Original subtitles

After the success of "Reservoir Dogs."

I used to work minimum wage.

The mega success, "Pulp Fiction."

I know, unbelievable.

The slow burn that earned,

"Jackie Brown."

And the whole

bloody spectacle of "Kill Bill."

It seemed Quentin Tarantino could do no wrong.

The woman's voice.

- Quentin Tarantino. - Quentin Tarantino.

Quentin Tarantino.

- We happy? - Yeah, we happy.

Until he did.

Not quite a box office success.

This is the story of how Hollywood's wunderkind

rewrote his own mythology.

And would succeed despite controversial associations.

He goes, "Who's that on the phone?"

She goes, "Oh, it's Michael Madsen."

Footsteps. Right out the door, he went.

And a World War II epic

12 years in the making,

"Inglourious Basterds."

The Germans call them,

- The Basterds. - Basterds?

We're gonna be dropped into France.

Through our cruelty, they will know who we are.

But the road to Tarantino's audacious

genre blending blockbuster

would be littered with unexploded risk factors.

Could Quentin get his band back together?

He likes to keep things close.

How did he resolve the most difficult casting

problem of his career?

In his words, the best character he's ever created.

He thought that actor might not exist.

Would the fans even laugh

at a Nazi black comedy?

How was Tarantino's magnum opus born?

Shot.

It was a very hostile environment to step into.

And how did it avoid being completely blown up?

This nearly killed the film.

It was 2006,

and despite riding a wave

of cinematic triumphs,

Quentin Tarantino broke away

from his long time collaborator,

producer, and friend, Lawrence Bender,

to see other people.

"Kill Bill" was tough.

It was 154 days of shooting.

He and Lawrence had a little bit of a struggle

during and after "Kill Bill."

Are you gonna be nice?

I've never been nice my whole life.

So Quentin headed to Texas

where Robert Rodriguez's Troublemaker Studios

turned low budgets into genre gold.

That's what I love about Austin, it's just so damn small.

The pair conceived two one-hour movies

made for no frills and nonstop thrills

known as Grindhouse films.

Bob and Harvey Weinstein put up 40 million

using their Dimension Films company,

assuming by now Tarantino was a pretty safe bet.

So let's do it.

And in the thick of it was Steve Joyner.

Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino built my career.

They wanted to do

two Grindhouse movies and run them back to back.

Two creatives at their peak teamed up

to make a classic double feature.

Rodriguez's contribution would be "Planet Terror."

a zombie horror comedy screened first.

After a brief intermission, audiences would be treated

to Tarantino's film starring Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell,

Mary Elizabeth Winsted, Vanessa Ferlito, and Kurt Russell.

Is it safe?

Aw, it's better than safe.

It's death proof.

There's a stunt man.

He's death-proofed his car

and he uses it as a weapon to kill women.

Death Proof was designed to be an homage

to the great car chase "Bullitt."

"Vanishing Point."

It's a fucking classic.

And once again,

Quentin would reach back into his grab bag

of inspirations and references.

But this time...

I can remember just saying to him,

"Just cast one woman in that movie that I could look like

because I have to work on that movie."

He was like, "You'll work on it."

And it wasn't until he brought me the script

and my name is in it

and I was like, "Yo, whoever you cast as Zoe,

I have to look like them

because I have to be my own double."

And he was like, "Yes, you will be your own double

because you're playing the role."

And I was like, "Eh, oh, uh."

Fucking hell, how does that happen?

Unchecked filmmakers

and a three-hour runtime pushed

the budget past 53 million dollars.

Originally, they were both supposed to be

about 65, 70 minutes.

I'm just gonna have to make this quick.

So they could run. But of course,

being the prolific auteurs that they are,

both of them made feature length films,

if not a little bit more.

But were double features a thing of the past?

The exploitation genre and duration were too much

for Tarantino's normally loyal audience.

And "Death Proof," because it's combined

as the Grindhouse experience,

does not land with audiences here, especially overseas.

I admit that sounds bad.

It is bad.

Grindhouse was more poor house.

The film grossed 25 million dollars in its initial release.

Less than half its budget of 67 million.

Where to now for the cult of Quentin?

People think that he has a misstep

when you get to "Death Proof." How does he respond?

