Quentin Tarantino's next film is about Jewish soldiers killing Nazis in gruesome ways - and it's being filmed in Germany, reports Derek Scallyin Berlin
ARE YOU BLONDE and blue-eyed? Could you pass for an Aryan Nazi on celluloid? If so, Quentin Tarantino wants to see you at a casting call in Berlin this morning for his new war epic, Inglorious Bastards.
Already nicknamed "Reservoir Dogs of War", the film borrows the name, if not the plot, of the 1978 Italian film, Inglorious Bastards, directed by Enzo Castellari, which is remembered chiefly for a tag-line that its soldiers were "dirtier than the Dirty Dozen".
For years, the Pulp Fiction director has been working on his dirtiest script yet, in the hope of rescuing his reputation after the box-office bomb, Death Proof. The plot - according to early versions of the typo-littered script, which are circulating online - involves a group of Jewish US soldiers sent behind enemy lines in Vichy France to spread fear among Nazi soldiers by killing as many as they can in the most horrific ways possible.
Tarantino has already assembled an A1 cast, headed by Brad Pitt as Lieut Aldo Raine, who puts together his team of Jewish soldiers with the order: "Git me 100 Nazi scalps or die tryin'!" His dirty dozen include Hostel director Eli Roth, Mike "Austin Powers" Myers, Michael Fassbender, BJ Novak and Samm Levine, as well as German actors Til Schweiger and Good Bye, Lenin! star Daniel Brühl. They dispatch Nazis with scalpings, baseball bats, and multiple shots to the testicles.
The film will reunite Pitt with his Troy co-star, Diane Kruger, who will play Jewish movie star Bridget von Hammersmark, who is also out for revenge against the Nazis.
The news that the second World War is about to get the Tarantino splatter treatment has electrified some Germans and horrified others. Adding to the controversy is that, under German film funding rules, Tarantino's decision to shoot in the Babelsberg film studios outside Berlin qualifies it for state aid.
Just how protective some Germans can be of "their" war was clear with last year's campaign against Tom Cruise's Valkyrie, a film about the plot to kill Hitler that has yet to be seen.
"All the German historians and critics who were left gasping for breath by Tom Cruise and his worthy attempts will be so shocked by Inglorious Bastards that they will savage it on the spot," predicted Tobias Kniebe, film editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. The collision of the Holocaust with Tarantino's Jewish revenge fantasy, he said, "is unprecedented in Germany and its results will be completely unpredictable".
Many Germans will welcome an unpredictable take on the tired war genre, squeezed in recent years of every last drop of pedagogical cinematic goodness. After the slavish, lengthy realism of Downfall, Tarantino is ready to break the mindset that films about the second World War must be solemn, finger-waving affairs.
"I don't want it to feel like a period film," said Tarantino in an interview before coming to Berlin. "This is a modern, in-your-face movie." That said, if the casting call is anything to go by, Tarantino is anxious to get the period details right. Cue the next controversy: Hollywood Nazis.
"Because the film takes place during the second World War, the agency will only hire extras who fit into this time visually," said the casting agency in an open call.
According to Tarantino's criteria, that means blonde men between the ages of 20 and 45 with military experience. Applicants with dyed hair, piercings, or a sun-bed orange glow are "taboo". Amputees will get a look-in. Hair must be long enough to be cut into a historically correct style - short sides, long top.
"So, once again, the Germans are the blonde, blue-eyed monsters," remarked one newspaper columnist sardonically. "And we are expected to queue up in Babelsberg and lie in battlefield mud in October for the privilege of being shot by Brad Pitt and friends. Super!"
Shooting starts on October 13th, assuming that Tarantino finds his way to the studio. Since his arrival in Berlin, he has been carousing with a Canadian barmaid and burlesque dancer named Tallulah Freeway. If that romance blossoms, expect her to have a cameo in the film with her dance speciality, the "Titty Twister".
