Ennio Morricone, the legendary composer who wrote the music for the biggest spaghetti westerns and scored Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, has spoken out against the director in an interview for Playboy Germany.

In the interview, Morricone calls Tarantino’s work “trash” and brands him a “cretin”. Evidently, the collaboration between the two cinema icons on The Hateful Eight didn’t go as smoothly as they might have hoped, despite the fact it won Morricone his first Oscar.

The composer’s chief complaint seems to be with Tarantino’s originality (or lack of it). “He just steals from others and puts it together again. There is nothing original about that,” he says, adding that he doesn’t even consider him a real director.

Morricone also goes on to say that Tarantino is “not comparable to real Hollywood greats like John Huston, Alfred Hitchcock or Billy Wilder. They were great. Tarantino is just cooking up old stuff.”

But Morricone has a more personal, work-related bone to pick with the Kill Bill director, too. “He calls out of nowhere and then wants to have a finished film score within days, which is impossible. Which makes me crazy! Because that’s just not possible.” Tbh, that’s a fair point, since the Italian is now 90 years old.

The whole Morricone interview isn’t just about slagging off Tarantino, though. He also takes aim at Hollywood more generally, criticising “these pompous pomposities, these embarrassments like the Oscars and the whole frippery” that he says pervades “this dreadful America”. Sounds like he’s reached that age where people just stop caring what anyone thinks.

UPDATE: Since this news, Morricone has publicly denied the comments made in Playboy Germany, claiming that the interview never happened. “This is totally false,” he said in a statement released Sunday (November 11). “I have not given an interview to Playboy Germany and even more, I have never called Tarantino a cretin and certainly do not consider his films garbage. I have given a mandate to my lawyer in Italy to take civil and penal action.”