You get "Inglourious Basterds."

It was back to the real world,

but 1944, and a refocused Quentin Tarantino.

"Inglourious Basterds" was actually the title

of a 1978 Italian war movie.

The concept of it was like "The Dirty Dozen,"

but even dirtier.

You prefer to be captured or destroyed?

And if there was one director

who could reimagine this...

Tarantino loved that.

The kind of fun, upbeat war movie.

While these films and TV shows

like "Hogan's Heroes"

allowed the World War II generation

to finally laugh at the bad old days--

I know nothing, nothing.

the 1990s and 2000s saw cinema return

to a more serious tone.

This Ryan better be worth it.

And right in the middle of this era, in 1998,

Quentin would finally start a project

he thought up long ago.

Known for films that didn't take the safe route,

this would be no different.

Right after "Jackie Brown,"

I came up with the idea,

a bunch of Jewish American soldiers are behind enemy lines

and they're doing an Apache resistance

against the Third Reich.

The concept began expanding rapidly,

so Tarantino consulted a producer friend

to review a proposal that made

"Gone with the Wind" read like a pamphlet.

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

I'd never read a script,

but he did a reading for me.

And he read a couple of scenes, which

were great,

I mean truly great.

And there are gonna be two platoons, a Jewish platoon--

Known as the Basterds.

And a Black Platoon.

Known as the Killer Crows,

a respectful nod to all African American regiments

that served in World War II.

An all-black unit, they have been sent in to do a mission.

The fictional Killer Crows

would travel across Europe hunting down Nazi scourge.

Killing all of them,

scattering throughout Europe and hiding out there.

They would cross paths with the Basterds in some form,

maybe a mission, but they weren't gonna be like

opposing forces with one another.

The disruptive troops

would be hunted down in turn by a Nazi named Hans Landa.

Tarantino would find Hans's solo mission

a 10-year ticking time bomb when it came to casting.

And I was like , yes, make that movie.

Yes.

He worked on that for like years ,

but couldn't get it over the line.

He couldn't finish it.

It just ended up getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

The size of three movies.

It was just too big.

I had the opposite of writer's block.

I couldn't stop writing, basically.

And at a certain point I realized,

okay, this isn't even a movie.

I mean, this might be a 12-hour mini-series,

but it's not a movie.

He never found a way to tie it all together

and say, there, that's done.

He happens to go to this fortuitous dinner

with French director, Luc Besson.

And while they're at dinner, he's telling Luc Besson,

"I've got this great script.

It's gonna be this 16-hour

World War II epic."

And Luc Besson very calmly just looks at him

and goes, "Tarantino, you're one of the few directors

I leave the house to go to the cinema to watch their movies."

"So you're telling me that with this big epic,

I now am gonna have to wait another five years

to see one of your movies?"

And that sticks with Tarantino.

And he starts to strip down things

that he doesn't feel are necessary.

The Killer Crows would be written out,

but the Basterds would stay in.

Eight Jewish-American soldiers.

And I realize it was the story that was the problem

that made me not be able to finish it way back when.

So I took the same characters

and a couple of the introduction scenes

of some of the characters,

and then I came up with a whole new storyline

and that I figured I could do as a movie.

10 years of scripts had to be rewritten

but Tarantino's classic Rubik's cube method

of switching themes between multiple scripts

came to the rescue.

Eventually he found a way to end it.

And part of the reason for that was one of the plot strands

that he had had for "Inglourious Basterds"

was the character of

Shosanna.

She had like a kill list.

So she was gonna sort of hunt down

and kill the Nazis that she saw as responsible

for the death of her family,

which of course

was the idea for "Kill Bill."

So it was almost like that

went into "Inglourious Basterds,"

then came out of "Inglourious Basterds," went back

to "Kill Bill," and now he couldn't have that

in "Inglourious Basterds."

So the kill list idea

had been gifted to "Kill Bill."

Meaning when he returned to the Basterds in 2008,

Quentin would need a fresh storyline for the protagonist.

He instead came up with this idea of Shosanna

running a cinema in Vichy, Paris.

And then that led to the idea of the premiere

for the German propaganda movie.

And Tarantino went down a whole rabbit hole of Goebbels

and his film studio and German propaganda movies.

This sort of became a fascination for him.

