Is anybody ready for Pulp Fiction creator Quentin Tarantino’s take on slavery in the Old South? It’s coming.
Tarantino, a director and screenwriter whose films are known for earthy and witty dialogue, eccentric story lines, and violence (and eccentric violence) is currently making a movie titled Django Unchained about a freed slave who seeks revenge against his former slavemaster. Django Unchained follows on the heels of Tarantino’s World War II movie Inglourious Basterds, about a group of Jewish American military operatives who seek to assassinate members of the Nazi leadership. That movie garnered positive reviews and was Tarantino’s highest grossing film.
Wikipedia says this about the Django Unchained:
The film stemmed from Tarantino’s desire to produce a spaghetti western set in America’s Deep South; Tarantino has called the proposed style “a southern,” stating that he wanted “to do movies that deal with America’s horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they’re genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it’s ashamed of it, and other countries don’t really deal with because they don’t feel they have the right to”.
…Jamie Foxx has since been confirmed to play Django. Tarantino regular Samuel L. Jackson will play Stephen, a wise, proud house slave. Leonardo DiCaprio has also been officially cast in the role of Calvin Candie, the primary antagonist in the film. Kurt Russell had been cast as Ace Woody, a “vile and sadistic trainer of slaves who are forced to fight in death matches for a plantation owner.” Kerry Washington has been cast as Broomhilda, the “long-suffering slave wife of Django.”
Other cast members include Dennis Christopher as Candie family lawyer Leonide ‘Leo’ Moguy, Laura Cayouette as Candie’s sister, Lara Lee Candie-Fitzwilly, M.C. Gainey and Tom Savini as Big John and Ellis Brittle, two of the slave owners who separate Django and Broomhilda, Anthony LaPaglia and Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Australian brothers, Jano and an unnamed character, respectively, who encounter Django while escorting slaves to a fight. However, Gordon-Levitt has not fully committed to the film, due to possible scheduling issues, and Gerald McRaney and Michael K. Williams in unknown roles. Tarantino-collaborator RZA was cast as a slave named Thadeus. According to ReservoirWatchDogs.com, Sacha Baron Cohen was cast in the role as gambler Scotty Harmony who wishes to purchase Django’s wife from Calvin Candie.
The film is scheduled for release on Christmas day, 2012, but don’t let the release date fool you: this will not be a film for the whole family to enjoy. If it’s a Tarantino movie, there will be blood. In fact, I can see the puns already: “What’s black, white, and red all over? It’s Quentin Tarantino’s new film about the Old South!” (Well, that seemed punny to me.)
PS: Black filmmaker Spike Lee has criticized Tarantino for the frequent use of the N-word in his movies. It will be interesting to see what the N-word count will be in this new film.
PPS: In an earlier interview, Tarantino said that among historical figures, he was most facsinated by the violent white abolitionist John Brown. Brown is most famous for trying to incite a slave rebellion in western Virginia.
Now, a Tarantino movie featuring John Brown… I’d pay to see that, no questions asked. I can only dream it will happen.
Note: See the follow-up to this story: Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” Hits the Big Screen
Jubilo! The Emancipation Century 