At least one police union has seemingly abandoned its plans to boycott Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight in the wake of the director’s participation in an anti-police brutality rally in October and his subsequent escalating rhetoric against law enforcement.

A representative for the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the New York police union that first sparked the boycott threat, told TheWrap on Saturday that it was noncommittal about plans to follow through with the boycott.

“We’re not giving this guy anymore free publicity,” union spokesperson Albert O’Leary told the outlet over the weekend. “We have nothing to say about it.”

The Hateful Eight opened in limited release on Christmas Day and had premiered earlier in December with no reports of protests or disruptions. The epic western took in $1.9 million from 100 theaters in 44 cities on its opening day and is projected to earn around $5 million through its opening weekend, according to Variety. The film opens nationwide on December 31.

Tarantino touched off a firestorm of controversy when he marched in and addressed the RiseUpOctober rally in New York City just four days after NYPD officer Randolph Holder was shot and killed in Harlem while pursuing a suspect. The director referred to police officers as “murderers,” telling demonstrators: “When I see murders, I do not stand by. I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers.”

Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch quickly issued a statementcalling for a boycott of The Hateful Eight, and law enforcement groups representing thousands of officers across the country—including the LAPD, Philadelphia PD, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), and the National Association of Police Organizations—quickly joined the effort. FOP executive director James Pasco vowed his organization would deliver an economically damaging “surprise” to Tarantino’s film ahead of its release.

It was not immediately clear whether the aforementioned police organizations had entirely abandoned their plans to boycott the film. Emails from Breitbart News to the National Association of Police Organizations and Mr. Pasco at the Fraternal Order of Police seeking comment were not immediately returned.

Tarantino has stood by his comments about police officers in the months since the New York rally, appearing on multiple television and radio talk shows to defend his position. In his first comments after participating in the rally, the director told the Los Angeles Times that critics were attempting to silence him from speaking about police brutality.

Earlier this month, Tarantino said he was “not worried” about the backlash and threats of boycott from police organizations.

“People ask me, ‘Are you worried?’ And the answer’s no, I’m not worried, because I do not feel like the police force is this sinister black hand organization that goes out and f–s up individual citizens in a conspiracy sort of way,” the director said at a recent Hateful Eightpress conference. “Having said that, a civil servant shouldn’t be issuing threats, even rhetorically, to private citizens. The only thing I can imagine is that they might be planning to picket us, picket one of the screenings or maybe picket the premiere, or one of the 70mm screenings.”

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly just last week, Tarantino said he “utterly rejects” the “bad apples” argument that only a handful of police officers behave inappropriately on the job.

Quentin Tarantino continues to stand by anti-police comments he made earlier this fall in a new interview, saying he “completely rejects” the “bad apples” argument that only a small number of police officers behave inappropriately on the job.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly on Monday (and in an interview with Howard Stern last week), the Hateful Eight director put the blame for some instances of police brutality on the “institutional racism” of the profession.

“I completely and utterly reject the bad apples argument,” the director told EW. “Chicago just got caught with their pants down in a way that can’t be denied. But I completely and utterly reject the ‘few bad apples’ argument. Yeah, the guy who shot [Laquan McDonald] is a bad apple. But so are the other eight or nine cops that were there that said nothing, did nothing, let a lie stand for an entire year.”

“And the chief of police, is he a bad apple?” Tarantino continued. “I think he is. Is [Chicago Mayor] Rahm Emanuel a bad apple? I think he is. They’re all bad apples. That just shows that that’s a bulls*** argument. It’s about institutional racism. It’s about institutional cover-ups that are about protecting the force as opposed to the citizens.”

Tarantino created a firestorm of controversy in October when he participated in an anti-police brutality rally in New York City, where he said: “I am a human being with a conscience. And when I see murder, I cannot stand by, and I have to call the murdered the murdered and I have the call the murderers the murderers.”

Tarantino’s comments sparked calls for a boycott of the director’s upcoming Hateful Eightfrom some of the largest police associations in the country, including the NYPD, LAPD, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the National Association of Police Organizations.

Last month, Fraternal Order of Police executive director said his group’s 300,000 members had an economically damaging “surprise” planned for Tarantino before the Christmas Day release of his film. But the director told EW he only had “natural human trepidation” before the New York and Los Angeles premiers of Hateful Eight, and that, rather than frighten him, the police association’s threats proved his point.

