With his controversial slavery-themed action flick coming out this holiday season, the eccentric Oscar winning scribe proves that no subject is off limits.
By Amy Elisa Keith From Ebony Magazine
Quentin Tarantino isn’t afraid to start some ish. The director who scalped Nazis in Inglourious Basterds and destroyed Japanese mob bosses in Kill Bill is tackling American slavery by unleashing his brand of wildly imaginative storytelling on audiences once again with his new film, Django Unchained.
Set in the pre-Civil War South, Django, starring Jamie Foxx, Samuel L. Jackson, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kerry Washington, is part dramedy, part love story, part spaghetti Western and a whole lot of badass.
And as is the case in many of his previous films, it is not without controversy. After all, despite Django’s gritty and James Brown-squealing trailer, portraying slavery on the big screen is no laughing matter. On the other hand, if you think this a Roots remake, think again.
Tarantino sat down with EBONY to discuss popular misconceptions about the film and teaming back up with Jackson.
EBONY: What was your vision for Django Unchained?
TARANTINO: I set out to write a really heart-wrenching story of slavery in the antebellum South combined with an operatic, mythical spaghetti Western story of a Black man who is a slave. Then [we] see his mythical rise to not only become a man, but to also become a professional bounty hunter whoe would literally go into the mouth of hell to extract his princess.
EBONY: A lot skeptics are critical of your taking on slavery.
TARANTINO: I haven’t liked any of the representations of slavery that I’ve seen on film. So being touchy about what you’ve seen in the past and what could come out based on that past, [the skepticism] is totally understandable. I get that.
EBONY: Are you more confident about Django after doing Inglourious Basterds?
TARANTINO: One of the characteristics of my work is that I make you laugh at f—ed-up shit. I show things that aren’t funny and are f—ed up, then all of a sudden, against your will, I get you to laugh. The moment I get you to laugh, you’re a co-conspirator. [Laughs]
EBONY: How do you make slavery humorous?
TARANTINO: To me, there is no humor in slavery. There is no humor in the Holocaust; however, there can be humor in the course of the situation of the story you’re telling.
EBONY: On a scale of 1 to 10, how many n-bombs are viewers in for?
TARANTINO: Since the n-bomb is just the parlance of the day, there’s no limit.
EBONY: Is the mojo still there with Sam Jackson?
TARANTINO: Completely. Sam is such a theatrical beast. He really is. He just devours everything in his path. He’s the bull in the china shop, and everybody else is the china.
EBONY: Any reservations about making this film?
TARANTINO: Asking a lot of Black folks to do something very painful. I thought about getting non-Americans to do it. What stopped me was [going] out to dinner with Sidney Portier. I was telling him my thoughts, and he said, "For whatever reason, I believe that you were meant to tell this story. You just need to not be afraid of your own movie. You need to get over being afraid."
EBONY: Favorite scene?
TARANTINO: It’s the sequence at Don Johnson’s plantation when Django tracks down the overseers who f—ed over him and his wife. To actually see a slave wipe out overseers is crazy catharthic.
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Of the many plantations along the River Road that leads out of New Orleans, following the path of the Mississippi, Evergreen Plantation might be the most beautiful. Its long paths are lined by grand oak trees, with Spanish moss delicately clinging on. Still a working sugar cane plantation, it features 37 buildings on the National Register of Historic Places, including 22 antebellum slave cabins that speak of the true horror witnessed in the South in years past.
Today, amidst the frequent storms that shake this part of the United States, Quentin Tarantino has resurrected a small part of that history. Marching in single file, their arms and legs in chains, is a group of slaves being led into "Candie Land", the fictional plantation that lies at the centre of his new film DJANGO UNCHAINED. Leading them in, dressed in full cowboy outfit atop a horse, is Jamie Foxx as the titular Django, passing for a freed slave-turned-slaver to gain access to Candie’s protected fortress.
It’s Tarantino’s first foray into the Western genre, here inspired by his beloved Spaghetti Westerns. With a title borrowed from Sergio Corbucci’s 1966 epic DJANGO, in which Italian actor Franco Nero played the mysterious gunslinger, Tarantino’s DJANGO UNCHAINED is his typically-fearless attempt to tell a Western led by a slave, and shine a light on one of the darkest periods in American history.
What’s especially surprising about DJANGO UNCHAINED, is how quickly the project came together. Tarantino remembers an Oscar party, in the year INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS had been on the awards circuit. It was there that he started discussing the state of the Western genre with producer Reginald Hudlin, himself a noted director of films like HOUSE PARTY and BOOMERANG.
