{"id":155691,"date":"2026-01-30T00:11:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T00:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/155691\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T00:11:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T00:11:09","slug":"paul-dano-speaks-out-on-quentin-tarantinos-diss-at-sundance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/155691\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Dano speaks out on Quentin Tarantino’s diss at Sundance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After Paul Dano came under unexpected fire from filmmaker Quentin Tarantino in December, the \u201cThere Will Be Blood\u201d star received support from fellow artists including Daniel Day-Lewis and Ben Stiller. A month after the drama, he is now returning the love. <\/p>\n

Dano finally publicly addressed Tarantino\u2019s controversial comments at the Sundance Film Festiv<\/a>al<\/a> during a 20th anniversary screening of \u201cLittle Miss Sunshine.\u201d Speaking to Variety<\/a>, he said the groundswell of support \u201cwas really nice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tarantino appeared on Bret Easton Ellis\u2019 podcast in December to rank his top 10 films of the century. The \u201cDjango Unchained\u201d and \u201cPulp Fiction\u201d filmmaker placed Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s oil drama \u201cThere Will Be Blood\u201d at No. 5 on his list, and said specifically Dano \u2014 not his performance \u2014 was the \u201cbig, giant flaw\u201d in the Oscar-winning film. \u201cThere Will Be Blood\u201d stars Dano as fiery preacher Eli Sunday and Day-Lewis as oil tycoon Daniel Plainview. <\/p>\n

When the movie was released in 2007, former Times film critic Kenneth Turan praised Dano<\/a> as \u201csmoothly effective\u201d and gifted. Clearly, Tarantino thought otherwise. <\/p>\n

\u201cHe is weak sauce, man. He\u2019s a weak sister,\u201d Tarantino said, adding that he thought \u201cElvis\u201d star Austin Butler (who was a teenager launching his career on Disney Channel and Nickelodeon when the movie came out) would have been a better actor for the part. \u201cHe\u2019s just such a weak, weak, uninteresting guy,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Tarantino added: \u201cYou put [Day-Lewis] with the the weakest f\u2014 actor in SAG?\u201d <\/p>\n

A handful of Dano\u2019s collaborators immediately defended him. \u201cEscape at Dannemora\u201d executive producer Stiller praised him as \u201cbrilliant\u201d and Reese Witherspoon called her \u201cInherent Vice\u201d co-star an \u201cincredibly gifted, versatile actor\u201d and a gentleman. Matt Reeves, Josh Gad, Alec Baldwin and Simu Liu also voiced their support for Dano, whose credits include Steven Speilberg\u2019s Oscar-nominated \u201cThe Fabelmans,\u201d Bong Joon Ho\u2018s \u201cOkja\u201d and Oscar-winning director duo Daniels\u2019 (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) \u201cSwiss Army Man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was also incredibly grateful that the world spoke up for me so I didn\u2019t have to,\u201d Dano said at the Sundance screening. <\/p>\n

Before Dano responded, though, Toni Collette (who played his mom in \u201cLittle Miss Sunshine\u201d) chimed in, dismissing \u201cthat guy\u201d Tarantino and speculating that \u201che must\u2019ve been high.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was just confusing. Who does that?,\u201d she said, according to Variety. \u201cLittle Miss Sunshine\u201d directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris also criticized Tarantino and praised their star. <\/p>\n

During his podcast appearance in December, Tarantino also slammed Owen Wilson and scream king Matthew Lillard. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly<\/a> published Wednesday, Lillard brushed off the shade and recalled the ensuing social media praise for his talents. \u201cIt was like living through your own wake,\u201d Lillard told EW.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll those R.I.P. emails or tweets and Instagram posts and TikToks, all of the things we see after somebody passes are so sweet,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd the reality is I just got to live through all of it firsthand \u2014 alive and kicking! I can\u2019t imagine a more lovely reaction to what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After Paul Dano came under unexpected fire from filmmaker Quentin Tarantino in December, the \u201cThere Will Be Blood\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1872,76310,9133,76307,24105,2242,48,52,51,76309,76308,47,50,49,4287,76305,6221,47917,2850,4190,76306],"class_list":["post-155691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-actor","tag-alec-baldwin","tag-blood","tag-daniel-day-lewis","tag-december","tag-drama","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-lillard","tag-little-miss-sunshine","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-movie","tag-paul-dano","tag-podcast","tag-quentin-tarantino","tag-star","tag-support","tag-tarantino"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=155691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/155691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=155691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=155691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=155691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}