“As far as getting my point across, the cops response to it has made my point for me in so many ways,” he said. “They look really bad. Civil servants, even rhetorically, shouldn’t be threatening private citizens. They sounded like bad guys in an ’80s action movie.”

The Hateful Eight opens this week in select theaters before opening wide on New Year’s Day. Variety reports that a screener of the film intended for Academy voters has leaked on the Internet and had already been illegally downloaded more than 500,000 times in a 24-hour period.

His films may be gory, but Quentin Tarantino has made it pretty clear where he stands on the issue of police brutality. “I think you can actually decry police brutality and still understand that there is good work that police do,” said Tarantino, who was in town today to promote The Hateful Eight.

“Just because some union mouthpieces are calling for a boycott doesn’t mean officers on the street are necessarily gonna follow suit,” he added. “A lot of police out there are big fans of my work. I hope they’re not gonna take Patrick Lynch’s word for what I said.”

At a rally against police brutality on October 24 in Washington Square Park, Tarantino told the crowd, “I have to call a murder a murder and I have to call the murderers the murderers. If you believe there’s murder going on then you need to rise up and stand up against it.”

Police unions across the country extending all the way up the ranks to the National Association of Police Organizations joined in on denouncing the director for what they considered “anti-police rhetoric” that equated all police with murderers.

While Tarantino has stood by his original statements, he insists that opposing injustice doesn’t necessarily mean opposing police. (“I never said that [all cops are murderers]. I never even implied that,” he later told the Los Angeles Times.)

As The Hateful Eight nears its December 25 roadshow release date, it’s unclear exactly what form the proposed boycott will take, if any. Executive Director of the Fraternal Order of Police Jim Pasco has said that “something is in the works,” and that whatever that something is “could happen anytime.”

At Monday’s press conference, the director went so far as to express his hope that more police might take his side of the issue:

“I think there are a lot of good cops out there who should agree with what I said if they’re coming from the right place.”

Tarantino said he hopes to “go further” with his activism once he’s done promoting the film. Until then, the bulk of his engagement with the issue of police brutality and institutional racism will take place through the camera lens.

After making Django Unchained, the genre-hopping director told reporters that he “realized I wasn’t done with the [Western] genre. I wasn’t done with what I felt I had to say…and one of the things I had to say in this regard was dealing with race in America, which a lot of Westerns had avoided for such a long time.”

For those police and civilians who won’t be participating in the boycott, tickets for the film’s 70mm roadshow went on sale today.

By Roxie Pell for gothamist.com

U.S. director Quentin Tarantino flashes a victory sign as he arrives on the stage during the 39th Cesar Awards ceremony in Paris February 28, 2014. REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen (FRANCE – Tags: ENTERTAINMENT) – RTR3FUHN

Published by Forbes.com:

It was just under a year ago when the entire film industry was sent into panic mode when an unknown third party group make cryptic and violent terroristic threats against Sony and those involved with The Interview. One major multiplex chain after another declined to screen the movie.  Sony canceled the theatrical release, which in turn led to calls of censorship and handwringing about our moviegoing freedom being denied due to caving into terrorist fears. Will we be as outraged by similar threats or as strident over our willingness to press on when those threatening filmmakers are representatives of American law enforcement?

As you know, Quentin Tarantino marched in and spoke at a #BlackLivesMatter rally in New York City on October 24th, where he made comments stating that the contested shootings of civilians by law enforcement, often unarmed black men, were acts of murder and thus the police officers involved were murderers. As a result, the NYPD Police Union forcefully responded in protest and officially boycotted Tarantino’s upcoming film The Hateful Eight. Over the last two weeks, the story has continued as more and more big city police unions have joined in what has become a national boycott. I argued earlier this weekend that said boycott was having the opposite effect since it was keeping the story at the top of the news cycle and making the filmmaker and his film into a national news story rather than letting it evaporate after a day or two as it otherwise would have absent the outcry.

Well, now the “Fraternal Order of Police,” which is the largest police union in the country, is apparently trying to help Mr. Tarantino’s film both become a box office smash and win a bunch of Oscars in the process. Yesterday afternoon, they issued what could only be described as a comic book supervillain-type threat against the filmmaker. To wit, Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police (which consists of 330,000 police officers) told The Hollywood Reporter that, to quote their headline, “We’ve got a surprise coming for you.”