Now, Tarantino was seeing

a storyline opportunity about cinema still in its infancy

as seen through the eyes of a PR genius.

Having as part of "Inglourious Basterds"

a German propaganda film,

which would involve a character that he based on

the American soldier, Audie Murphy,

who was an American soldier

who ended up starring in movies about himself

in adventures based on his own exploits.

Audie Murphy,

the kid who on the field of battle

won every decoration for valor his country had to give.

So he came up with the idea of

having the Nazi German soldier version of this,

which is the character played by Daniel Bruhl in the film.

But he realizes in this moment,

he's got Hitler trapped in this theater.

And history says that Hitler doesn't get killed by fire

or a gun in a theater in France.

He commits suicide in Berlin before the allies get there.

So Tarantino starts to think about, "What do I do?"

All of a sudden in a late night writing session,

it comes to his mind and he goes,

"Well, what if I just fucking kill Hitler?"

And he sits there for a little bit

and it starts to germinate in his head.

And the more he thinks about it, the more he's kind of like,

"I think I'm gonna just fucking kill Hitler."

But he's not 100% sold on it,

and he's not sure if it's late night fatigue or what, so...

So what he does is he grabs a piece of paper,

he writes down on the paper, "Just kill Hitler."

Puts it on his bedside table, goes to bed.

The sun is about to rise

on one of Quentin Tarantino's greatest writing achievements.

When he wakes up in the morning, he sees the note

and he agrees, "Yeah, we're gonna just fucking kill Hitler."

Well, he did have it coming.

Tarantino's script had the version

everyone would like to see, except The Fuhrer, of course.

I literally read the script and I text him,

"Quentin, this is your masterpiece."

It was shocking to me.

It was like a real life "Raiders of the Lost Ark."

Which is exactly what the Nazis are looking for.

I remember reading it

and just being like...

Prop masters Steve and Caylah

had a similar reaction

and then a bit of a lie down.

And Caylah's sobbing and it absolutely wiped her out.

In fact, we stopped working for the rest of the day.

But Tarantino couldn't.

Next came Hans Landa, the uncastable role

that nearly killed the film.

He had Leonardo DiCaprio in mind.

Tarantino hadn't worked with DiCaprio,

but the character of Landa was fluent in German,

English, Italian, and French.

Where to, Miss?

DiCaprio could sure pull off

upper-class English, but foreign languages?

So he had to move away from that concept

and he had to find someone

who could not only be Landa as he imagined him,

but also pull off being quadrilingual.

Buongiorno.

A time bomb called Hans Landa

was now ticking under Quentin Tarantino.

Other roles were easier to cast.

The role of Aldo Raine, the leader of the Basterds,

was not written for Brad Pitt at all.

But as the writing process went on and went on,

he more and more came to see Pitt in that role.

And he has said categorically,

not because Pitt was a star. It was just simply, again,

the same as Pam Grier for Jackie Brown

or Robert Foster for Max Cherry,

or John Travolta for Vincent Vega.

He just went, it's got to be Brad Pitt and fortunately...

Sound good?

Yes sir.

Brad Pitt was very amenable to the idea.

I sent him the script.

I had heard that he really liked it

so I flew up to his home in the south of France.

He lives on a vineyard.

I know that he had tried to talk to Brad's agent

about casting him before in something and--

He wasn't available.

So we open up a bottle of rosé.

We're pouring some glasses,

having a bit of a chat about the movie,

and ultimately decided to do the movie

and decided that we were in love with each other.

We just want to say we're a big fan of your work.

Like Bruce Willis,

when Quentin cast him in "Pulp Fiction,"

Pitt was now a heavyweight Hollywood champion.

And I think Quentin was like, yes, it's just perfect.

And you have to go quickly

because he might have something else.

Now's your chance to do it now.

It's a different kind of a role for Pitt.

It is more of a supporting role than a lead role

if we're honest in that movie,

and it's more of a character actor's performance

than you'd expect from a lead actor.

Once Pitt was locked in,

a name was needed to play the British spy.

Who better than an old friend and Tarantino regular?

The role of Archie Hicox was originally

supposed to be Tim Roth.

Michael Fassbender gets that role,

helps launch Michael Fassbender's career,

at least here in America.

