Man, even educated speculation gets you nowhere sometimes! We’re midway through our second read of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” (note his spelling naturally is inconsistent and he actually sticks to “Inglorious Basterds” most of the time) and we’re getting to know it quite intimately, however, we were wrong with our posit (though to be honest the news apparently even confused some cast members).
Yesterday, it was announced that ’70s TV actress, 82-year-old Cloris Leachman had joined the cast of Tarantino’s sprawling WWII epic. That made us assume the part she was playing was Madame Mimieux, the patrician French doyenne of the cinematheque who gives shelter to the film’s protagonist Shosanna from the Nazis.
But today we have learned that this is thankfully not the case (and thank god, cause they’d probably have to maker her character American and that would ruin the perfect, iciness of that character). Leachman will actually play a cameo role as Mrs. Himmelstein — “a very old Jewish woman” who is visited by Eli Roth’s character Donny “The Bear Jew” Donowitz in a flashback sequence that illustrates the character’s baseball-bat loving need for Jewish vengeance.
The role of Madame Mimieux is either still up for grabs or its still currently unknown who has been cast. The part was evidently originally going to go to Isabell Hupert and then was rumored for Catherine Deneuve at one point. The latter person was our first choice for the part and would be perfect, but we’ll see. Friends of ours are supposed to get the entire cast list tomorrow.
We thought this script was imperfect when we first read it and yes, it does have some third-act problems mostly of the too-outrageous-type, but it does get better on a second read and we think it’s Tarantino’s masterpiece work. Now if he can just pull it off onscreen.
