Apr 2001
In this issue:
Features
Pulp friction
The peerless Tarantino is back in the cinemas with Inglourious Basterds, a ruthlessly graphic fantasy that of WWII
Issue: Sep, 2009
Despite the 1940s setting, the militaristic wardrobe and the expansive explosions, Quentin Tarantino’s latest film is not about war. It’s not even about people, race, or vengeance – nothing of any sentimental substance at all, in fact. Inglorious Basterds is simply about other movies. “The Dirty Dozen was a huge influence,” says Quentin, before going on to list a collection of B-movies, noir pulp, spaghetti westerns and 1970s exploitation flicks that would make any cinema geek proud. “These were the starting off point, and then I kind of go my own way. When I first sat down to write Inglourious Basterds I thought I was going to write my Dirty Dozen. It didn’t work out that way but that’s what got me to sit down.” The result was a tale that is uniquely, unmistakably Tarantino: a World War Two western, a fairytale that re-writes history in a way that perhaps only this particular filmmaker would dare to do.
His previous works are all in there, too, of course, displaying a canny knack of self-reference as he charts another gory, vengeful yet cathartic story. The snappy Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino’s 1992 directorial debut, first served up his stylised dialogue and cartoonish violence; Pulp Fiction, his critically-acclaimed follow-up, set them in stone. Both these projects have an obvious impact on Basterds, from its dark humour to the nearly sadistic violence – not to mention the sharp one-liner-laden script.
Tarantino, a perpetual, obsessive film student, is renowned for his extraordinarily protracted dialogue, which he claims to write when he’s sitting alone, and the conversations come to him. The “Sicilian scene” in True Romance, between Christopher Walken’s Vincent Coccotti and Dennis Hopper’s Clifford Worley, which famously describes the island’s bloodline, remains his most famous, and he claims is only bettered by the opening 20 minutes of Inglorious Basterds. “Basically, I just get the characters talking to each other, and then they do it,” he says. “They really write the scene. I’m more like a court reporter jotting it down… when I’m done writing the scene, then Quentin the writer comes in and just kind of cleans it up just a little bit.”
Tarantino’s is perhaps the most unique voice in contemporary cinema. But there’s little question he owes much of his style to a fusion of the movies that filled his youth. He would skip school to watch kung fu and blaxploitation films in dilapidated theatres in Manhattan Beach, south of Los Angeles, and after dropping out of high school at 15, Tarantino starting taking acting classes. Back then, he says, it was nearly impossible to get real movie scripts for his workshops. “One of the prerequisites of being a writer, or at least a good writer, is you have to have a really good memory. So, I would go see a movie and I’d just remember the scene. On the bus ride home and I’d write the scene down from memory and anything I didn’t remember, I filled in the blanks.”
At the age of 22, Tarantino became a maniacal video-store clerk, hanging out with fellow movie buffs like Roger Avary (director, producer, and Oscar-winning screenwriter) and spending the days discussing and recommending films to customers. Nine years later, his first two creations had won him critical acclaim, and he spent the subsequent decade lurking around darker corners of the Tarantino Universe, a contemporary world of sadistic gangsters, wise-cracking assassins and the hapless loners who inevitably get in their way. A war film set in France, therefore, didn’t seem a likely jump for the Kentucky kid with an Americana fixation.
It took Tarantino nearly ten years to bring the fairytale set in Nazi-occupied France to life, to come up with his group of renegades and their history-defying mission. The process involved sifting through the different influences and scenarios the movie would encompass, keeping the parts he wanted to explore further, eliminating those that weren’t instantly Tarantino. This meant getting rid of practically anything approaching a battle scene. “No tanks – they’re gone,” he laughs. “It wasn’t about that. I was always much more drawn to situations, to the cloak-and-dagger kind of stuff, with people hiding in Nazi-occupied countries and pulling stuff behind the scenes.”
Once the script for Basterds was injected with this macabre humour, Tarantino overruled his earlier misgivings and set about finding his cast. And his biggest coup, was landing the world’s most famous man, Brad Pitt, who has previously unearthed a passion for spoof roles in Snatch and Burn After Reading. Tarantino and Brad Pitt had met each other only briefly, but were unashamed fans of each others’ work. They were eager to work together, and there was one character specifically, Lt Aldo Raine, that Tarantino thought would be perfect for Pitt.
Tarantino was then invited over to dinner at the Pitt household to discuss the final details of the project. They got along brilliantly – and the dinner lasted late into the night. “I sent the script off to him, he read it and he wanted to meet me. And so we met at his place and we had about five bottles of wine – Brad’s own rosé, because he has a vineyard. It’s amazing. That was quite a night,” he laughs.
To get to know his hosts and their dreams better, Tarantino would take over the Babelsberg cinema once a week to host his very own “film nights”, where he would screen movies from his own private collection, complete with hot dogs and popcorn. “It was really cool because the German production manager was very excited that we were doing stuff like this, so we’d have salty and sweet popcorn. And we got beers, lots of Becks, and then they started getting a hot dog truck. We’d do that most Thursday nights. It’s fun, man. It’s the movies.”
It’s almost as though Tarantino is creating an alternate universe in his films, where movies have ultimate power to destroy and eventually give a surge of triumph. Inglourious Basterds could well be the fullest expression this specialised art. “The power of cinema is going to bring down the Third Reich,” he says. “I get a kick out of that!"
For a full version of this article, see NOX38