Lieutenant Archie Hicox, reporting, sir.

But amid all that firepower,

one comic actor wouldn't be clocking in.

Eddie Murphy started popping out there

and Adam Sandler was supposed to play

Donny Donowitz, The Bear Jew.

Well, he certainly knew

how to put a hole in one,

but Sandler was already batting

for Jud Apatow's "Funny People" team.

He shoots, he scores.

Instead of Sandler, Quentin's friend Eli Roth--

would step up to the plate.

Big fucking Williams knocks it out of the park.

Roth could speak French and Italian.

- English? - Nein.

But his famous European co-stars

would need genuine fluency.

Can I assume you know who we are?

Fuck you.

French actress, Melanie Laurent.

And Denis Ménochet.

Representing the fatherland,

actress Diane Kruger could--

Speak German better than your friends.

Alongside Daniel Bruhl and other locals.

All sharing a sense of humor and history.

When I read the script and I read about Bridget,

it just blew me away.

I thought, wow, he wrote this obviously for me.

Getting Mike Myers is easy.

He asked to be in the film.

Tarantino answered.

He said, "Listen...

Are you familiar with German cinema?

...would you like to play a British General?"

And I said, "Sure, yeah, just tell me when and what to wear."

Got the gist?

If Tarantino had asked me to read the phone book,

I would've done it.

Myers's comedy

would find its way into the movie.

I suspect that wouldn't be too much trouble for you.

But that old Hans Landa landmine

was about to blow up.

And after many, many casting chances,

he really felt that he wasn't gonna be able to find him

and he felt that Hans Landa was such a good character,

in his words, the best character he's ever created,

that he would rather not do the movie

than cast the wrong person.

This nearly killed the film.

They'd got to a point where they were a few days out

from the studio locking in to make it.

And they still hadn't found Hans Landa.

And Tarantino realized at this point,

he couldn't realistically commit to making the movie

unless he had Hans Landa.

He'd pull the plug on the whole film.

It wouldn't happen.

Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" film

is only months away from starting shooting.

But if he couldn't cast Hans Landa,

Quentin's sixth movie might not survive.

I've heard that straight from Quentin.

He was about to pull up stakes.

He thought that actor might not exist.

So they just auditioned and auditioned.

About a day before that plug had to be pulled

that Christoph Waltz walked in.

Surely he waltzed in.

I have no way of knowing

if you are familiar with who I am.

Well, no, nobody was.

Now, Christoph Waltz, Austrian actor,

almost totally unknown outside his country,

has hardly done any English language speaking stuff,

primarily a TV actor,

and he can speak fluent French, Italian, German, English.

He did his audition as Landa.

Tarantino just looked at him...

...and went, yeah, we've got our movie.

It's this guy.

Bingo, how fun.

Inglourious Basterds is saved,

and Christoph Waltz does a little bit of lying.

He tells Tarantino that he's fluent in Italian.

Tarantino doesn't know any of the language,

so he believes him.

Christoph Waltz taught himself Italian to speak it

at the end of that film.

Si.

Correcto.

He had to find a very, very, very specific actor.

The Fuhrer couldn't have said it better himself.

Now, Tarantino could start piecing together

his World War II black comedy.

First he'd need to approach an old friend.

But did this come with risks?

Allegations of Harvey Weinstein's misconduct

were surfacing in Hollywood with increased frequency.

This happened to a lot of women and happened to me

and I was afraid.

As were several other women at the time,

such as Daryl Hannah.

Actor Michael Madsen was in Cannes

to promote their movie, "Vice"

I don't know if I should tell this story.

when his phone rang. It was Daryl.

Weinstein was in her apartment and wouldn't leave,

so she locked herself in the bathroom.

I said, here's what you do.

Walk out there with your phone in your hand.

And so I heard the door open

and she came out and she goes, yeah, Mike,

well, you know, she's making up some stuff,

but I was still on the line.

He goes, "Who's that on the phone?"

And she goes, "Oh, it's Michael Madsen."

He goes, "Michael Madsen? He's on the phone with you?"

And she goes, "Yeah."

And then I heard like footsteps,

right out the door he went.

Harvey didn't like me because he knew that I knew

that he was a pig.

In the interim,

there would be no consequences for Harvey

or any business associate, but that was going to change.

