For his next picture, polarizing auteur Quentin Tarantino will move from a Nazi revenge-fantasy mash-up to the hot-button topics of slavery, racism and the Deep South. The title page and plot details of “Django Unchained” were recently leaked to the web.
Whether or not the leak was intentional, Tarantino’s agents confirmed the news that he’d finished a new script and gave movie geeks as well as the cinema blogosphere plenty to chew over for a news cycle or two. A scan of the title page for “Django Unchained” accompanied most of the stories; like his smash-hit “Inglorious Basterds,” it is handwritten in an almost childlike scrawl.
Tarantino is notable, of course, for his fanatical devotion to obscure corners of the movie universe whose denizens are household names to a select few cinema obsessives. Tarantino’s gift is for synthesizing their styles and quirks into mainstream entertainment. Sometimes it works—see “Basterds” and “Pulp Fiction“—and sometimes it bombs, as with “Grindhouse.”
So what about the new script? “The title pays homage to both the Sergio Corbucci original ‘Django,’ not to mention Takashi Miike‘s ‘Sukiyaki Western Django,’ which features Tarantino,” notes Indiewire.com. “Another long-rumored inspiration… was Elmore Leonard‘s ‘40 Lashes Less One.‘ ”
Don’t worry if those names and titles mean nothing to you; ask your local movie geek. Or better yet, look ’em up on Wikipedia, Netflix and elsewhere.
Christoph Waltz stole his every scene and won an Academy Award for his memorable turn as a gleefully villainous Nazi in “Basterds” and will re-team with Tarantino for “Django Unchained.”
Tarantino’s reps also confirmed the following plot summary: “It’s a Western whose lead character is a former slave who is in league with Waltz to save his wife from an evil plantation owner.”
In an earlier interview, the director expressed a desire to film what he termed a “Southern” (rather than a Western). “(R)ather than set it in Texas, have it in slavery times. With that subject that everybody is afraid to deal with. Let’s shine that light on ourselves,” he said.
“You could do a ponderous history lesson of slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Or, you could make a movie that would be exciting. Do it as an adventure. A spaghetti Western that takes place during that time…. I want to do movies that deal with America’s horrible past with slavery and stuff, but do them like spaghetti Westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they’re genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it’s ashamed of it.”
More on “Djano Unchained” by Indiewire.com HERE and HERE 