The latest edition of Entertainment Weekly (not online, but we scanned) examines Quentin Tarantino’s upcoming WWII B-movie homage, “Inglourious Basterds.”
Included in the preview is this picture which shows Eli Roth and Brad Pitt in their respective roles as Jewish baseball-toting Sgt. Donny Donowitz and Tennessee hick Lt. Aldo Raine, the leaders of the Nazi-scalping gang known as the Basterds. The shot of them together is the POV of a Nazi who is about to get a certain insignia carved in his forehead.
EW also caught up with Quentin Tarantino who boasted that Pitt was in character the whole time and the director loved it. “Aldo has the big, thick hillbilly accent — he’s from Tennessee — so if I asked Brad a question he would answer with Aldo’s inflection. It was great. I could spend all day hanging out with the character I created.”
Why make a WWII film the magazine asks? Tarantino says WWII was always his steez. “I’ve always liked that sub-genre: a bunch of guys on a mission. In the 1940s they made war movies with a wonderful mix of adventure and action. And comedy too. That’s all my shit, you know?”
Will the final film be different from the script the whole world has already read? The filmmaker suggests that yes, you’ve only been reading an early version. “[I prefer editing to shooting]. Editing goes back to the writing process. I’ve always considered the last draft of the script to be the first cut of the movie.”
“Inglourious Basterds” is set to premiere at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival and will hit U.S. theaters on August 21.