And I think that he stayed with Quentin

because whatever they did together worked.

Principal photography would begin in Germany

in October, 2008.

Despite a budget

more than eight times "Pulp Fiction's"

Tarantino set the same 10-week

production schedule for "Basterds"

to recapture his old sense of energy.

What's going on here?

If we had three days to do a scene,

there was no manana, manana which happens all the time.

Along with K.N.B, his long-term effects crew,

he also pulled back DP, Bob Richardson,

past "Kill Bill" clashes and all.

So that's when I was like, hey, okay fellas, okay,

we're a little semantic here,

let's just take a deep breath.

Would lightning strike twice?

It was completely different.

They had more respect for each other.

They could understand each other.

Bob knew the creature he was dealing with.

Meanwhile, another former lieutenant

was showing up for front line duty.

Lawrence Bender was back

after narrowly avoiding Tarantino's unpopular "Death Proof."

Quentin and Lawrence have not always seen eye to eye.

They definitely have had times apart and friction,

and they've had times together and great joy.

I think it's like any relationship.

I think, you know, Lawrence just believed in Quentin.

On "Pulp Fiction" and "Jackie Brown,"

he was remarkably supportive

and always protecting Quentin's vision.

He certainly had it on "Inglourious Basterds."

With his soldiers at attention,

Tarantino's vision became reality in Altendorf, Germany,

when cameras rolled in October, 2008.

We get to this farmhouse, Quentin has written

that these hills are littered with cows.

The city boy would come face to face

with rural reality.

And it's this beautiful French peaceful place

and up drive the Nazis.

And there's this stoic French farmer out chopping wood.

Well, they've told the animal wranglers

that these cows have to be here and here

and here on these hills

and they can't have these fences around them.

So they've got the fences around them, we're ready to shoot,

and they're like, "Okay, lose the fences."

and they're like, "These cows will last here for two seconds

and you're gonna be filming here for days."

So well, let's just try it.

They remove the fences and the cows disappear.

So Quentin has to abandon the pastoral scene

of cows munching quietly on the French hillside.

So Quentin's not happy about that.

Three cows edged into the frame,

but Waltz was now front and center.

Would he be everything Quentin hoped for?

You're anticipating this for months and months

as you're building up to it.

That you realize you're gonna shoot

those 10 pages that have terrified you.

Quentin needn't have worried.

Waltz's performance took everyone's breath away.

One of the great discoveries

in motion picture history

is Christoph in "Inglourious Basterds."

Please tell me what you've heard.

If you want to see what's the definition of suspense?

Just go, here's the opening scene of "Inglourious Basterds."

I was like, holy shit, I didn't know someone

could take it to a whole other...

I didn't know there was another level

that scene could get to.

But a great performance needs a great,

but also unorthodox director.

Hans Landa looks at him and says,

"You're hiding Jews, aren't you?"

And there's this closeup shot of LaPadite.

Quentin got Shosanna to set that day,

although she wasn't shooting and he had her covered in blood

and he got the three sisters to set that day,

although they weren't shooting

and he had them hidden on set.

And so when LaPadite is looking,

they stepped out behind camera and he wasn't expecting that.

I'd never seen a director do that before.

You are sheltering enemies of the state, are you not?

Ménochet's glance to his right

is when he sees his costars.

Has Tarantino created a magic moment in cinema yet again?

Yes.

Not all the tension was scripted.

Crew disputes kept the European shoot on edge.

Bruce Moriarty was, he's like, da da da da da,

he was like a drill sergeant.

It was unpleasant.

Nobody was having a good time.

Quentin wasn't having a good time,

so nobody was having a good time.

The first days of shooting

Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds"

are not going as smoothly as expected.

As the cows cleared out,

so did First AD Carlos Fidel.

Tarantino felt the pull of a familiar face.

Within the first week of shooting, I got the call.

And Bill Clark was Berlin bound.

Well, like Quentin needs me?

What the fuck could he need me for?

But yeah, I'll come.

Quentin needed Bill

because he was his go-to First AD

as far back as "Jackie Brown."

There was an obvious shift in the mood

and also in the actors when the AD changed.

But now this apparently welcomed change

would make the director upset.

His mood changed completely.

