The director of Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, and Reservoir Dogs Quentin Tarantino expressed to Variety how he’ll never put animal abuse in his movies in spite of the fate of his human characters that encounter blood baths and goriness. According to Tarantino, animals killed in films ruin the immersion since most of the time, the audience is worried about the furry friend or crawly insect instead of the character themself.

Tarantino stated, “I have a big thing about killing animals in movies. That’s a bridge I can’t cross.” He continued, “Insects too. Unless I’m paying to see some bizzarro documentary, I’m not paying to see real death. Part of the way that this all works is that it’s all just make-believe. That’s why I can stand the violent scenes, ’cause we’re all just fucking around.”

Tarantino expressed similar sentiments when he spoke about how he felt about sex scenes, decrying them as they serve no real purpose in moving the narrative forward and character development in movies. That led the public to point out his supposed hypocrisy through his close-up shots of feet and seemingly unveil Tarantino’s supposed foot fetish.

While talking about this in an interview, Tarantino informed Deadline about his upcoming film The Movie Critic, which is set in California in 1977 and is based on a real-life person. Tarantino explained, “He used to write movie reviews for a porno rag” who “wrote about mainstream movies and he was the second-string critic.”

“I think he was a very good critic,” Tarantino said. “He was as cynical as hell.”