Django Unchained | meet the press (2013) Quentin Tarantino

[Music] you've talked about you've talked about wanting to make a Western but it is impossible to watch this movie without thinking about the fact that slavery as a subject has been largely absent from Hollywood cinema in the hundred years roughly since birth of a nation what what sense of responsibility did you have in terms of making a movie that brings slavery out front and center like this well I've always wanted to do a movie that deals with America's horrific past with slavery but the way I wanted to deal with it is as opposed to doing a straight historical movie with a capital H I actually thought it could be better it was wrapped up in genre I mean the thing is seems to me that so many westerns that actually take place during slavery times have just bent over backwards to avoid it as as is America's Way which is actually kind of interesting because most other countries have actually been forced to deal with the atrocities that they've committed and actually the world has made them deal with the atrocities that they have committed but but it's kind of everybody's fault here in America white black nobody wants to really deal with it nobody wants to stare at it and I think it's like in the story of all the different types of slave narratives that could have existed in the 245 years when slavery during this time of slavery under America there's a zillion stories Sicilian and dramatic exciting adventurous heartbreaking triumphant stories that could be told and living in a world now where everyone says there are no news stories there's a whole bunch of them and they're all American stories that could be told and so I wanted to be one of the first ones out the gate with it and for Jaime although Cary and Sam if you want to jump in on this too when you read the script what was your what were your first impressions about being asked to play slaves in this movie well I was in ass to play I actually saw that the movie was already going and someone else was supposed to play it and I thought wow here's another project that I haven't heard about and actually I had a management change and just to tell you my Atma my acting hustle was like first of all I don't care what it is it's Quentin Tarantino and all these people on this stage and I feel that the people here on this stage can tackle absolutely any subject matter just as far as artistic ability that's the first thing reading the script I'm from Texas so being in the south is a racial component and I love the south I mean no no other place I'd rather be from but there are racial components in the south me being called [ __ ] growing up as a kid so when I read the script I didn't need jerk to the word [ __ ] like someone from maybe New York or LA would knee-jerk because that was something I experienced exactly like is like and I and but what I did gravitate to was the love story of Django and broom-hilda and the first of everything in this film when you see movies about slavery in and Quinton is his made mention to this and like everybody knows we never get a chance to see the slave actually you know fight back actually you know do for his self and in this movie there's a lot of first and as we actually went on to shoot the movie we started to comment on these are some of the things that you that you you you know you'll see for the first time so for me it was just uh it was about to work and we knew that coming into it there's gonna be all the other things said and everything about it but it's been a fantastic ride that's I think a lot of times people in the past may have felt nervous about playing us because so many of the narratives that we've told in film and television about slavery are about powerlessness and this is not a film about that this is a film about a black man who finds his freedom and rescues his wife he is an agent of his own power he is a liberator he's a hero and so there's nothing shameful about that it's really exciting and hopeful and inspiring there were two things I mean I was very moved by the love story particularly in a time in our American history when black people were not allowed to fall in love and get married because marriage that kind of connection got in the way of the selling of human beings so to have a story between a husband and a wife at a time when black people weren't allowed to be husband and wife was not only educational but again hopeful and it's a that we've seen this love story a million times about star-crossed lovers it's just that they don't come from two different Italian families like Romeo and Juliet the thing that stands in the way of them being with each other is the institution of slavery so Jane goes out to get his woman and he's got to take down slavery to get her take down the Calvin Candie and the other thing was in terms of first I really I mean I said to Quentin in our first meeting I feel like I want to do this movie from my father because my father grew up in a world where there were no black superheroes and that's what this movie is Sam the character of Steven I think is know you work but you don't want to know how I felt about all this well you can you can you can you can mention that but you work with Quinton so many times I feel like the more interesting Big Dance having chosen things to say about this I want you to talk about this the psychology of this character to me is maybe the