He had had a miserable first week of shooting,

and the second he heard I was able to come

and was gonna be coming to Berlin,

his mood changed immediately.

And he's like, "And I was very upset with you.

Why you would have that much control over my mood,

I have no idea and it made me very upset."

The film shifted in tone when Bill arrived

because Quentin was doing a hell of a lot better.

He'd do even better when Steve Joyner flew in

to replace European prop master, Simon Boucherie,

who made a name in France and Germany

for sourcing period correct World War II artifacts,

but wasn't marching in step with Tarantino.

He was French and they just didn't communicate.

They weren't hitting it off,

so they replaced him with basically me.

Would Steve be welcomed by his new European colleagues?

Who are you? British, American?

It was a very hostile environment to step into.

We're American.

I'm here to facilitate communication

between Quentin and this department.

And after three days, we were the best friends.

With trust flying around,

it was time to get the basterds out

and into the German countryside,

an historical military fortification just outside Berlin.

Fort Hahneberg is the location for Eli Roth's brutal scene.

Somewhat simplified, when Tarantino noticed

something only he would notice.

And there were shots

that Quentin had designed inside there,

so you show him listening to this thing.

We never shot those shots.

Quentin heard the first...

of the clack of the bat back in that tunnel echoing out.

It's like, we don't need to go in there.

But something was bothering bat man, Eli,

and it wasn't the fact this fort

is actually a registered bat colony.

Go.

The man was getting bored in there.

Eli said, "Can you give me a, like a bar back here

inside the tunnel?"

Like, what?

Not that sort of bar.

And he said, "I want to like do some pull-ups back there."

All right.

So they built it for him.

Ever the prankster,

Eli planned a hair raising fright for Miguel.

When we were setting up for that scene,

everyone's like, Miguel, where's Eli?

And I'm like, yeah, where is the guy?

And the dark tunnel he comes out of in the film,

I hear grunting and pounding and hitting

and I'm like, go have a look.

So I walk down this tunnel with my flashlight

and the grunting and the hitting gets louder

and there's no light in there. It's dark, right?

And I come up to the end of this tunnel,

or at some room at the back and I shine the light on Eli

and he turns around and he looks at me

and he was full on in character.

But the weirdness

was about to get even weirder.

Had the ghosts of World War II turned up for a cameo?

There is a continuity mistake

where Gedeon Burkhard's character,

a leaf landed during the shot on his chest

and Quentin left it there.

And Gideon didn't wipe it off during the shoot.

He just left it there and played his scene.

Quentin said, oh my God, that looked like the Jewish star.

And you know, I'm sure there are directors out there

were like, oh, rotoscope, cut him out.

But he was like, no, leave it there.

It's the Jewish star.

But while the shoot

was now firing on all cylinders,

Tarantino began pushing his luck with the next location.

You said it was in a tavern.

It is a tavern.

Yeah, in a basement.

An actual basement

instead of a sensible sound stage.

Whose idea was it for the death trap rendezvous?

Quentin's like, "I will shoot it there."

And I went into it scared.

We managed to bring down the floor joists

enough to be able to hang our parkins

so that we can have light bouncing off of the tables.

Come up with some windows that let in some light,

false entrance areas

so that we could put some light down the stairs.

Achtung.

It was definitely the most exhausting scene to shoot.

Quentin's famous for doing really long takes,

sometimes 10 minutes,

and I had about 15 pages of dialogue in that scene.

We rehearsed the scene for two weeks

and then shot it over the course of two weeks.

So it was a lot.

And Quentin's language barrier

wouldn't help either.

I hope you don't mind if I go out speaking the King's.

Half the direction would be,

"So you come over here, German, German,

German, German, German,

and then you sit over here and I want this from you.

I want to feel that. I want to feel this."

Inglourious Basterds fused

old school practical effects

with razor sharp editing, locking its tension in place.

After a grueling month in the stuffy basement,

the epic scene was completed,

but approaching the Christmas break...

He kind of felt like we got

so much great stuff getting to this story,

we want to get to the climax

and we want the climax to happen.

We don't need to build it up anymore.

Quentin would stay in Berlin

to rewrite the ending,

most notably cutting scenes with actresses, Maggie Chung

and Cloris Leachman to tighten the pace

and clarify the narrative.

