The release of a screenplay for a Quentin Tarantino film is de rigeur, but we didn’t realize the paperback screenplay version of “Inglourious Basterds,” would be available so soon. It’s out today in stores and can be purchased at Amazon, where-have-you stores. Bit curious as to who’s going to be buying it as that screenplay has probably been the most widely circulated script on the Internet in the last few years and was basically everywhere a day or two after it was handed in to producer Lawrence Bender, et al.
The paperback ‘Basterds’ screenplay is 176 pages and we’re vaguely curious if it includes anything not in the version that leaked and everyone has read (like the inclusion of Omar Doom, Paul Rust and Michael Bacall’s characters, who aren’t in the original script; not they they really have lines in the film — Doom does, but it’s just taking over for Samm Levine’s lines in the last act; Tarantino switched out the characters for some reason). We’re sure many Tarantino obsessives, probably Tarantino Archives, will purchase it and let us know.
Tarantino’s hubris knows no bounds and that was definitely on display Saturday evening in Austin at the Q&A for “Inlgourious Basterds,” but this quote Jeff Wells found from the director’s appearance on CBS Sunday Morning this weekend is just out-fucking-rageous and deserves a slapdown or karmic retribution this weekend.
“I have sibling rivalry with Orson Welles. I don’t think he’s that good…all right? I have sibling rivalry with him and Stanley Kubrick,” Tarantino said.
Dude, you fucking wish. Gotta hand it to the Weinstein Company though, they are flogging Tarantino everywhere to make this thing a hit. In that New York Times article about TWC that we wrote about this morning, where Harvey Weinstein says, “You see this?” [pointing at a Nielsen NRG tracking poll, a gauge of public interest in coming movies and figures beside “Inglourious Basterds”] “This is called ‘smash hit’!”
His claims remain to be seen. Most estimates are pointing ‘Basterds’ to an opening no higher than $30 million (which would be less than “District 9”), but it’s really early in the week and those numbers could easily rise by Friday. It surely will be #1 at the box-office, but there’s literally no competition aside from Robert Rodriguez’s “Shorts,” which is aimed at an entirely different audience: kids (how ironic would it be if Rodriguez’s WB film topped QT’s TWC film?).
Totally forgot to mentioned we posted a If I Were Quentin Tarantino imaginary soundtrack playlist about two years ago now. It’s got some pretty good stuff if we do say so ourselves and anticipated the use of Billy Preston in ‘Basterds.’