most interesting character in the film and the sort of the relationship that he has both to Calvin Candie but also to the other slaves and the sense of relationship this small power that he's that he's holding on to I'm the power behind the throne talking about I'm like the spook Cheney of of Candyland yeah I'm all up in that but you see what I got is to tell this story you have to have you know that particular character especially if it's in this setting so when I got the script from Quentin he just called me told me he wrote a Western and he want me to read Stephen I complained about being 15 years too old to be Django and I was done with that and then when I read the script I called him back and said so you want me to be the most despicable Negro in cinematic history and we're both kind of like laughs together said yeah yeah let's get on that you know and and and not only was that a great artistic opportunity and and and to create something that was iconic and to take what people know as Uncle Tom and turn it on his head in a powerful way it also gave me an opportunity to do really nasty [ __ ] to the person that got the role that I thought I should have had hey that's a [ __ ] and it was written beautifully that way so I could do that but you know to tell the story you have to have that guy and Steven is the is the freest slave in the in the history of cinema he has all the powers of the master and literally is the master during the times and most times when Calvin is off mandingo fighting he makes the plantation run everybody on that plantation knows him everybody on the plantation fears him he has a feeble persona that makes people kind of disregard him in an interesting sort of way even though they fear they kind of think he's physically not able to keep up or do things but he's around we used to refer to him as the Basil Rathbone yeah of the antebellum self and that's what we tried to do but honestly and I wanted everybody to understand that when Jango shows up that's a Negro we've never seen before not only is he on a horse he's got a gun and he speaks out and the first thing I have to do is let all the other Negroes on the plantation know that's not something you can aspire to you know so let me put him in his place as quickly as I possibly can and I wholeheartedly embrace that one of the things that really needs to be taken into account we know because we have historical perspective the slavery is on its way out it's two years before the start of the Civil War they don't know that they have to think that for at least the next hundred and fifty years at least this is the way it is there is no end in sight all those northerners those bleeding-heart liberals can say anything they want don't mean nothing down here they don't understand us and ain't nothing gonna have a change there's always gonna be a Candyland this ain't going away this is this is here to stay this is the first film you've been in in quite a long time where you're not the only name above the title and where and it sucks and it's very uncomfortable for all of us where you are one of although perhaps not the biggest villain of the piece as Sam was just saying can you talk a little bit about what made you want to take on this role well I mean obviously mr. Tarantino here was a major factor but you know you we all read the script there was a sort of buzz about this script around for a while and people were talking about the next Tarantino movie that was about to come out and the fact that he tackled this subject matter like he did with sort of inglorious basterds and recreated his own history it and tackled something as hard Gore's as slavery and combined it with the genre of having it be this crazy spaghetti western feel to it with this with this lead character that sort of obliterates the the the cankerous rotting South was completely exciting and and he wrote this incredible character and I as soon as I read it I was incredibly excited I mean this man was as Quentin put it you know he was a character that represented everything that was wrong with the south at the time you know I mean he was like a young louis xiv the young sort of prince that wanted to hold on to his position of privilege at all costs and you know justified away even though he was integrated his whole life with black people he brought up by a black man you know lived with him his entire life he had to find a moral justification to treat people this way and continue his business he had a plantation to run and so he became this sort of you know this you know I don't know hey there's a lot of you know the fact that he sees a Francophile but he doesn't speak French this he's a walking contradiction you know what I mean he lives and is brought up by black people yet he has to regard them as not human you know what I'm saying it was this incredibly interesting horrific Lee I mean I mean there was absolutely nothing about this man that I could identify with I hated him and it was and it was one of the most narcissistic self-indulgent racist horrible characters I've ever read in my entire life and and I had I had to do it it was too good not to do you know it's too good of a character in that sense and I don't know I mean this man writes just incredible characters and uh and was also of course the opportunity to work with all these great people to dr. King Schultz Christoph Waltz can you talk about reuniting with Quinton