PERP FICTION
Sham Quentin ‘lied’ about doing jail time: LA cops
HE SAYS
I was a little scared of the cops, alright? Oftentimes, I had warrants . . . and had to serve eight days in jail.
—Quentin Tarantino
It’s “Pulp Fiction,” alright. Quentin Tarantino — under fire for recent comments about police violence — has claimed for decades that, as a young man, he served time in a Los Angeles County jail.
One problem: The LA County Sheriff ’s Department has no record of the filmmaker ever being in its system. At The Post’s request, the department searched its files back through the 1980s, when, according to Tarantino, he would have been incarcerated.
“A check of Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department jail records revealed no evidence that Mr. Tarantino was ever incarcerated in our jail system,” said Capt. Christo pher Reed of the Sheriff ’s Office.
Tarantino used to tell the story as evidence of his outlaw bona fides. But on a recent episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Tarantino, now 52, recounted it again to claim solidarity with police protesters — that he understands what it means to be frightened of cops.
“Back when I was in my 20s and broke, I was a little scared of the cops, alright?” Tarantino told Maher. “And oftentimes, I had warrants out on me for traffic stuff that I never took care of and everything . . . I’d get stopped, and I’d have to do eight days in county jail.”
The Post spent a week calling and emailing Tarantino’s agent, lawyer, publicists and Harvey Weinstein, who produced the director’s upcoming movie, “The Hateful Eight.” The Post also left voice mails on Tarantino’s personal phone line. No one responded to any of the inquiries.
As a budding film geek, Tarantino worked at LA’s Video Archives rental store for five years — a story key to his creation myth. In the Maher appearance, he said he couldn’t pay his traffic tickets because he earned only $10,000 a year.
It’s a claim he has made as far back as 1992, when he told the Web site Paris Voice a version of the same story. “If I had a brush with the law, I think I’d wise up fast,” he said. “I spent eight days in the county jail on traffic warrants once. At first, I thought, ‘ Wow, I’m going to pick up some great dialogue in here.’ But then you realize what a waste of time it is. They treat you like an animal, and nobody wants to be treated like an animal.”
Tarantino’s lone brush with the law, according to the LA County Sheriff ’s Department, is a 2000 charge for driving without a license and failure to appear in court. He paid a fine to avoid jail.
“A check of court records re
COPS SAY
A check of . . . department jail records revealed no evidence that Mr. Tarantino was ever incarcerated in our jail system. —Capt. Christopher Reed, LA County Sheriff’s Office
vealed that in August of 2000, he paid a fine of $871, which included court costs, for violation of driving without a license,” Reed said.
The payment was “in lieu of an eightday sentence imposed by the court,” the captain added.
Other versions of the incarceration tale have floated around for years. In some, he did one stint in jail; in others, he has done multiple. One was printed in a 1997 profile of Tim Roth in GQ UK magazine: “Tarantino ... had worked in a video shop and he had spent eight days in LA County jail for unpaid parking tickets.”
In Jeffrey Dawson’s 2000 biography “Quentin Tarantino: The Cinema of Cool,” the writerdirector is quoted as saying, “I went to jail about three different times just for warrants on me for moving violations . . . They had warrants on me for three years and eventually I got stopped and they sent me to jail.”
In 2009, the British news site Metro.co.uk quoted Tarantino as saying, “I was kind of excited about going to jail the first time and I learned some great dialogue.”
Tarantino has been on a press tour for “The Hateful Eight” and has refused to back away from his recent statements about police.
“When I see murders, I do not stand by,” he said at a rally in Washington Square Park last month just four days after NYPD cop Randolph Holder was shot dead. “I have to call a murder a murder, and I have to call a murderer a murderer.”
Tarantino’s father and several relatives who are NYPD retirees condemned the diatribe.
“It makes police officers’ jobs a lot harder,” his cousin, retired NYPD Lt. Anthony Massaro, had told The Post. “It’s much more dangerous today than in my time ... It’s gotten very bad for police officers to do their job. My heart goes out to them.”