'That's not rape!' Tarantino's 2003 interview with Howard Stern

HOWARD STERN: How can you defend, see I don't understand this, how come Hollywood embraces this madman, this director, who raped a 13-year-old girl?

QUENTIN TARANTINO: He didn't rape a 13-year-old. It was statutory rape, that's not quite the same thing.

It's statutory rape. He had sex with a minor. That's not rape. To me, when you use the word rape, you're talking about violent, throwing them down... it's like one of the most violent crimes in the world.

You can't throw the word 'rape' around, it's like throwing the word 'racist' around. It doesn't apply to everything that people use it for. He was guilty of having sex with a minor.

ROBIN QUIVERS: That she didn't want to have?

QT: No that wasn't the case at all. She wanted to have it. Dated the guy…

RQ: She was 13!

QT: And by the way, we're talking about America's morals, we're not talking about the morals in Europe and everything.

HS: Wait a minute. You have sex with a 13-year-old girl and you're a grown man, you know that that's wrong...

RQ: Giving her booze and pills...

QT: Look, she was down with it... and she's talked about it. She's talked about it. I'm right, she's talked about it since. Like "no, he didn't do anything to me, it was the technicality of being 13."

Now she's an adult, she's got a whole other story. Of course she's gonna say this because she knows she was in trouble with her mom.

I've met him once, but he's not a friend or anything. His version sounds more likely, sounds really really more likely.

HS: He could get a girl his own age…

QT: He likes girls!

HS: If you had a daughter... if he had intercourse with her?

QT: Yes, there's be a bullet in Polanski's head...

HS: You would kill him?

QT: I'd beat the hell out of him, but the situation was not that she was against this, she was down to party with Roman.

Lets talk about it the way it was. She was down with the party, he was down with the party. I don't believe its rape for these 13-year-old party girls.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5358267/Quentin-Tarantino-defends-Roman-Polanski-2003-interview.html