You’ve surely by now see the ET sneak peak at Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” as it’s all over the Internet this morning.
But for those that haven’t read the script, Tarantino recently explained some of the film’s Nazi-scalping craziness to Empire magazine (which Tarantino Archives scanned).
“The idea is that they’re doing an Apache resistance against the Nazis,” the director said of the Basterd soldiers led by Brad Pitt’s character. “It’s taking the idea that the Jews are acting like the Apaches in a no win situation. The idea is to terrify the Nazis, get inside their minds.”
As for his lead character Lt. Aldo Raine? He’s described as an American hillbilly and the director says of his star, “Brad [Pitt] is wonderful. We wanted to work together for a long time and this was just the right one. After I finished the script, two days later I sent him a copy. He loves Aldo so much that he’s pretty much in character all day. When he’s on set, he’s Aldo. He doesn’t really break character.”
The footage above does strike us a little bit movie-like, with Pitt seemingly overdoing his lines, which is to be expected from Tarantino, but one reassuring thing Quentin says in the Empire article is about the fundamental importance of his lead villain and the languages he speaks. “If I hadn’t found the right Landa (Christoph Waltz) I would have pulled the plug. Landa’s a linguistic genius, so I had to find somebody who was [like that] because half of his scenes are in German, the other half is in French. And there’s a big scene in English, so he’s actually got to be able to do my dialogue in English as good as as the German as good as the French.”
He also praised his lead heroine Melanie Laurent. “Melanie just came in auditioned,” the director said of how she scored the coveted lead role (arguably one more essential than Pitt’s is to the story). “I thought she was terrific. She’s a wonderful actress. She has a lovely emotions-at-the-ready quality. She totally understands Shosanna in her soul.”
BTW, it appears that the full ‘Basterds’ teaser trailer will screen in front of “Friday The 13th” this Friday, what a terrible movie to be associated with… or maybe not. Maybe the Weinsteins are just simply trying to court the geeky blood n’ guts crowd. We’re hoping ‘Basterds’ is much more than that.