I Can Take You And Your Girlfriend

July 1998
I can take you and your girlfriend
Michael Danza

A fashion stylist says she took a punch in the face from Quentin Tarantino, even if he meant to hit her boyfriend.

Leila Mwangi alleges in a $15 million lawsuit filed this week that the screenwriter opened a cut over her left eye when he punched her in the face at a Manhattan restaurant May 2.

The trouble started when Tarantino and Mwangi’s photographer boyfriend got into a heated discussion about the way Hollywood portrays black Americans, said Robert Godosky, her lawyer. Fists started flying.

“I’m sure there are at least two views of what caused the fight,” said Godosky, “but I don’t care. My client was not throwing any punches but she got hit by Mr. Tarantino.”

David Mortimer, a publicist for Tarantino, said he was not aware of the incident or the lawsuit.

Tarantino, who won the screenwriting Academy Award for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994, is starring on Broadway with Marisa Tomei in a revival of “Wait Until Dark.”