"We started talking about movies set in this time period," recalls Hudlin. "I basically said I hated all of them. I hated the Hallmark greeting card movies. I wanted movies that told the truth about slavery, and that had clear-cut victories. My idea of a great slave movie was SPARTACUS. And until there was something like that about the American slave experience I wasn’t interested."
It set Tarantino’s mind racing, and immediately he started drafting what would become DJANGO UNCHAINED. "It just poured out of me," Tarantino says. "I was in Japan doing the last of my press tour and Spaghetti Westerns, they call them Macaroni Westerns there, are so very, very popular. I went and picked up a bunch of soundtracks and as I was listening to them the basic outline of the story came to me. I ended up writing the first scene while I was there. And it’s fairly similar to what exists today."
Adds Hudlin: "I thought the topic was over, but Quentin called me last April and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this new script and you got me into this thing!’"
In the end it took Tarantino six months to write a finished draft, a speedy job for him. "In fact I even slowed it down," he laughs. "I got to the middle point and backed off for a couple of weeks or so, because I worried that perhaps I was going too fast. I had about three different spots where I got to a certain point and kind of marinated for a few weeks before I continued telling the story."
For Hudlin, producing DJANGO UNCHAINED meant connecting with the roots which bind most of the country’s African American population. "Even though this was a work of fiction, there were people like this in my family," he says. "My great-great-grandfather was a conductor on the Underground Railroad. So these are true-life historical characters that have long needed to be represented. And not in some sanitised, ‘Oh, isn’t this nice’ movie but a foot-to-ass balls-out Quentin Tarantino action film."
The challenge of finding an actor capable of bringing Tarantino’s iconic lead to life wasn’t easy. "I had no idea who was going to play it, so I met with six different actors," Tarantino says. "Jamie Foxx came to my house and I was going to put him through the ringer and really test him out. He was the last one I saw. You just know when you meet the guy and I met the guy. He understood and he was the cowboy."
As it turns out, the dream of playing a cowboy had long been in Foxx’s mind. "Everyone wants to be a cowboy, man," he says. "As a kid I grew up in Texas and I had toy guns. I got a horse for my birthday four or five years ago, so I’m riding my own horse in the movie."
Foxx, in fact, grew up little more than eight hours drive away from the Evergreen Plantation location of the DJANGO shoot. "It was almost like, that’s what we were used to," he says. "That’s the way it is. Even now, how certain things are happening with that racial component, it’s because of this. It’s because of some of that mentality not being washed out yet."
Agrees Hudlin: "It affects all of us in the cast and crew. When we’re doing a scene in which one of the characters is getting tied to a tree, and is about to be whipped, it’s a whole thing to realise that really happened here. It happened with a horrifying regularity. It’s no different from shooting a film about the holocaust in Auschwitz. The disturbing thing is that Auschwitz at least looks like a prison; this is beautiful. It can lull you into a false sense of security. It’s a beauty that’s been paid for in blood."
Foxx is impressed by Tarantino’s courage. "He’s hip-hop, man," he laughs. "This is going to be a tough film to do, but the way he’s shooting and the pleasant and great things he’s finding are amazing. That’s why he’s Quentin Tarantino."
For Tarantino himself, tackling such sensitive subject matter comes with no hesitation. "I always know that a couple of people will say some things about it," he admits. "But then that goes away and the movie is the movie. And I don’t let anything anybody might possibly say ever stop me from doing anything anyway!"
DJANGO UNCHAINED, then, seems certain to represent everything Tarantino: courageous, energetic and above all entertaining.
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When "Django Unchained" opens in theaters Dec. 25, audiences will finally see just what Quentin Tarantino has wrought with his provocative, ultraviolent slave-era Western. But that big-screen version is a long way from the screenplay Tarantino originally wrote that sparked a burst of excitement (along with juicy debate) when it first surfaced online in 2011.
Since then, scenes have been axed, dialogue has been added and major sections have been completely rewritten. Even the climax of the film was ditched — no longer does the titular character, played by Oscar winner Jamie Foxx, ride through town on his way to the Candyland plantation to blow up the master’s house. (Not to worry: Foxx himself claimed recently, "The new ending trumps it because Quentin made it a ‘ghost story.’")
But fans of that original version will still have a chance to check out what it might have looked like visually, since Tarantino’s script has been adapted into a comic book series by Vertigo/DC Entertainment. The first of six installments drops Dec. 19; the second, which features a cover by Denys Cowan revealed here for the first time, hits Jan. 30 (three and four go on sale in February and March). Think of the comic series as an alternate version — that happens to come out first.
