When Somewhere beat Black Swan, among others, to win the grand prize at Venice, the immediate reaction was huh? It’s a large pill to swallow to think that Tarantino would not be likewise wowed by Black Swan. Charges of favoritism began to swirl, considering Sofia Coppola and Tarantino once dated and are now friends, or something to that effect. Now it’s up at the NY Times and Deadline.com. Tarantino denied it. Now the question becomes, is the momentum gained by Somewhere in Venice now downgraded because of this?
“I wasn’t going to let anything like that affect me at all,” he told reporters after the awards ceremony. “I was just going to literally respond to the film. There was no me steering any direction.” Tarantino said it had been a unanimous jury decision. “It enchanted us from the first,” said Tarantino, “Being her friend didn’t affect me or make me sway the jury in any way. The other members of the jury don’t know her at all. They just loved the film. We kept coming back to it, as one of us said, because ‘it’s a great fucking movie,’ all right?”
