up with the idea for his 2012 film “Django Unchained.”
Last week, the rapper told Piers Morgan that he had pitched the concept to the director and Jamie Foxx – who co-starred in the film – as the music video for his 2005 song “Gold Digger,” which also featured Foxx.
During a Thursday evening appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Tarantino said that “there’s no truth” to Ye’s claim, but that they did discuss a potential collaboration for “Gold Digger.”
“I’d had the idea for ‘Django’ for a while before I ever met Kanye,” said the director. “He wanted to do a giant movie version of ‘College Dropout’ the way he did the album. So he wanted to get big directors to do different tracks from the album and then like release it as this like giant movie – not videos, oh no, that’s nothing as crass as videos.”
Adding that they used the video “as an excuse to meet each other,” Tarantino said Ye pitched him on a music video concept that would have had the rapper dress as a slave.
“The whole thing was a 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,” he continued.
“It was meant to be ironic, right, and it’s like a huge musical, like no expenses spared, with him in this slave rag outfit, doing everything. And then that was also 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 when he says that he told me that.”
Hype Williams ended up directing the 2005 music video, which featured Ye and Foxx alongside a series of cover models. It went on to win Video of the Year at the 2006 BET Awards and was nominated for three VMAs.
Watch the video above. Kimmel and Tarantino’s discussion about Ye begins at the 18-minute mark.
