Studio Cut

The scene that played out poolside at Quentin Tarantino’s house in Los Angeles proved to be a small but significant snapshot in contemporary movie history. Two films – one directed by Tarantino and the other by his close friend, Eli Roth – were still in the early stages of development, and each director was offering the other vital encouragement.

One, Roth’s horror movie, HOSTEL, would go on to become a huge worldwide box office hit just over a year later. The other, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, took longer to reach the screen but would eventually become the latest, eagerly awaited offering from cinema’s enfant terrible – a World War II “fairytale” about a ruthless group of Jewish-American soldiers who operate behind enemy lines to strike fear into the hearts of the Nazis.

Roth himself would play one of the “basterds” – Sgt. Donny Donowitz – although back then, he had no idea he would appear in the film.

“I first heard about INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS in December 2004,” recalls Roth. “A couple of weeks earlier, I’d told Quentin about this idea for a movie I had, HOSTEL, and he loved it so much I went home and wrote it and gave him the first draft to read. He said, ‘This is great, but we can make it better.’ So, I went back to his house, and we talked it through and he came up with some ideas. It was great. At the end of the day we were hanging out, swimming in the pool, and talking movies, and he said, ‘Hey, do you want to hear scenes from INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS?’ And I thought maybe he meant a couple of pages, but he had 30 pages and he performed it for me – acting out every character including Hitler. It was quite a moment.”

Roth has known Tarantino for years and clearly regards him as a mentor and one of the most talented filmmakers of this, or any other, generation. “There are certain artists, like The Beatles, who are cultural phenomena who never lose their cool. It’s not like, ‘Oh, your parents are into it, so let’s not listen to it.’ Every generation loves it and embraces it. Quentin is the same. His films are so fresh and modern and, like The Beatles’ albums, they are timeless. Like ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,’ ‘Abbey Road’ or ‘The White Album,’ everyone will defend one of Quentin’s films and say ‘That’s the greatest…’”

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS surfaced again when the pair went on holiday together to Iceland over New Year’s in 2007. At that point, Tarantino was still uncertain about what form his story would take. There was the possibility of simply publishing the script, making it a novel, or even filming it as a TV mini-series. Roth pleaded with his friend to make it a movie.

“I always wanted him to do it as a feature,” says Roth. “This wasn’t a television thing. It’s a World War II epic. You don’t want to see that on the television, or at least I didn’t. I told him then, ‘It has to be a movie.’”

Tarantino carried on writing and began to use Roth, who is Jewish, as a sounding board. He wanted to know how Jewish people would react to his story about a group of soldiers who plot to kill the very highest-ranking Nazis, including Hitler. Tarantino, in his film, was rewriting history and Roth whole-heartedly approved.

“I invited him to my Passover Seder, and at that point, he hadn’t written Chapter Five (the climax to the film). And I said, ‘Quentin, if you really want to get the feeling of Jewish vengeance, come to my Seder.’ It was maybe 20 people, all East Coast Jews from New York and Boston, where I’m from. And it was a real moving experience for him, and he went home and finished Chapter Five. And while he was writing that last part, he was calling me to check the Jewish side of things. He was like, ‘Well, how would a Jewish person feel about this? And about that?’ And so, we were texting back and forth, and there was a period toward the end of his writing where he was calling me to get perspective. And I was like, ‘I’d kill every ****** one of the Nazis.’”

Roth feels strongly that the Jewish community will approve of Tarantino’s story, which shows the “basterds” – who are Jewish-American soldiers – taking extreme vengeance on the Nazis for their horrendous crimes.

“I think they’ll love it. A lot of Jews that I know, and a lot of non-Jews too, have had fantasies about killing Nazis. Where we grew up, in Newton, it’s a very Jewish area, and everyone’s grandparents were from Europe. So my grandparents are from Poland and Austria and Russia, and those who didn’t make it out were killed. And everyone grew up knowing there were camp survivors, and some were friends of your parents. They would come over, and you’d see the tattoos on their arms and they’d say, ‘Don’t ask them.’ But later in the day, they’d get around to talking about it and they’d be crying. And so, you grew up with a very strong Holocaust education. So as I said before, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is ‘kosher porn.’ It is a Jewish fantasy that we always visualize: going back in time and killing all of the Nazis. And it’s a movie about fighting violence with violence.”

As Tarantino continued writing, he told Roth that he had him in mind to play one of the “basterds,” Donny Donowitz. Roth had worked, as an actor, for Tarantino before, taking the relatively small role of Dov in DEATH PROOF. Roth assumed that his part in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS would be the same sort of scale. He was wrong.

“He told me that when he was writing Donowitz, he kept hearing my voice in his head,” says Roth. “And I thought it would be like DEATH PROOF and that I would be in one or two scenes. Then, I read the finished script, and I was really surprised. I was like, ‘Wow, this is a really big part. This is one of the leads.’ As you can imagine, I was delighted.”

Tarantino was also grateful to harness Roth’s skills as a director, too. Within the main movie, there is a Nazi propaganda film, NATION’S PRIDE, which is to be premiered at the Paris picture house that becomes the location for a plot to kill the high-ranking Nazis who will attend. Roth shot the NATION’S PRIDE short film himself.

Tarantino had set himself a tough deadline: he started prepping INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS last July and wanted the film to be ready in time to screen at the Cannes Film Festival, which it did, in May this year.

“I said to Quentin, ‘I’m going to be there for six months. So if you need help making Cannes, you’ve got another director there. Just give me a camera. I’ll do insert jobs. I’ll do it free and un-credited,’” says Roth. Quentin said, ‘That’s a good offer, and you know I don’t really have NATION’S PRIDE conceptualized. It’s just like a battle movie.’ And so I started prepping it. It was a tough schedule, but it was worth it. At one point, I was working seven days a week. From the moment I got the script, I hit the ground running. If I’d known what it was going to entail before, I might have thought ‘You can’t do that.’ But once you are committed to it, you tell yourself, ‘I’ve got to come through for him.’ And somehow, pushing yourself to that degree, is when you get your best stuff.”

Eli Roth burst onto the film scene in 2002 with his debut feature, CABIN FEVER, which he produced, directed and co-wrote. His second feature, HOSTEL, which he wrote, produced and directed, was a huge worldwide box office hit. The sequel, HOSTEL PART II, was released in 2007 and became another massive hit.

Roth is also an accomplished animator with 20 shorts to his credit, and as an actor, he appeared in Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF segment of GRINDHOUSE.  Roth also wrote and directed the faux trailer, THANKSGIVING, which appeared in between the features in GRINDHOUSE.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is released and distributed by United International Pictures thru Solar Entertainment Corp. In Cinemas 04 November 2009 (Wednesday).

MTRCB Rating: R-18 (without cuts)