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Home , Django Unchained, Jamie Foxx

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REVENGE SHOULD BE SATISFYING MAKE THE VILLAIN CHARMING The difference between Unchained and my I did a lot of research into how slave plantations worked other is that it follows one character on a journey. as societies: basically an absurd, grotesque parody of Django and his wife are runaway slaves who are caught European aristocracy. I’d pictured Calvin Candie as an and as a punishment sold to owners on opposite sides of older man but when Leonardo DiCaprio said he was the country. We meet Django in as he’s freed by Go interested, I realised Candie could be like a petulant a bounty hunter who teaches him his trade and, later, boy emperor. If you owned 40 miles of land in those agrees to help him rescue his wife from the clutches of days, you had all those slaves who were literally your Calvin Candie, a plantation owner who makes slaves property. The white workers were pretty much slaves fight to the death for fun. ahead, as well. To all intents and purposes, you were a king Generally, revenge movies are simple. You meet the with absolute rule. And so like Caligula, Candie indulges hero. You meet his wife. You meet their kids. You hang himself with hedonistic vices and strange obsessions. out with them for about 20 minutes and then the bad Leonardo brought a charm to the role and makes guys kill the wife, kill the kids and the good guy goes take Candie a much better bad guy than the one I’d written. on a roaring rampage of revenge. The important thing to remember is that the revenge should be satisfying; it’s horrible when the heroes don’t personally kill the understood what it had to do with surfing. I planned bad guys. In Patriot Games, for instance, they’re fight- your to put the for this film together the same way, ing each other and then the bad guy falls on an anchor using existing songs that I liked. But artists heard and dies. That is so unsatisfying. You need to go to about the movie and about three-quarters of the way movie jail if you do that! At the end of through filming began to send me songs on spec. I a movie called Breaking Point, the best actually ended up with an original song that Ennio bad guy is in a greenhouse and Morricone wrote for the film, called Ancora Qui. the hero takes a bulldozer and pushes the house off COPY CLASSIC SCENES... a cliff. Well that wasn’t shot BUT MAKE THEM YOUR OWN any fun! I want you to There’s a scene in where a guy gets beat his head until shot through a white carnation and I lifted it directly it’s black pudding! from a film by [director of 1966’s Django]. That’s satisfying. But I tried not to copy anybody else. I used slow motion In my own Kill more in this film than I ever have before, but I didn’t Bill it’s a little bitter- want to imitate Sam Peckinpah too closely. If there’s sweet when bad guy one thing worse than a bad Tarantino imitator, it’s a bad Bill dies. He’s got to Peckinpah imitator. The final shootout sequence of The go, but it’s not quite Wild Bunch is a masterpiece beyond compare. the euphoric scene I do it slightly differently: I film Django shooting at you might think it 90 frames per second [very slow motion] and the people would be. But if your vil- getting shot at 22 frames per second [slightly speeded lains are really worthy to up]. I didn’t quite pull it off the way it was in my mind, have hell rained down on but it worked nevertheless. them, if they’re as loathsome as To me, a well-done action scene by a director is a joy the slavers and murderers in Django PICK YOUR HERO LIKE YOU forever. The way Michael Cimino did the restaurant Unchained, then we need to see it. Let the WOULD YOUR WIFE shootout in Year Of The Dragon is one of the best pieces lead character want to do it – and then do it! Clockwise from above: When you pick your lead for your movie, it’s kind of like of action ever committed to celluloid. The showdown as Django; picking your wife; it has to be right. Jamie Foxx has a at the end of The Good The Bad And The Ugly is, I think, FORGET CGI – MAKE IT REAL Leonardo DiCaprio in quality that the young actors of the Sixties Westerns had. the greatest moment of cinema since its invention. None of the gore in Django is digital. No way. What’s Django Unchained; a They were young, good-looking and sexy. Jamie has a the point of that? The only time you’re allowed to use shootout in the film; cowboy quality about him already. He’s from Texas and USE SPECIAL TARANTINO BLOOD CGI (computer-generated imagery) is where you would ‘Regulators’ attack he’s a good rider. The horse in the movie is Foxx’s horse One of the things Corbucci did was to push Spaghetti kill the actor if you did the stunt for real. Otherwise, if a wagon in real life. I think it’s the first time since Roy Rogers and Westerns from being operatic, grandiose versions of you want to impress me as a viewer, you’ve got to do it. Trigger that a lead actor has ridden his own horse in a film. American Westerns to being much more violent, brutal The hardest stunt in Django was when a wagon blows and surreal. I wanted Django Unchained to be like that. up as the Regulators who guard the slaves attack. We had So for the climactic shootout at the Candyland planta- 11 horses and the riders hit the ground at the same time. By Quentin seemed to be holding. The idea behind it was like stretch- tion we have dozens of people dying, with bullets hitting That’s more horses than have ever done a stunt like that ing a rubber band. The thinner and thinner a rubber band the fallen bodies and big blood squibs filling the air with before. It took four months to get them to do it on cue. gets, the more you fear the moment it snaps. It gets more gore. I’d never seen in a movie what would happen to For the opening sequence in the winter, I needed it to Tarantino and more dangerous... you’re waiting and waiting. bodies in a hail of bullets, these explosions of blood and be so cold you could see the actors’ breath; I didn’t want Now, pulling that off takes some delicacy and fan- flesh. Peckinpah did bloody shootouts – but bodies being to add the breath later. It was -8F. People were collaps- tastic actors who will keep up the tension. The long, landmines of blood? That was something even he hadn’t ing, going face down in the snow. People would start tense scene in this film is a dinner party where Samuel tried. Rather than being so realistic that you can’t han- crying and were having nervous breakdowns because it As his bloody Jackson suspects Django. For a long time, all the tension dle it, it’s surreal. And I actually think it’s fun. Hopefully was so brutally, frigidly cold. But if I can shoot the real is carried entirely in Samuel’s eyes. My theory with this people’s mouths are on the floor with surprise. thing, I will. revenge drama Django stuff is, to use the rubber band metaphor, there should The colour of the blood is very important, by the way. Unchained opens, the be no more give in the rubber band. It’s going to snap… It’s Tarantino Blood, a colour we discovered on Kill Bill STRETCH THE TENSION then you pull it a bit more! I’m a huge Brian De Palma and now use all the time. There are moments in the LIKE A RUBBER BAND director reveals his fan. He is one of the true modern masters of suspense. movie where people get shot and because they’re back- If you do it right, the longer the scene goes on, the more But even he never ratcheted up tension for half an hour. lit, it looks like the Bellagio fountains in Las Vegas. Yet suspenseful it can be. I happen to think this is an area golden rules for shooting no matter how bad the violence in this movie gets, I’m where I seem to be the only person doing it. The idea GET THE MUSIC RIGHT here to tell you, a lot worse was done in real life during came to me when I was writing : an action movie Since Kill Bill, I’ve used a lot of music times. Far worse. n one scene, with a German growing suspicious of a British in my films. Even in , all that surf music? That was in conversation with Simon Lewis. spy in a tavern, was 35 pages long! I questioned it – but it sounds like rock ’n’ roll to me. I never ‘Django Unchained’ is out on January 18

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