on this movie and was there any hesitation on either of your parts about working together again so soon after this very iconic character in inglourious basterds neither there was no reunification and there was not no working again that was just another mushroom of the fungus this was was growing sub cute in me all the time I had the same problem I had the same problem with Sam for about a decade it's hard not to write for these guys they say my dialogue so well that it's like for ten years I'd write some cool bill for like seven months of the of the year and a half of writing kill bill bill sounded just like Sam you know it's hard it's like they say my dialogues so well and just aren't you know just the the way I write my dialogue which I always kind of I was kind of fancy at his poetry and they're the ones that make it poetry when they say it it's just hard it's it's just they come out of my pen and sometimes it's not even appropriate sometimes no that's not right you know but it's just I I have to you know I can't shut it off when I've been wanting to do this story for a long time there never was some German dentist bounty hunter in the story all right but in this thing I know I sat down and wrote that opening scene and he just flew right out of the pen like an antenna to God oh and can you talk her stuff about the physical training for the role cuz I know you injured yourself pretty severely at one point and succeeded gloriously in falling off a horse very quickly and then my very early on in the training and then my work was a little slower for a few months and then I got back up on the horse Don I want to ask you your performance is very exuberant in the film which isn't something I think we think of with Quentin's actors that they seem to be having a lot of fun on screen what is it about working with Quentin that brings this out performance as Quentin told me he said you sing in Mikey and I looked at that I looked at Big Daddy Bennett Azzam as a as a character who had his fiefdom and he was fully engaged in his fiefdom he enjoyed his fiefdom and and and as everybody has mentioned you know this was gonna go on forever until these two showed up and they messed up everything so they gotta go you know but [Music] Betina it was a joy to work with what we have sort of a I think everybody does a second a second hand you know it's a look it's a you know there's almost no no no dialogue question I'll finish the take or something I'll turn around I'll look at him and he'll give me some sort of hand signal it looks like one of those Navy signalmen or something like that and I know exactly what he means I don't know how I know it but then we do it again I go yeah that was right that was you know yeah bring that bring that aircraft and on the other carrier you know so the first day I got there I went looking for Clinton and the day I got there the slaves were in the field you guys were coming up on the plantation for the first time and Jamie headed a little lord fauntleroy Sudan and I was walking down that road through the cotton feeling I didn't realize so I got in the middle of cotton field that all these extras out there and this slave gear and it was cotton and they were picking it no white dudes on horses with shotguns and then I look back and Dawn was up on the porch of the big house and all this stuff I was like oh [ __ ] we're doing this yeah almost like a Twilight Zone episode or something it was it was crazy ice-cold drink in his hand it was so awesome but everything everything started to help us do this movie slave plantation called evergreen plantation in Louisiana and so that lent itself to all of us kind of disappearing into the story because you felt like you were making the film on sacred ground you felt like you were you were reenacting this behavior where these crimes against humanity were actually committed and so it just if it started to infiltrate everybody's acting and behavior and choices or relationships when you got whipped everything around there all the books not making noise were stopped singing it was kind of like oh [ __ ] is this back my dresser who helped helped me get my my costume every day found out that her ancestors were buried in in the cemetery on the plantation and and when and and that that was a serious day when she came to work and told me that and she was you know she was visibly German yeah you get a call from Quentin Tarantino to play a role called the bag head number two in a movie about slavery do you even ask to see the script at that point did you it did take a while to find Baghead number two what what goes or did you just say yes I'm do it yeah no I don't know I don't know about you guys but I got in this business to work with great filmmakers and so you know I don't care if he wants me to be an extra in one of his movies I was like I don't even know what the [ __ ] I'm doing up here with these guys I only worked for like I worked for like two days on them film you know but it's kind of an ego stroke they even want me here too because I don't have anything to do that but uh you know you know I think it was like the weekend Moneyball come out and it was like I've met with Quinn and he asked me with me and I was just overjoyed so there wasn't any like thought about it he wanted me to be in the film and I was just so excited to be there and that before I turn it over I just want to ask mr. Walton Goggins at