It wasn't a big dramatic change, it was just condensed.

Getting to the finish of the movie.

The film within the film

had already been directed

and shot by Eli Roth in October.

So he got to direct a German war movie.

Who wants to send a message to Germany?

No downside for Eli.

Quentin, he wanted the propaganda film to be its own entity.

47.

But now the question was...

48.

...how to shoehorn Nation's Pride

into "Inglourious Basterds" seamlessly and chronologically.

There wasn't a Tarantino movie.

The propaganda film was something

that Leni Riefenstahl would've come up with or Goebbels.

I think he chose Eli also

because Eli has a horror background.

With the film's ending worked out

and everyone back on set,

the final explosive scenes would be easy.

And I remember going, oh fuck.

Or would they?

Viola.

That's about to crush a thing I need.

In early 2009,

after a festive German Christmas,

Quentin Tarantino was about to film

the final dramatic scenes of "Inglourious Basterds."

The whole way through

it felt Shakespearean, it felt like witnessing opera.

Another terrifying Christoph Waltz

performance took place

as his Hans Landa character laid his hands

on Bridget von Hammersmark.

And I'm doubling Diane,

so I've got the cast on my leg

and Christoph and I are sitting

opposite each other in chairs.

Despite a trademark Tarantino foot closeup,

Zoe wasn't about to get hers massaged.

So I had this conversation with Christoph

and I was like, on an emotional level, just be in character,

think of me as my character,

know that if you feel me doing this to you,

that means I need to stop.

He was like, okay.

Quentin was like, roll camera. We rolled cameras.

And the minute we rolled cameras,

Christoph went from like, okay, okay, okay,

and he just went.

Viola.

And I remember going, oh fuck.

Christoph went full throttle.

And we went for it and he went for it.

And I think we did it like four times.

I think take three was

the only time I may have had a little...

because he got a little bit on my...

I was like, that's about to crush a thing I need,

so let me, you know.

And then they'd call cut

and he'd go straight back to like,

"You okay? Is everything...

And I was like, "Hey, I'm good, that was fucking awesome."

While Christoph would switch

from psycho to softy in a second...

Well, let's just say she got what she deserved.

...not so Brad Pitt.

Brad stayed in character the entire time.

You got a good "How I broke my leg mountain climbing" story.

That's German, ain't it?

Y'all like climbing mountains, don't you?

So he was Lieutenant Aldo Raine through and through.

Like when I would talk to him

or when anyone would talk to him, he was always...

...your little ass up that rouge carpet.

...always had his accent, he was always in character.

I'm a slave to appearances.

Putting Brad Pitt, sexiest man in the world,

putting him in a bag for like

a couple of weeks worth of filming,

nobody else is gonna do that.

While Brad Pitt was in the bag, so to speak,

the final scene still wasn't.

Ending just completed the whole thing.

So we're gonna establish this elegant theater.

How the hell are we gonna burn it down?

By using a match.

After the first fiery scene nearly took the set

and the cast with it, everything had to be rebuilt.

We shot that in a theater.

We shot that in a build.

We shot that in a cement compound where they make cement.

Everything has to be replicated in all places.

And yet the requirements for us filming it in a stage

are greatly different than the requirements

for us shooting in a burn box.

And a burn box is...

It's just like a big, like almost like a cool store,

like a big concrete, massive concrete bunker. I walked in,

it was decked out as this beautiful old school cinema,

red velvet, balconies and shit everywhere.

As ever, Tarantino would strive to dress sets

and actors with maximum authenticity,

and that meant going to trade fairs and garage sales.

We had a lot of real Nazi memorabilia,

which you are allowed to sell and possess.

You just can't display it.

I think it was Lawrence that knew a collector in Texas

that had Hitler's pocket watch

and a pair of his eyeglasses

that were verified really his from the bunker.

And he contacted that guy and that guy got on a plane

and flew out for the scene.

These are all little tidbits

that sort of keep Quentin entertained

watching his own movies.

For Quentin specifically, what a great resource.

I mean, you don't get more real than that.

But the props just didn't feel "reich."

Lawrence was there and he took the glasses

and he put them on to look through them

and he immediately handed them back.

It actually shook him visibly.