"There’ll be a lot of scenes in the comic that are not in the finished film," says "Django" producer Reginald Hudlin, whose comic book credits include Marvel’s "Black Panther" and "Birth of a Nation." While putting the final touches on the film, Hudlin took some time to give Indiewire his first in-depth interview about it — plus his thoughts on black superheroes, nerding out with Tarantino and the challenge of translating a 168-page screenplay into panels and word balloons.
Who came up with the idea for a "Django Unchained" comic book?
It kind of happened organically, actually. We were getting proposals to publish an illustrated screenplay, meaning it would be the screenplay with a bunch of photographs from production, and Quentin didn’t really want to do that. He believes the screenplay is an artistic medium in itself. He loves publishing his screenplays, but he wants them to stand alone and not have pictures as a crutch; either the writing works or it doesn’t. And when Quentin gave me that response to the offer I said, "Well, I get that. And, in fact, I was kind of disappointed because when I read ‘illustrated screenplay,’ I thought they were talking about a comic book adaptation." Then he lit up, like, "Yeah. Now, that’s what I’m talking about! That would be fun." [laughs] I agreed, so I reached out to my friends in the world of comic-book publishing and we got it going.
Has a slave ever been the hero of a comic book?
There haven’t been many, but yes. I mean, I have a great appreciation for the medium and so does Quentin. His specialty is, in whatever you’re talking about — film, television, comic books — he will mention very obscure characters and titles. For example, we talked about comic books — specifically the subcategory of Western comic books — and how big a fan he was of "Gunhawks," which had a black slave who was teamed up with a Confederate soldier. To me, that’s typical Marvel. [laughs] Like, what’s the boldest, craziest combination we can put together? The fact is, as per usual, comic books are bold and will go to provocative places. I can also say, pretty confidently, that no one’s ever seen anything like "Django" before.
The plot for "Django" revolves around a newly freed slave in the antebellum South attempting to rescue his lost love, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who was sold to another plantation. Though slaves could not legally marry during that period, did Django and Broomhilda consider themselves husband and wife?
You’re asking the question we bring up in the movie. Schultz [Christoph Waltz’s character] tells Django, “I didn’t know slaves recognized the institution of marriage.” And Django says, “Me and my wife do.” I mean, at the end of the day, doesn’t it come down to that? Marriage is a state of mind. Plenty of marriages on paper mean absolutely nothing.
Speaking of things on paper that aren’t necessarily binding, the original “Django”script went through numerous changes during production, and I heard that the gang rape of Broomhilda was toned down considerably. Quentin decided to shoot it in a way that protected Kerry while still conveying that something horrible happened to her character. Were those changes a direct result of her conversations with you and Quentin?
Let me answer that by making a broader statement. Quentin writes these scripts, and obviously he’s one of the best writers we have in our business right now. As the crew, we tend to treat his scripts with great reverence, like, “let’s figure out how to execute this exactly as he wrote it.” Quentin, though, looks at the script very much as a living document. He’ll show up on set with some new dialogue written on lined paper that he’s ripped out of a notebook and give it to an actor and say, “Learn this.” [laughs] And we’re going, “WHAT?” Then we see what he’s doing and say, “Oh, my God.”
Because it’s so much better.
We were completely happy before. But Quentin is constantly trying to figure out how to elevate, and part of that is talking with his actors. He’s not necessarily trying to appease his actors. But they are his partners, and he listens to them for their emotional truth.
Can you give us an example?
There was a whole other scene that kind of kicks off the third act of the film. Quentin knew the scene worked for every character except one, Jamie’s character, and when we were rehearsing it, Jamie said, “Oh, I’d play it this other way.” Quentin said, “Oh, really? I didn’t think you’d do that.” Jamie said, “Definitely, I’d play it like this…” That previous concern Quentin had, combined with Jamie’s instincts, made Quentin rewrite the third act of the movie! He always wants things to be true. That’s why he shoots the movie in what he calls “emotional order,” meaning it’s not quite in continuity order. But his thinking is, here’s a big scene, and based on how that goes maybe I don’t need so much of this other stuff, or maybe I need more of something else. Those things happened throughout the process of making the film.
You and Quentin seem like a very unlikely team. How did you first meet?