the other end as a southerner yourself and someone who's made a lot of films made a lot of films about Texas yeah but [Laughter] [Applause] [Laughter] London did you have any any sense of sort of cultural responsibility or social responsibility in in bringing this chapter of southern history to life well yeah yeah you know I I you know seeing the barn for me what was so what was so difficult about that and the responsibility that I felt as an actor was showing literally and metaphorically taking a man's ability to spread his seed and in my hands and rendering that impotent and I think that's what slavery did to African Americans in this country for 245 years and I just tried to be as as truthful and as honest as I could in order to respect the the pain and endured by by african-americans in this country you know slaves in this country and and and I was just grateful to be given an opportunity to do that you know kind of in this way that you know the thing about Billie crashing and and what Quentin does so well is for poor whites you know and in our country at that time there weren't a lot of economic opportunities but one place that you could get a job was on a plantation and you could rise through the the slave corporation and and if you were smart and I guess if you were ruthless enough you could really rise to a position of power and and unfortunately that was at the expense of a lot of human beings and and for me it was about showing a person who who had something to lose by Django being there that it was not just the color of his skin but it was also my way of life economically speaking and and I was so happy that Quentin gave me that in to this guy because it made it really three-dimensional for me all they came through - oh yeah yeah yeah hello thank you for this amazing film it's a complete blast I like a better Royale shirt you know I know that in the pre-production of Kill Bill there were a lot of movie kung-fu movie stills and movie posters bought before that and also before inglorious basterds I wondered what that external stuff does whether it's stills posters things you watch that helps formulate what we see the final picture and also for the cast anyone who would like to answer it what external sources helped you develop or further create or deepen your characters wow that's that's a great question yeah that's a really great question you know well you know the thing is you know I think all these actors can actually tell you the feeling they have like the first time they walk into my office and they see all of like the sixties western posters up and the blaxploitation posters up and all this viscera that's there that doesn't exist anymore in movie posters now everything just looks like a Vanity Fair photo shoot every single goddamn movie looks like a Vanity Fair photo shoot and you know the idea of drawing posters is just doesn't happen anymore and those were the posters you know those were really cool but that style of viscera whether it be the spaghetti western album covers the blaxploitation album covers the posters all that stuff is you know I'm kind of trying to get at that when when my you know when my stuff pops off in in in the big ways that it does or the imagery I'm trying to evoke the costumes we employ in the films that always have a bit of a comic-book panache you know that's what I'm trying to get that kind of those kind of illustrations in life in my flicks source is a contradiction in terms um I can only speak for myself but the source is the script and the script has a source I can point it out together but you know and that same on the same line frankly we've got the first issue of the Django Unchained comic book it has to come out now and things interesting about the comic book more to your point is we keep the entire script in the comic book alright so some of the sequences and big chapters that we dropped we didn't even bother shooting them because well it's just we don't want to for our movie or in the comic book and I gotta say I'm as excited about the comic book as I am about the movie it is it's boss that period of time is one of my favorite periods in history and in early developing America and because it's it's it's full of deceipt and and it's it it's rich in human character or lack thereof and from the Native Americans to slavery and so on and so forth so I I've read a lot about it blood and thunder is a great book of which I'd read before I started they started before I started this film and there's there's a lot of outside material and and for me I like to start with with my with outside information and just research and start layering it into my you know the ethics of the time you know the social graces of the time the did they have indoor toilets no how did certain our manners created and so I start from the outside and then I just slowly start to bring it all inside and emotional and stuff like that and all it and and a lot of that comes like Christoph was saying there's the source and then for for the character work I start to find for me I like to know what it's like on that day in that time with that energy running around and it just starts to I do a lot of that work way before I get there so that when I'm there it just comes out hopefully it's for mr. DiCaprio I wanted to know what did you learn by playing calming candy and also has being an actor become all you wanted it to be as being an actor but