Tarantino goes on the warpath
Hitler, Goebbels and Churchill all feature in the next Quentin Tarantino movie, with Brad Pitt and Mike Myers among the cast. Jonathan Dean reports on the latest twist in an eccentric career
Hands up who saw Quentin Tarantino's last film, Death Proof? It made £407,525 in its first week of release, entering the UK box office at number six, lower than the Adam Sandler vehicle I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry. The man behind pop-culture staples Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction taking less cash than a first-base comedy about two straight firemen pretending to be gay? As the latter's Jules Winnfield (Samuel L Jackson) might say, "Motherf..."
So Quentin Tarantino had an iffy 2007. But now, as befits a man born to go against the grain, the director is back in the spotlight, preparing to shoot his next film in October. The movie in question – only his sixth – is the long-gestated Inglorious Bastards, taking its name, but not its plot, from a 1978 Italian Second World War movie about a gang of US deserters fighting for the French Resistance. The reimagining is a juggernaut from the same era about US soldiers on a mission to assassinate high-ranking Nazis, replete with expletives, scalping, heroines and Hitler. It couldn't be more Tarantino if it had a couple of GIs chinwagging about the Gallic naming conventions of Quarter Pounders with cheese.
The buzz around Bastards has been building for almost a decade. Touted as Tarantino's next project back in 2001 ("It's my bunch-of-guys-on-mission film. It's my Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare kind of thing," he said back then), the director struggled with its ending, making 2003/04's two-part Kill Bill instead. Once that kung fu homage was complete, it was back to Bastards and a substantial tweak. Cameras were set to roll in late 2005. They didn't. Rather, QT teamed up with his best mate, Robert Rodriguez, to shoot the ill-fated Grindhouse double-header. Inglorious Bastards? Terry Gilliam's Don Quixote seemed more likely to hit multiplexes.
Yet here it comes and it's now moving as fast and as furiously as the Allies' D-Day assault. Last month a script called "Inglourious Basterds" (sic) leaked. "Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino," it is split into five chapters, kicking off in "1941, one year into the German occupation of France" and ending, 165 thrilling pages later, with a chaotic finale high on exhilaration and low on historical accuracy. It features Hitler, Churchill, Goebbels, is multi-storied as Tarantino does best and has at least three set pieces (watch out for farm, bar and cinema) set to be among his jaw-dropping best.
It is simply brilliant and, not surprisingly, the whole of Hollywood is itching to be attached to the film. Over the years, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael Madsen seemed certs for different roles, but the fresh start brought fresh faces led by none other than Brad Pitt as Lt Aldo Raine. He's the leader of the eponymous Inglorious Bastards, eight Jewish-American soldiers hell-bent on taking 100 Nazi scalps each. Foul-mouthed and full of hate, the octet share the best dialogue that Tarantino has written since 1997's underrated Jackie Brown.
Pitt's not the only A-lister, either. Throw in Mike Myers doing another British accent as Blighty Bastards buddy General Ed Fenech and the topline should spin money. Leonardo DiCaprio was even considered for the film's main Nazi baddie, Col Hans Landa, before Tarantino opted for little-known Austrian Christoph Waltz instead. Smart move, considering the flak that Tom Cruise's forthcoming Second World War thriller, Valkyrie, is feeling for not having one Germanic dialect among its Brit/US thesps playing German soldiers.
Accent authenticity doesn't stop with the men, either. Tarantino is reuniting Diane Kruger (who was born in Lower Saxony) with her Troy co-star Pitt for the role of the German actress/spy Bridget von Hammersmark. Tantalisingly, there also remains one major female role up for grabs in the shape of French Jewish peasant teen Shoshanna, continuing a rich vein (Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, a whole carload in Death Proof) of QT heroines. She's sexy, sassy and smart, with French starlets Ludivine Sagnier and Stéphanie Sokolinski being bandied about for the role alongside Israel-born Natalie Portman. Whoever is chosen will end up as the poster girl.
All in all, Inglorious Bastards is set to be the most star-studded war film since Terrence Malick's 1998 movie, The Thin Red Line. He had cameos from George Clooney and John Travolta, while Myers's part in Bastards is similarly brief and Pitt's Lt Raine only bothers just over a third of the screenplay. Hostel director Eli Roth has been cast, too, appropriately enough in the violent role of "Bear Jew" Sgt Donnie Donowitz. Donowitz clobbers his Nazi victims to death with a baseball bat, barely speaking and mainly thwacking. It's a perfect part, really, for a Tarantino cohort many believe can't actually act.
