Quentin Tarantino reveals Oliver Stone feud means he’s never seen Natural Born Killers – despite writing it

Filmmaker wrote the original script for controversial Woody Harrelson satire

Quentin Tarantino has revealed he’s never seen Natural Born Killers in its entirety because of his feud with director Oliver Stone – despite writing the original script.

Tarantino holds a “story by” credit on the 1994 film, which stars Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis as a pair of young lovers who embark on a killing spree endlessly documented by the tabloids.

Stone heavily revised Tarantino’s original script, alongside writers Richard Rutowski and David Veloz. Tarantino was later sued by the film’s producers after attempting to release his original script as a paperback book.

The director was ultimately allowed to publish his original work, but he has repeatedly condemned the film version and advised his fans not to see it.

While appearing on Brian Koppelman’s The Moment podcast, Tarantino revealed that he has never seen the film “from beginning to end”, and agreed with Koppelman’s claim that Stone wildly misunderstood his script.

“One of the things about that script in particular is that I was trying to make it on the page, so when you read it, you saw the movie,” Tarantino explained. “It was like, why didn’t he do at least half of [my script]? It was, like, done for him.”

Quentin Tarantino, and Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson in ‘Natural Born Killers' (Vivien Killilea/Getty Images/Shutterstock)

In 2019, Stone told IndieWire that Tarantino was paid “a lot of money” for his script and said that he disagreed with how Tarantino treated the film upon its release.

“His opinion? Yeah, he didn’t care for it, but I don’t know if he ever saw it,” Stone said. “He went around and said that and I don’t think it was the right thing to do. But that was one of my many problems. We did well in spite of it all.”

Tarantino recently revealed that he has had to retire his “Pussy Wagon” vehicle from the Kill Bill movies, as people kept recognising him while driving.