“Inglourious Basterds” Premier With Quentin Tarantino

Facebook has finally proven to be worthwhile. Yesterday afternoon my friend Mikey posted to Facebook that he was giving away two free tickets to the premier of "Inglourious Basterds" at the Castro. The clincher was that the director, Quentin Tarantino would be there, too. It was already after 4 and the screening was at 7, so I moved fast and nailed those tickets. So long, suckas!

As Tarantino described in the Q&A after the movie, he set out to create a WWII "genre picture" way back around 1998. His writing process begins with an idea, then starts building characters. He may or may not have an ending in mind, but the plot develops through the fleshing out and creating the characters. (Though I've never written a full-length script, that's probably how I would do it, too.) In the case of "Inglourious Basterds", he originally thought the movie would be historically correct, but as it turned out, the final script actually changes history.

Paraphrasing Tarantino, "Besides the sub-plot revolving around a Nazi propaganda movie-within-a-movie, the whole picture becomes my own propaganda movie because I end up re-writing history!"

I've seen enough Quentin Tarantino movies and heard him interviewed enough times to know he's basically a movie geek (or "cinephile" as he says) and makes movies HE would like to see. Graphic, gross out violence, dark humor, very complex character-driven plots and homages to other classic films are always incorporated. The audience at the Castro were true Tarantino fans with intelligent questions and a rather disturbing tendency to chuckle or even laugh at extreme violence. Tarantino knows his audience because he is one.

I won't go into the plot of "Inglourious Basterds" because it's very convoluted and complex, with plenty of surprising twists and turns that could be spoilers if I told you too much. I'm going to stick with tidbits of interest to readers of this gay porn blog. For instance:

Brad Pitt is sexy and swaggering as always playing a hot-shot hillbilly leader of an all-Jewish gang of Nazi hunters. He demands that each of his soldiers present him with no less than 100 Nazi scalps, and we see the process of several scalpings vividly. Brad's definitely rocking the hot daddy image.

A good deal of the cast were famous German actors. Maybe I see entirely too much gay porn, but many of them looked like gay porn stars.

My readers will take particular interest in a character called "The Bear Jew" who has a reputation for bashing in heads with a baseball bat. The Bear Jew makes his first appearance after a big build-up to terrorize captured Nazis. Gay fans of bears and bear cubs will drool over the hunky terrorist stud in dirty wife beater and suspenders. (see below) He's played by Eli Roth, the hot young director of "Hostel" and "Cabin Fever", who had to pack on 40 pounds of muscle to play the role. Move over Brad!

When asked to describe a "dream project", Tarantino explained that each of his movies are dream projects, "I am one of the fortunate people that get the chance to actually create my art the way I want to." True to his spirit of independent film making, he insisted that the first run of "Inglourious Basterds" be shown at as many single-screen theaters as possible. I applaud the whole concept of premiering a movie at an old movie palace like the Castro with the director sitting in the auditorium and answering questions afterward. (He actually sat in the same row as us!) It was not a tuxedo and slinky gown red carpet Hollywood affair, as Tarantino chose to arrive in a vintage 1940's Buick rather than a contemporary stretch limo. However, I think his film making technique continues to evolve and "Inglourious Basterds" has the look of a big, Hollywood blockbuster rather than the scrappy little indie films earlier in his career.