The photcall and first press conference for Inglourious Basterds has already happened in Cannes, and there’s some funny stuff coming out. Brad Pitt is claiming that he doesn’t even really remember signing on to the film because Quentin Tarantino got him hammered on five bottles of wine. Brad describes this as taking place “at the end of the summer”, which most likely means that Quentin came to visit Chateau Miraval last summer, after Angelina gave birth to the twins. So Brad has been drinking heavily ever since the babies were born. And Angelina was taking care of the babies while Brad and Quentin got drunk on French wine. There’s more:

Brad Pitt said today his appearance in Quentin Tarantino’s new Second World War film began over five bottles of wine and some kind of “smoking apparatus”.

Inglourious Basterds stars Pitt as an American army officer leading a group of Jewish-American soldiers around Europe taking violent revenge on Nazis.

Tarantino was a bundle of energy as he talked about the movie today, clearly delighted to be back in competition for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival 15 years after he won it for Pulp Fiction.

“Quentin came to visit some time at the end of the summer, we talked about backstory, we talked about movies,” he said.

“I get up the next morning and see five empty bottles of wine right on the floor. Five.”

“And something that resembles a smoking apparatus – I don’t know what that was about – and apparently I had agreed to do this film.”

“Six weeks later I was in uniform, and I was Lieutenant Aldo Raine (his character in the film).”

Tarantino said he was only days away from abandoning the project altogether at the casting stage after struggling to find the right actor to play one of the German generals.

[From Metro-UK]

There’s another interesting article, but this one is mainly quotes from Tarantino. Which is great if you love him (like me) because the man is a first-rate talker. The crux of the interview seems to be director Lars von Trier’s recent Cannes claim, as he was being booed for his film Anti-Christ, that he was God. Tarantino makes a similar claim, but hedges with “I am god… as far as the characters are concerned.”

Ebullient as usual on stage, Quentin Tarantino met the press today shortly after the overwhelmingly packed first screening of his new film, “Inglourious Basterds” this morning at the Cannes Film Festival. He praised Cannes as the holy land and declared himself god. But, there’s more to the story.

Opening in German-occupied France in 1941, Tarantino’s latest follows a young woman who opens a Paris movie theater after barely escaping the execution of her entire family by the Nazis. Elsewhere, a group of renegade Jewish soldiers band together to capture Nazis, ultimately joining forces with the woman (and her movie theater) to plot the demise of Hitler and his cohorts to end the war.

Asked this morning whether he stands by a previous statement that he loves all of his characters, QT continued the steady stream of auterist language being found here in Cannes this year.

“I love [my characters] from this god perspective because I am god as far as the characters are concerned, because I created them,” Tarantino said today.

The talk of the film may very well be the role of Nazi Col. Hans Landa, arguably the key character within the ensemble cast. Played by Austrian actor Christoph Waltz, who practically steals the show, Tarantino explained today that without the right man to play the role, he was ready to scrap the movie.

“I realized that I was writing a pretty impressive character pretty early on,” Tarantino explained, reiterating that finding the right actor was essential to the movie. “There was something very liberating about [being willing to walk away] from it rather than make a compromise.”

Later in the gathering, fellow actor Brad Pitt validated Tarantino’s assertions about authorship, saying, “It’s a real pleasure working for an auteur and something special to come here to the holy land with him.”

[From Indie Wire]

It’s true that Cannes was the first festival to recognize Tarantino as a genius, and it cracks me up that both Quentin and Brad Pitt refer to Cannes as “the holy land”. The reviews are starting to come in, and it’s about what I expected. The high-brow media outlets don’t care for Basterds, while everybody else thinks it’s pretty good. BBC News has a decent review of the film, calling it a “comic revenge fantasy” and a blend of western and war genres, with some “camp-operatic” parts. Nearly everyone is interested in the German actor Christoph Waltz, a TV star who plays SS officer Colonel Hans Landa in the film, many pointing out that he steals every scene he‘s in. The biggest criticisms thus far seem to the time (Basterds is nearly three hours long) and “Pitt’s character not getting the screen time he deserves.” So Quentin got Brad hammered and made him smoke some kind of homemade bong, and Brad didn’t even get the best part? For shame, Quentin.

Photos of Brad Pitt without the glass thanks to Bauergriffinonline. Photos of Pitt drinking water from WENN.com