The scene with Hitler's watch and glasses

would be cut, but for the next spectacle...

We burned the cinema down.

Burn it down.

Oui, Shosanna.

And filming a fire bombed cinema

would be no laughing matter.

It felt like every stunt man

and woman in Germany was in that building at the time.

Some 300 stunt people.

And then it gets insanely hot really quick.

Like really hot.

Real flames in a closed concrete box

can do that.

Heat rises so they're feeling even more heat

and it's kind of suffocating

when you're above flames like that,

everybody in there at some point,

whether you were crew or cast,

had a "switch out of character" moment.

Filming for "Inglourious Basterds"

would wrap in December, 2008.

Over and out.

Let's cut. Why?

Because we love making movies.

For his most anticipated movie yet,

Quentin would bring back his trusted post team

headed by editor Sally Menke.

Quentin always made sure that

the crew was aware of Sally.

At least once a day he would grab the camera

and tell everyone to say, "Hi, Sally."

Hi, Sally.

Bonjour, Sally.

Sally, I am not dead.

We all did the "Hi, Sally."

Sally, how are you?

Good? Little lonely, are you?

Mike says hello.

Sally wasn't alone.

She was in Berlin the whole time

getting ready for a fast turnaround.

We wound up wrapping the whole production in mid-February

and the Cannes film festival's in May.

So he and Sally posted that picture in breakneck time.

But it would be the last movie

Quentin and Sally would ever make together.

"Inglourious Basterds" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival

on May 20th, 2009.

Can you still get us in that premiere?

Yes.

The film received a standing ovation

normally reserved for dictators.

It went on for 11 minutes.

While the top award

would go to German thriller, "The White Ribbon,"

"Basterds" was about to top all of Tarantino's other films.

This ain't any war film.

This is not like your dad's war film.

This is Quentin's war film, so it has all that humor...

The Germans' nickname for me is The Little Man?

...violence

and great dialogue.

You'll be shot for this.

Nah, I don't think so.

More like chewed out.

I've been chewed out before.

Character and music that Quentin normally does.

It made over $300 million at the box office.

From a relatively modest budget of 70 million.

By this point, it does seem

to be like Tarantino can do no wrong.

He's become a genre in himself.

I just remember watching the movie and losing it.

By the time they shot Hitler's face off.

Think about the hundreds

and maybe thousands of World War II movies

that have been made, but no one's ever gave us

what we really wanted,

which is to see Hitler's face shot off.

Four Golden Globe nominations

and eight Oscar nods later,

Tarantino was back on top after his dabble with "Death Proof."

Well, it's just a really, really lovely thing

to be nominated, to be chosen to be one of the five.

I came up with a story, and I thought

it was a humdinger of a story,

and I thought, "I'd go see that."

But the victory of "Basterds" was somewhat muted

when the fog of war lifted.

Quentin and his extended film family

lost their beloved editor, Sally Menke.

And I remember getting the call

that Sally had passed away.

She was 54 years old, just went hiking with a friend

and passed out because of the heat.

Sally was just a beautiful, beautiful person.

When we heard that she had passed, it was just like...

You know, she had a nurturing quality to her.

She cared about people.

I think she took Quentin very seriously

and recognized his genius

when I'm not sure he felt like everybody was.

I can imagine her being like,

"This scene is the dopest shit ever as a standalone,

it doesn't serve the story."

And she might be one of the few people at that point

that he would've heard that from comfortably.

Tarantino named her his closest collaborator

and said he would struggle

to envision making films without her.

They were a match made in heaven.

From inspiration to ideas,

to surrounding himself with the best of the best

remains Tarantino's winning formula.

He continues to show us

he can do almost anything he wants.

He's not pigeonholed as a director.

The writing was so next level,

he achieved what he wanted to achieve.

It was a magnum opus for sure, and I think he knew that

and he wanted it to be that way.

But his next historical epic

would see Tarantino on the run from critics

in a way he'd never experienced.

Tarantino has said he was trying to show

the Holocaust in America.

Heated conversations to do with the N word.

Who this n----- on that nag?

But never this close to home.

Spike Lee didn't see it that way.

He says that the American slave experience

was not a Sergio Leone spaghetti western.

It was some upset people,

who were probably just feeling fucking terrified.