Way back at the beginning of the year, there was a bit of excitement and confusion when legendary Italian actor Franco Nero said he was making a spaghetti western with Quentin Tarantino titled “The Angel, the Brute and the Wise.” Many assumed the latter was directing the film — which Nero said would also star Keith Carradine and Treat Williams — however it soon transpired that Tarantino was directing a spaghetti western of sorts, “Django Unchained,” and that “The Angel, the Brute and the Wise” was something else entirely. Anyway, as talk of Tarantino’s slavery vengeance pic heated up, everyone pretty much forgot about Nero’s project but he still insists it’s happening and that Tarantino will play a small role in it.
“I made him sign a letter of intent saying that he would do the movie,” Nero recently told Box Office Magazine (via /Film). “I am sure that very soon we will do it.”
If Nero has his way, Tarantino is not the only director he hopes to snare into the film, for what will be pretty small roles. “I said ‘Quentin, we are going to do a western. It would be an homage to Sergio Leone and John Huston, the director that discovered me, and would you be so kind to play a cameo?’ And he said, ‘Oh yeah! What do I have to do?’ I said, actually there are three bandits, and I have to kill them all, and he said, ‘oh, great, so I can come with Robert Rodriguez and my friends to play them.’ I said, yeah! That would be great!,” Nero explains. “He said, ‘But how are you going to kill me?’ I said, I’ll tell you—with a shotgun, and inside, instead of having bullets, it will be gold coins. He said, ‘I love it!’ “
A creative kill? Two cameo-happy directors in a throwback genre flick? Yeah, it sounds like something that could easily get Tarantino and Rodriguez onto a film set for one of their idols, but with the former gearing up to start work on “Django Unchained” this fall, we think Nero might want to hurry to lock down that cameo. And as for Nero’s involvement in Tarantino’s film? He says despite the rumors nothing has come his way. “I hope that Quentin will ask me to be in the movie,” he said. “I would be very happy, of course.”
