So Quentin Tarantino’s multi-tiered WWII epic, “Inglorious Bastards,” is up and running and currently shooting in Germany, right? Well, it looks like the last few pieces of casting went under the radar and its looks like the director went back to the well of old pals.
Tarantino has tapped Julie Dreyfus (“Sofie Fatale” from “Kill Bill”) and Michael Bacall and Omar Doom from “Deathproof,” which reunites the guys with Eli Roth — the three of them played the dudes in Tarantino’s “Grindhouse” half in the bar trying to pickup Arlene (Vanessa Ferlito), Shanna (Jordan Ladd) and radio disc jockey “Jungle Julia” Lucai (Sydney Tamiia Poitier).
We called this. You’ll remember in August of this year we had heard that Tarantino had wanted Bacall to play one of the Bastards soldiers and, well, we guess our source was on-the-money.
According to Tarantino Archives, Dreyfus will be playing the role of Francesca, the colluding Frenchwoman and interpreter to the Nazis and not Anne-Sophie Franck as previously reported. Whether Franck has a role in the film, who knows, but it wouldn’t surprise us if she had a small one. Archives also say that Doom has been cast as one of the Basterds, and with our previous report come to pass, we’re sure that Bacall is one of these badass Jewish-American soldiers as well.
Apparently, Tarantino had Dreyfus in mind for the film before “Kill Bill” had even started. In an interview from 2003 with the BBC, Dreyfus said,
“[Quentin] says he wrote me a part in his World War II movie [Inglorious Bastards]. He was working on it before he started Kill Bill, and he did tell me he was going to write me something. But I never read anything, so I don’t know. Again, that’s an example of how he works. He says, ‘Oh, I have a part for you,’ and then he starts writing and he’s like a novelist and just goes where the story takes him. So I have no idea. I’m just hoping that I’ll keep being part of his world. I wish nothing more than to work with him again.”
Looks like she got her wish. It’s interesting to see the way Tarantino works. Five years later and it turns out he was being dead serious when he said he had a part for her. Bacall is actually writing the adaptation of the graphic novel, “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” (for Edgar Wright, a Tarantino buddy) and was named one of Variety’s 10 Screenwriters to watch in 2007. Omar Doom has no IMDB screen credits besides “Deathproof,” but Tarantino seems to really dig him. We must assume he’s from some extended friend posse, and by his looks a buddy of Eli Roth’s.
Meanwhile, Christian Berkel, a German actor famous for playing Nazis is actually playing a Frenchman in the film according to German newspaper FilmStart.de. This is a bit of a subversive move playing against type and we wouldn’t have expected it. Could he be playing Perrier LaPadite, the French dairy farmer hiding Shosanna (the main female protagonist) and her Jewish family?
And great news! August Diehl, one of our favorite current German actors and one we actually picked to appear in ‘Bastards’ (albiet in a bigger role) apparently has been cast in the film as well. He was spotted attending a cast dinner in Germany. German actress Jana Pallaske (who recently starred in Wim Wenders’ “Palermo Shooting”) has also joined the cast in some unspecified mnanner.
It’s interesting that we bitched and moaned when Eli Roth was cast and Leonardo DiCaprio was rumored, and we were about to write this film off, but the casting did a complete 180 and we’ve got to say for the most part, we’re incredibly impressed with it and super happy that Tarantino decided to go with actual German And French actors. Hell, aside from Brad Pitt, and Mike Myers’ cameo there’s hardly any name actors in this thing at all.
PS. Note: we’re re-reading the script as we speak and it appears that if Doom and Bacall are Basterds (which since they’re American they almost positively are), they don’t actually have lines in the script because all of the major Basterds have been accounted for casting wise. How’s that? It’s deeper and larger piece that we’re writing now.