“Something is in the works, but the element of surprise is the most important element,” Pasco said in the initial story. “Something could happen anytime between now and (the premiere). And a lot of it is going to be driven by Tarantino, who is nothing if not predictable. The right time and place will come up and we’ll try to hurt him in the only way that seems to matter to him, and that’s economically.”

Now for the record Mr. Pasco clarified that this was not remotely a threat of violence or physical harm. Yet this all started because Mr. Tarantino was speaking out against instances of police officers using deadly force when deadly force was arguably not called for. Under such circumstances, it is impossible not to read Pasco’s comments and not be reminded of any number of cinematic villains making various not-so-subtle “Ya know, stuff happens, things might go wrong, what can ya do?” threats as a means of intimidation.

And that’s what this is. Even if there isn’t any intent to do physical violence on anyone associated with the Weinstein Company film, this is still a grand act of intimidation and absolutely beyond the pale for someone proclaiming to represent those who protect and/or serve. Considering that the police are in-fact a governmental authority, said threat against person and/or economic interest as retribution for constitutionally protected speech has potentially crossed the line to where the Django Unchained filmmaker can say that his First Amendment rights are being violated.

Of course there is a world of difference between melodramatic terrorists threatening fiery death upon moviegoers for going to see a movie on Christmas weekend versus offering vague but presumably non-violent threats of something economically harmful against a single private citizen. But since the most plausible way to harm the filmmaker economically is to harm the economic earning potential of his new movie, then by proxy the movie is a target and thus so is anyone who might go to see it.

Until this “surprise” is revealed, those with an interest in seeing The Hateful Eight will arguably feel just a little less safe driving to the theater, taking our seats, and watching the movie unspool than we did yesterday morning. Even if it’s merely fear of being inconvenienced (a traffic jam, a power outage, the film prints being sabotaged, etc.), it is still a fear that we now have about the film that we didn’t have before this outrageously irresponsible public statement. We don’t know what Mr. Pasco and his Fraternal Order has planned over the next month or so.

Those of us who will presumably get the chance to see The Hateful Eight either during its gala premiere or during the actual Christmas Day platform debut will now be wondering in the back of our minds just what might happen and how it might affect us.

Yes, I am fully aware that this said theoretical danger is exponentially less than the actual danger faced by the very citizens whose arguably unjustified shootings spurred the protests in the first place. I will also presume that this “surprise” is not endorsed by the vast majority of this nation’s police officers. But yet it was Tarantino’s presumption that he didn’t need a #NotAllCops qualifier when discussing why maybe police officers shouldn’t shoot and kill people that didn’t need to be shot and killed that started this in the first place.

Furthermore, even if the Fraternal Order of Police plans nothing so much as to toilet-paper Mr. Tarantino’s house or pull a ding-dong ditch at the TCL IMAX, the fact remains that there are any number of less mentally stable individuals who may respond to the notion that Mr. Tarantino and/or would-be moviegoers who would see The Hateful Eight in theaters this Christmas are enemies of law enforcement worthy of a perhaps less “economic” kind of punishment. Yes, that is a potentially inflammatory theoretical to be sure. But we live in an era where violent shootings in a movie theater, as well as lethal attacks against private citizens targeted by media outlets and powerful politicians, are just common enough to no longer be merely within the realm of the fantastical.

And that’s precisely why people in power, especially those in law enforcement orcelebrities with large microphones, shouldn’t go around arguing that private citizens are glorified enemies of the state by virtue of their constitutionally protected behavior. There is a moral case, if not a legal one, for not pointing at citizens or various groups of people and saying “They are the bad guys, they hate you and yours and wish to harm you!” Even if you don’t wish any harm upon the accused, someone else may hear your cry and take it upon themselves to go a little further.

Around this time last year, we all puffed our chests and argued that it was our patriotic duty to stand up to the terrorists who were threatening us over a constitutionally protected work of art. It was our American right and duty to see the bawdy (and not as good as you might have hoped) action comedy as an act of patriotic defiance against these terroristic threats. Is it now our patriotic duty to see The Hateful Eight as an American action against threats and intimidation?

