Although it lacks the catchphrase-generating back-and-forth of certain other celebrity feuds, Quentin Tarantino’s recently filed lawsuit against Alan Ball has its own amusing color: It seems the Academy Award-winning writer-directors are neighbors, and unfortunately for Tarantino, Ball and his partner Peter Macdissi are the proud owners of a large “exotic bird menagerie” which they keep in an outdoor aviary, where “they emit blood-curdling screams at random intervals for 7 to 8 hours each day.”
As with any sound appeal for injunction, the papers that Tarantino’s lawyers have filed quote Goethe in their argument, saying, “He is the happiest, be he king or peasant who finds peace in his home.” It then claims that those “obnoxious pterodactyl-like screams” of Ball's Macaws—which the suit helpfully notes are “a large variety of wild parrot known for its intolerably loud screech and for behaving poorly in captivity” —regularly prevent Tarantino from being able to achieve that peace, something that’s presumably more important than ever now that he’s attempting to finish his spaghetti Western.
The suit goes on to acknowledge the irony of Ball’s being a writer himself, supposing that this is the very reason why Ball keeps the birds and their “blood-curdling, prehistoric screams” outside. It also mentions that Tarantino has attempted to ask Ball nicely to do something about it, hopefully by saying, “Did you notice a sign in front of my house that said ‘Loud Exotic Bird Storage’?” because that is like something he said in a movie one time. It then notes that Ball and Macdissi have made promises to soundproof the aviary, but that they have so far “done little to eliminate the Macaws’ daily cacophony,” which is once again fairly poetic for a lawsuit. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that it also comes from Marty “Mad Dog” Singer—current attorney for Charlie Sheen—whom we’d like to thank for all the distraction this week.