We met years and years ago. I’m friends with Pam Grier, who invited my brother Warrington and I to an awards event where she was being honored for her work in “Jackie Brown.” Quentin was presenting the award. And as soon as we met, Quentin said, “I saw that special you did for HBO, ‘Cosmic Slop.’” Now, this is something very few people have seen. It’s an obscure part of my filmography. And Quentin goes, “I don’t know why you did that short ‘Space Traders’ [about aliens who offer to buy the African American population] for HBO. That’s a feature. You blew that!” I was like, whoa. Then I thought about it and said, yeah, you know, he’s kind of right. [laughs] That kind of started our relationship, where we would meet up whenever and talk very, very passionately about movies, about everything.
Do you ever get competitive with each other when it comes to pop minutiae?
“Competitive" is not the right term. It’s more like we “revel in our nerditude.” I remember overhearing my assistant describe our interaction to someone. He said, “Yeah, Reggie and Quentin will talk, and then they’ll just go to a place and no one knows what they’re talking about.”
Is there any talk of releasing Quentin’s earlier films, such as “Pulp Fiction,” as comic books?
Funny you should say that. When we were looking at the “Django” pages, we were lamenting that we hadn’t started this a lot sooner. And I said, “Well, maybe it’s not too late.” So, yes, that conversation has started. I think comic books are part of the complex strain of DNA that make up what people think is the Tarantino style of storytelling. You’ve got all kinds of things that go into that mix. And for someone like myself, who never understood why he never did anything in that medium, I was very excited to shepherd “Django”into the comic book format.
Tarantino’s scripts are extremely quotable and dialogue-heavy. How do you go about adapting one?
I was a little intimidated at first. But if you just break up the story into the appropriate number of panels, it actually flows really well. When I was showing Quentin the first 10 pages of the book, I said, “Look, we’ve got it all in there, and the page isn’t drowning in word balloons. You still have plenty of room for the art.
Can you talk about the decision to go with R.M. Guera for the book’s illustration, and what kind of direction Quentin gave him?
We looked at a lot of artists, and Quentin picked R.M. Guera, who has done great work but is best known for “Scalped,” which is a kind of noir series among Native Americans set on a reservation. He’s a brilliant artist, and that sensibility is perfect for what Quentin’s doing. Also, R.M. already worked with Quentin, adapting a couple of scenes from “Inglourious Basterds” for Playboy magazine. “Django” was that same approach: Don’t draw what’s in the movie ; draw what’s in the script, which in some ways is different from what’s in the movie. We also have a great lineup of different cover artists: Jim Lee, Denys Cowan, Alex Ross and Frank Quitely. They all do their interpretation of Django. I get excited about projects like this, because I also feel like it’s a way to help support a medium that means so much to me.
It’s been a while since the comics industry has seen a new iconic black superhero. Do you think “Django”has the stuff?
He could. I’m committed to the concept of black superheroes, no matter what. And I certainly consider Django a superhero.
The first commercial black superhero was “Black Panther,” which you helped revive in 2005.
That’s right. When I was writing “Black Panther” for Marvel, I told them I want to give back to that next generation, and the series turned out to be a huge success. “Black Panther” is the biggest seller in the Marvel Knights line of animated DVDs. It out-sold Joss Whedon’s “X-Men,” which is pretty amazing given the brand power of those two great names. It out-sold “Iron-Man Extremis.” BET, who reluctantly aired the series at midnight, keeps re-running it because it gets a huge ratings bump every time, without any marketing and promotion. The show has become this amazing cult hit. [Hudlin was BET’s president of entertainment from 2005 to 2008.] A lot of my interest in comic books is diversifying the audience base. One of the nicest compliments I ever got was from a comic book retailer who said, “Reggie, we love when your comic books come out because we get different people coming into the store.” By “different,” he didn’t just mean black, he meant not the same people who come in every Wednesday. When I go to a comic book signing, there are tons of women. I see adults and kids — Latin, Asian, white, black — and I think that’s healthy for the industry.
Are you still planning a big-screen version of “Black Panther?”
Yeah, but those decisions are up to Marvel. Certainly, Stan Lee [who created the character with artist Jack Kirby in 1966] has said on multiple occasions he wants a “Black Panther” movie to get made. People are constantly asking me, “What’s the holdup?”
And what’s going to happen to Django when the miniseries wraps up?
Don’t know. Of course, I want very much to see the further adventures of Django. Quentin and I have talked about what those might be. But I want to see it in a feature film, and I don’t want a comic book to pre-empt or put him off doing a sequel, even though Quentin’s [officially] never done a sequel in his life and may never do one. All I know is we’ve got a great movie coming out, and we’ve got a great comic book, and we’ll see what happens after that.
Craigh Barboza is a New York-based freelance writer. His work has appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Uptown, USA Weekend and Vibe.
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