Will we as a populace, or at least the film pundit class, be as outraged this time out? Sure the details are different, and hopefully the threat is less severe. But we don’t know that. We merely have to go on faith that the same figurehead that showed the awful judgment to threaten a private citizen in public over what amounts to hurt feelings will also show good enough judgment to not break the law or do any real harm to anyone involved with making or seeing The Hateful Eight.

Yesterday a spokesperson for over 330,000 police officers just issued an over-the-top public threat like he was a comic book supervillain or cinematic crime boss. He threatened a filmmaker with financial harm for the crime of speaking out against a perceived injustice, and by proxy threatened said artist’s new film in such a vague way that anyone involved with making it or seeing it are now potential targets. Will our national sense of outrage be as forceful was it was last December or will we let it slide because the would-be menace was a representative of American police officers and not a would-be “other?”  Because with representatives of an armed governmental authority making public threats against an artist for engaging in lawful behavior, well, it’s like I said last year. In America, going to the movies should not be an act of courage.

Quentin Tarantino became an enemy of the NYPD and other cops who viewed his siding with anti-police brutality protesters as a slap in the face. The film director was rumored to offer statements that he was apologizing and stepping away from the controversial protests, but it appears that was entirely untrue.

The chatter around Tarantino began after he appeared in New York last month at a rally in Washington Square Park. Tarantino delivered statements that NYPD police chief Bill Bratton took seriously to heart.

The response to Tarantino’s speech at the rally had police unions and other figures painting him as someone who hates cops and Tarantino sat down with the Los Angeles Times to fully clear the air.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Tarantino said his remarks at the rally last month were aimed at police officers who have been involved in unwarranted shootings of civilians.

“What they’re doing is pretty obvious,” he said of his critics. “Instead of dealing with the incidents of police brutality that those people were bringing up, instead of examining the problem of police brutality in this country, better they single me out. And their message is very clear. It’s to shut me down. It’s to discredit me. It is to intimidate me. It is to shut my mouth, and even more important than that, it is to send a message out to any other prominent person that might feel the need to join that side of the argument.”

This tension between Tarantino and the police comes at a time where he’s promoting his upcoming film, The Hateful Eight. The Times suggested that the controversy might have an impact on sales of the film. Still, Taratino is doubling down with his support of the protestors against police brutality.

“I have a 1st Amendment right to protest against police brutality as I see it. And I’m not backing down from that,” Tarantino said.

The Guarding writes:

Django Unchained star Jamie Foxx has encouraged his friend Quentin Tarantino to “keep telling the truth” about alleged police brutality in the US, despite a growing rightwing backlash.

Speaking at the Hollywood Film Awards on Sunday, Foxx said the Oscar-winning film-maker should “keep speaking the truth and don’t worry about none of the haters”. His backing came after The Wrap reported that Tarantino would soon write a comment piece explaining his reasons for attending a protest against alleged police brutality on 24 October, during which he made controversial remarks to a crowd of around 300 which have drawn anger and calls for a boycott of the director’s films from police unions.

Speaking at the rally in New York, which was organised by a group opposing what it described as a “genocidal assault on black and Latino people in this country”, the film-maker stated: “If you believe there’s murder going on then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I’m here to say I’m on the side of the murdered.”

Police unions in New York, Los Angeles, Houston, New Jersey, Chicago and Philadelphia have criticised the Pulp Fiction director for his appearance and choice of words one week after NYPD officer Randolph Holder was fatally shot in the city. On Friday, the National Association of Police Organisations joined the growing boycott.

“As a high profile figure, Tarantino’s language is utterly irresponsible, particularly at a time when the nation is seeing increasing and persistent calls for the killing of officers,” said the association in a statement. “Anti-police rhetoric like Tarantino’s threatens the safety of police and citizens alike. The police he is calling murderers are the same officers who were present along the protest route to ensure the safety of protesters, who provide security when he is filming and who put their lives on the line to protect our communities day in and day out.”

Tarantino has also come in for criticism from US conservative commentators such as Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly, who said in a broadcast that he suspected the film-maker had “destroyed his career” with the New York appearance.

Studio The Weinstein Company, which is releasing Tarantino’s new film The Hateful Eight on Christmas Day in the US, were unavailable to comment on fears of a boycott.