Saving Private Ryan, then – a stately, subdued, sombre epic – this is not. But why now, and why should we care? The answer lies in the film's evolution. Grindhouse – Rodriguez's zombie-schlocker Planet Terror and QT's girls-on-the-run Death Proof – performed badly. An expertly created love letter to exploitation and sleazepit cinema, the three-hour film bombed, taking only $11.5m on its Easter 2007 US opening (the film was predicted to take three times as much) and being split in the UK.
Long-term Tarantino-backer Harvey Weinstein is back on board for Inglorious Bastards, despite admitting to being "incredibly disappointed" with Grindhouse's performance. All of which makes Bastards – an ultra-violent, snappy war movie brimming with internet excitement – the perfect film to put the auteur back on a commercial track. This time round, Weinstein may have gone to a major studio (Universal) for financial assistance, but his loyalty remains. The casting of Pitt, too, the biggest movie star in the world, is a genius move that no doubt loosened the purse strings of any remaining sceptical moneymen.
Some German critics, though, are none too impressed with the film's tenuous grasp of basic history. "This is pop culture encountering Nazi Germany and the Holocaust with unprecedented force," said Tobias Kniebe, film critic for Süddeutsche Zeitung. "The effects of this collision are utterly unpredictable. All the German historians and critics who were left gasping for breath by Tom Cruise and his worthy attempts to produce a correct image of Stauffenberg [in Valkyrie] will be so shocked by Inglorious Bastards that they will savage it on the spot."
All of which proves Tarantino is still capable of ruffling a few feathers. So he makes certain things happen to certain historical characters that most certainly did not happen – but then again, the Enigma code machine was captured by the British, not the Americans as portrayed in 2000's U-571 and no, Marie Antoinette did not own a pair of Converse trainers as shown in Sofia Coppola's 2006 punk-biopic. But this is a movie directed by Quentin Tarantino. "I don't want it to feel like a period film," he says. "This is a modern, in-your-face movie." It was never aiming for a spot on the National Curriculum.
The final word should go to Enzo Castellari, the director of 1978's Inglorious Bastards – tagline: "Whatever the Dirty Dozen did, they do it dirtier!" Tarantino has entirely overhauled the plot so this is not a remake, but he's been in touch with the 70-year-old Italian over the years, even promising Castellari a role when cameras start rolling on 13 October. It would be decent thanks for the man credited with coming up with the oddball title. "A strange law in the Italian government at the time had just decided to remove all firearms from the movies, so they took all our guns – crazy!" he laughs of his film. "It's not easy to do a war movie without weapons! After they went, everyone was saying, 'Bastards! Bastards! Bastards!' And I just said, 'Inglorious bastards!' And everyone said, 'That's it! That's the title of the movie!' I'm still very proud of it!"
Suffice to say there will be guns in Tarantino's version, rumoured to be hankering after a slot at the Cannes Film Festival next May. That would be one hell of a turnaround for a man who's been tinkering with his opus ad infinitum, but don't count against him. Death Proof may have set him back, but if there is one director you'd expect to be able to shoot his way out of a corner, then it's Quentin Tarantino.
TARANTINOGRAPHY
Reservoir Dogs (1992)
This was where it all began for Tarantino – a stylish and violent heist movie. At times, the adolescent shock tactics were over the top – witness the scene in which Michael Madsen lops off a cop's ear with a razor. The film gave a huge jolt to US indie cinema.
Pulp Fiction (1994)
The peak of Tarantino's career. The visuals were a treat – the dance scene with John Travolta and Uma Thurman, the syringe into Thurman's heart – but what everyone remembers is the dialogue: Travolta and Samuel L Jackson riffing about burgers, Marcellus growling: "I'm gonna get medieval on your ass."
Jackie Brown (1997)
Pam Grier brought poise and elegance to the title role. Tarantino still had a knack for writing witty and provocative dialogue, but what "Jackie Brown" lacked was the snap of its predecessors.
Kill Bill VOLS 1 & 2 (2003/2004)
Uma Thurman slices off limbs and heads with gleeful abandon. Some tremendous action sequences and plenty of highly stylised bloodletting ensured that the films were nothing if not vivid.
Death Proof (2007)
Tarantino's half of a "Grindhouse" double bill didn't do great box-office business. Still, he served up one of the best car-chase sequences in history – it was so deliriously violent that it puts even the chariot race in "Ben-Hur" to shame.
