Hollywood- Quentin Tarantino is among the maverick movie directors who might be crouching defensively at the prospect of New York Times Hollywood correspondent Sharon Waxman’s dishy, yet-to-be-published book, “Rebels on the Backlot.”

The man behind such 1990s neoclassics as “Reservoir Dogs” and “Pulp Fiction” – not to mention the more recent but equally buzzed-about “Kill Bill” series – emerges from Waxman’s narrative (of which I got an early peek) as a kind of stinky genius.

Make that a self-absorbed, inconsiderate, disloyal stinky genius.

Waxman, who secured Tarantino’s cooperation for the book, which is scheduled for a January release, repeatedly recounts his alleged antipathy to bathing and changing his underwear.

Then there’s her account of Tarantino achieving wealth and fame and coldly shedding old friends and cutting off his mother, Connie, who gave birth to him when she was only 14.

In a stunning act of treachery, Waxman reports, Tarantino abruptly fired his longtime manager, Cathryn Jaymes – who once, in one of many actions beyond the call of duty, cleaned out his rubbish-strewn car.

A few days after the fatal Northridge, Calif., quake that nearly destroyed Jaymes’ home, Tarantino phoned her.

To apologize for firing her and to find out how she was faring?

Nope.

To ask her for yet another favor, Waxman reveals.

The book will doubtless do little to dampen Waxman’s lightning-rod status in Hollywood, where her post at The Times makes her a feared movie-biz player.

“She got a lot of people to cooperate because they felt they had no choice,” claims a Hollywood insider. “She kind of bent them over a barrel, if you know what I mean.”