No shortage of Inglourious Basterds news has made the rounds since yesterday's Cannes premiere, but one nugget prompted some particularly interesting speculation from Quentin Tarantino: How close did his new WWII epic come to being scuttled entirely? That fate was nearer than the filmmaker expected at this time last year (or so he said Wednesday), at least until an unlikely hero came to his rescue.
I mentioned yesterday how one of the best things about Taratino's latest film is the little-known German actor Christoph Watlz (far left), whose cunning Nazi Col. Hans Landa possesses a special, sadistic knack for locating Jews during World War II. In choosing Waltz, Tarantino displayed one of his major talents: casting prowess. But while Waltz's resume is packed with dozens of roles in German films and TV, his road to playing what's essentially the lead role in a big-budget Hollywood movie was anything but simple, according to Tarantino.
"I realized I was writing a pretty impressive character fairly early on: He's a linguistic genius," the director said. "It's one of the main aspects of the character, and I knew that whatever actor I cast to play this had to be as much of a linguistic genius as Landa is, or he would be trapped on the page."
It's a grueling role. Throughout the film, Landa speaks four languages fluently: English (with an accent that might place him from Boston), Italian, French, and his native German. Yet aside from the languages, he needed to have a sadistic and charming side. In the chilling opening scene, Landa deftly uses language, switching between French and English in his conversation with an unlucky villager to get what he wants: the location of one of the town's Jewish families.
"I was rightfully proud of that character," Tarantino said, "so I started casting actors in Germany, but I wasn't finding anyone who had quite everything I needed a hundred percent. They could do the poetry in this language, but they couldn't do the poetry in that language. He had to be able to say the poetry in every language."
Waltz fulfilled the criteria, though he almost never got the chance play the role of a lifetime. "I called the producers and said, 'Look, if we can't find the right Landa, I'd rather just publish this script and do something else,'" Tarantino continued. "We were going to get our cash-flow money on Friday, and this was Monday. I was like, 'If I'm gonna pull the plug I need to pull it now, this week while it's still only my money involved. If we don't find him, I'm pulling the plug on Thursday, and I'm going to publish the script and that's it.' The producers were very cool about it. They said we'll just spend this week on Landa Landa Landa Landa."
The exhaustive search paid off. "I can tell you the day Christoph came, walked into the room, sat down and read two scenes," the director said. "I remember thinking 'We're making the movie.'" Following his nod to the heretofore unknown German actor, Waltz got up from his seat, and walked over to Tarantino and gave him a kiss -- on the head, not on the rear.