first start off with the second one um yes I love acting it's what I've always wanted to do my entire life and I hope to continue doing this for a long time to come it's the greatest job in the world truly is we're all lucky bastards up here and the fact that we get to do what we love for a living every every single day you know what was what was great about doing this role honestly was the the sense of community and the support mechanism that I had every single day there I mean this was really my first attempt and and and like I said playing a character that I had this much disdain and and this much hatred for and it was a very an incredibly uncomfortable environment to walk into you know I've dealt with and seen racism and my surroundings in my life growing up but to the degree that you know I I had to treat other people in this film was was incredibly disturbing I think was and disturbing for actors on both ends of the spectrum but it was a very uncomfortable situation and and I like we were talking about before you know one of the pivotal moments from me in this character and sort of going to the places that I had to go to as far as treatment of other people was the this wreath initial read through that we had were Sam and Jamie told me and I think I brought up the point like do we need to go this far at times do we need to push push it this far does it need to be this violent do I need to be this atrocious to other human beings I think it was Sam and Jamie they both said look man if you'd if you sugarcoat this people are gonna resent the hell out of you you know what I mean you got to push this guy to the utter extreme because this is all not only historically accurate but it went even further than that there were worse atrocities and I think that by holding the character back you know you're gonna do an injustice to the film and people are gonna feel like you're not telling the truth and that from that honestly that was the thing that sort of ignited me into the into the and ended going the way I did with the character and and once I did do even more research and once you know I started to watch the documentaries read about the sugar plantations I mean yes I mean we're just scratching the surface of what happened in our country and it and it's a sore subject matter and to film that there should be a subject matter that they should should be looked at more often and and not shied away from and I commend Quentin for making a film that combines so many different genres and and as daring as it is to actually make the subject matter entertaining for an audience omits it's a daring concept I'll stop rambling but no it was what was great at the at the at the core of it was to have a group of actors that were all mutually there for one another to support and drive each other further and a subject matter that I think was very difficult for all of us and I couldn't have felt like I had a better support mechanism it honestly felt like you know we were cheerleaders for one another like damaged it was good keep going up fine be even worse to me next take you know horrible like we relied on each other because we'd be in these awful places and then called Quinn would call cut and we'd all go everybody okay everybody okay you okay you hurt you all right all right let's do it again special special for Carrie that one scene when you had no like for two days straight you know and the but you know she's you know it's it there's there's the real way to do it and that's Kerry's way and anything else is [ __ ] as far as care is concerned so she was taking a beating for like two days straight but I always hate no okay it's all good it's all good that's weak that's what we have to be anything else is gonna be baby we got to go forward and I just I was like man she's she's the real deal [Laughter] hi good morning you kind of touched upon the question I had I just wanted to say that when I watched the movie it didn't make me ask uncomfortable as I thought it would but I just wanted to know if a mrs. Tarantino and anyone who wants to answer were there any moments where you got really uncomfortable and had to change anything on set there was nothing that uh nothing that I wrote that we had to change on set every one was when we were all we all knew what we were doing we all got together and everything and and you know I kind of made sure with a lot of people as far as if there was anything that was uncomfortably talked about it but for way beforehand actually I guess that what I mean before I hired them but there was only there was only one thing that I felt uncomfortable about not on not shooting but earlier I mean at the very very beginning stages upon finishing the script was it's one thing to write exterior Greenville where the slave auction town was a hundred a hundred slaves walked through this deep [ __ ] mud in Chains being moved along wearing masts and metal collars and this whole town that's built over this this you know this is almost like a black house whit's all right it's one thing to write that that's another thing to get a hundred black folks put them in Chains and March them through the mud and an same thing but planting the cotton and putting you know you know army a black folks dressed as slaves in the hot Sun pickin cotton in the background and I didn't I started to question could I do it I started to I'm I don't think I've ever thought that about anything