By Iain Blair

I’ve had lengthy conversations with Quentin Tarantino throughout the years, and for quite some time he’s been talking about “writing this big WW11 script, The Inglorious Bastards,” as he calls it. Well, his dream is finally a reality as Inglourious Basterds – as it’s now known - began principal photography last week on location in Germany.  The star-heavy ensemble cast of Inglourious Basterds includes Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Mike Myers and Cloris Leachman and the film reunites Tarantino with Academy Award-nominated Editor Sally Menke, Academy Award-winning Director of Photography Bob Richardson and Production Designer David Wasco.

Joining Tarantino for the first time is Academy Award-nominated Costume Designer Anna Sheppard. So why the long wait? Quentin told me “it’s the script that took so long,  and I ended up writing two scripts. Then I got inspired about doing Kill Bill. Don’t forget, when I came out with Reservoir Dogs, I’d already written True Romance and Natural Born Killers and From Dusk Till Dawn. And after Reservoir Dogs came out, I wrote Pulp Fiction.

“So, the reason anyone knows who I am is because I have this big body of work which gives you a nice sense of my writing style, my personality, my dialogue, all that kind of shit. And suddenly it all got made in one big burst. And what happens with most writer/directors is, once you use up all that stuff, you’re like, ‘OK, what do I do next?’ And you have to start from scratch again. And you’ll notice that what happens with a lot of people who become famous as writer/directors - not Woody Allen - is that at a certain point they stop writing their own scripts, as it’s too much of a pain in the ass to always start from scratch. So they look for a script they like and then rewrite it or develop it. But I like to write my own stuff.”

Academy Award-nominee Lawrence Bender is producing Inglourious Basterds; Bob and Harvey Weinstein are the executive producers. The Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures, through its newly formed International Studio, are co-financing and co-presenting the film with TWC handling domestic distribution and Universal handling international distribution. The two companies are partners on the project, which will be released worldwide in 2009.

Share This

This entry was posted on Friday, November 14th, 2008 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.