The idea for ‘Inglourious Basterds’ has been kicking around for some time and was mooted as a novel and a mini-series. Was there a eureka moment in the writing when you realised it was ready to go as a film?

Up until the time I decided to set the third act in the theatre I was

still nervous that it could be condensed into a movie. I knew I didn’t want it to be any longer than ‘Pulp Fiction’. When writing this I had the script from ‘Pulp Fiction’ sat right next to me, just so the thing wouldn’t have become elephantine. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to policing my work. And I knew if I wanted to get the film ready for Cannes, I didn’t have the time to shoot a bunch of shit I wasn’t going to use - that was gonna happen anyway (laughs) but that wouldn’t have happened with impunity.
 
Which are the films that you drew on for inspiration this time around?

There were no specific films, it was more genres and sub-genres, and what was inspiring at the beginning seemed passé when I sat down to write the film. Obviously there were all the films I talked about before I wrote the effing thing like ‘Where Eagles Dare’, ‘The Dirty Dozen’ and ‘The Devil’s Brigade’. But when I was doing the movie, I was watching a lot of films made in the forties - people disparagingly call them American propaganda movies and I really dislike the term as many of them were actually done by foreign directors who were actually living in Hollywood and who couldn’t live in their own countries because the Nazis had occupied them; you’re talking about Jean Renoir with ‘This Land is Mine’, Fritz Lang with ‘Man Hunt’, Jules Dassin with ‘Nazi Agent’ and ‘Douglas Sirk’ with ‘Hitler’s Madman’. And almost all of these movies starred George Sanders! What interested me about them is that they were made exactly at the time when the Nazis weren’t this theoretical threat or boogie men from the past. This was actually going on, on the planet earth, and many of these directors had had personal experience with the Nazis. I’m sure all of them were living in exile and had people still there who they were concerned about. Can you imagine a world where Jean Renoir can’t live in France? Yet these movies were entertaining, they could be thrilling; many of them have a large amount of humour in them. And the dialogue in these movies is so fantastic – of course any move starring George Sanders is going to have good dialogue. Also I’ve always been a big fan of German cinema of the twenties but I became truly in love with it while working on this film. I even had the idea of making one of the chapters a silent Pabst-style thing. Well, I got over that as I thought it would be too reflexive but I had a fun time exploring the idea.

The film features your usual eclectic mix of found music. How early in the filmmaking process do soundtrack choices come to you?

It kind of happens in a three stages. In some ways the first is the most important. I have a big vinyl collection and before I start the writing itself I just dive into my music, whether it be rock music or lyric music or my soundtrack collection. What I’m looking for is the spirit of the movie: I’m looking for the beat of the movie. Part of it is I’m immediately trying to jump to the screening process because when I find the right piece of music - it’s usually the opening credits, big stuff - I can actually visualize myself in a movie house watching it on screen; the images are provided by my imagination but the music is right there. All through the writing process I’m always going back there to reinvigorate myself, reminding myself that I’m making a movie and remembering it’s not just words on the page because I’m a very precious writer and I can get a little caught up in that. This process continues to go on into the second stage, the shooting, and the third stage is when I’m editing. What’s also interesting about the editing process is how it is less about the big moments, now I’m thinking more minutiae, and that becomes really fun, searching for these little small cues from some obscure soundtrack.

Michael Fassbender’s character, stiff upper lip English soldier Archie is also a film critic. Should we read anything into that?

I have no bones to pick with film critics at all. If I wasn’t a filmmaker I would probably be a film critic. My bone if I was a film critic would be I’d be a better film critic than most of the film critics I read. But talk about it’s never time to kick a dog when it’s down! I never thought that some of the critics that I had grown up and admired reading would go the way of the dodo. It’s a sad time.
I love Archie’s character though, he’s terrific, and he’s not just a weird flight of fancy. I vaguely based the character on Graham Greene who was a film critic and was also a commando in WW2.

There’s a telling moment in the picture when Pitt’s Aldo Raine character opines ‘This might just be my masterpiece’. Is this a clue to how you regard this film?

The line was in the original script and as far as Aldo and his engravings are concerned this might be his finest.
But not to be coy, it’s not for me to say if this is my masterpiece, it’s not for the chicken to speak of its own soup, and if I did have that opinion it would not be valid until at least three years from now.

Are you impulsive about the projects you tackle or do you keep an eye out for posterity?

It’s a mix really. If something turns me on to write a story I’ll just do it. When I did ‘Grindhouse’ with Robert Rodriguez we thought it would just be this cool fun thing to do at the time - I had no idea of course that it would turn into this big fucking deal. So yes, I’m pretty impulsive but I’m also interested in my career, well, fuck the word career, I’m thinking about my filmography.  I believe that a filmmaker lives or dies by their filmography and if you muck about to much you just cheapen your entire artistic standard. I admire filmmakers who retire at a certain age before they go off. I am a student of cinema and I can see where directors who have gone wrong or where they’ve gone off track and there’s not that excitement about their work. I never want that to happen.

-David Willoughby

Inglourious Basterds is released August 19.

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