when it came to my work before I started thinking you know God can I do it can I be the reason that that's even happening and I'd actually have came up with an idea possibly of maybe shooting just those sequences alone like maybe in the West Indies or shooting it in Brazil where they have their own issues of slavery but since this is an American story there would be a once-removed quality a prank frankly my problem was was having Americans do that that was my problem and so I was almost trying to escape it how can I do it but get around it some way so I don't have to deal with the pain and I went out to dinner with Sidney Poitier and I just finished writing the script and he's kind of like a father figure to me and and I was explaining my little harebrained scheme of escaping and maybe doing this and maybe doing that and he listened to me and he basically told me I had to man up you know he goes Quentin for whatever reason I think you were born to tell this story and you need to not be afraid of your own movie you can't tell this story if you're afraid of your own movie you just need to do it everybody knows what time it is we have everywhere all professionals everybody gets it just treat them with love and respect treat them like actors not not atmosphere let them know why they're there and what we're doing and what we're trying to get across and it'll all be good by the way you're gonna be doing this in the South those people need money they need jobs you're taken you know you got to do it and when they finish being slaves for you yeah there was a yeah there was a lot of guys oh man I was in Abraham Lincoln house leaving a diamond thing that happened as a result of doing that though and it for me was one of the most profound days on our set was we were shooting one of these days of picking cotton in the Louisiana heat and everybody was really hot and exhausted and you could tell that it mean even for a Jamie and either the waking up every day and putting yourself in the mental state of somebody who you know your Constitution says you're a fraction of a person not a whole human being you know it's just starting to wear on everybody a little bit and we had this one background actor who was a pastor who kind of paused everybody and said we have to remember that we are the answer to these people's prayers that the people who did this work dreamt of a day where you could not be property but own property where you could read where you could vote where you could get married where you could have a job and be compensated and it really you know again on that sacred ground it forced everybody to shift and man up and own kind of how blessed we are that we get to be here and tell this story and not feel victimized by it but know that it's a it's a story of a hero and that that's a profound opportunity the most outrageous yet courageous films to come out of Hollywood yet has been very well received why do you think that is hopefully cuz it's a good movie and that's not just my dad's answer I think it sings yeah I think I think it's a good movie and and I think I hope I might not be the person answer I made the damn thing all right you know but you know what I was talking about all the different things that we juggled I think to pull that off went a long way to actually be able to to deal with some of the to deal with the pain to deal with the history but do it in a way that's an exciting adventure story that the two don't negate the other you know so I mean when you talk about this it almost you always seem to have to go down the dirt road of talking about the horrible time of that path and that's fair enough and that because it is but the whole Idaho was that if you leave your house and go to a movie theater and pay a ticket to sit with a bunch of strangers and watch this movie you're gonna have ultimately by the end of it a great time at the movies and I think so far so so far so good always writes movies that he wants to see because we watch a lot of same kind of moves we talk about stuff all the time so he writes movies that he wants to see he generally writes the role in there that I'm gonna do that I want to do because I want to see myself in that kind of movie and I think I represent a lot of moviegoers he represents a lot of fans also in terms of people going to movies watching things they want to see and when you get it right you get it right it's an entertaining film yeah you know that's some stuff in there that's um historically correct stuff that's um historically exaggerated stuff and some of its horrific but it's a great film it does what you want to do when you pay you whatever it is 1350 they're going to movie now and sitting the dark with a whole bunch of strangers when you come out of there you felt like you saw a movie and you got your money's worth and that's ultimately what we want to happen and I think the original the impetus for all the adventure and action and all of it is love I mean it's a completely universal theme this idea everybody wants to be loved so badly that their prince would slay the Dragons shaft in the Old West Hong Kong Hong Kong Bullitt ballet thrown in you [Music]

Channel: moviemaniacsDE

Views: 3,446,658

Rating: 4.8488655 out of 5

Keywords: film, movie, teaser, moviemaniacs, mmde, movie maniacs, official, Film (film)

Id: -1QpScB-HJg

Length: 39min 39sec (2379 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 01 2013