In an interview with National Public Radio's Terry Gross Wednesday night, Quentin Tarantino talks about the movie "Django Unchained", calling the movie's violence "fun" and "cool," and an entertainment for viewers, according to npr.org.
Tarantino said the violence in the movie somewhat compares to the real life incidents that involved 245 years of slavery, but insists showing what actually happened would be brutal. Instead, the movie provides a spin and a different touch.
"What happened during slavery times is a thousand times worse than [what] I show," he said. "So if I were to show it a thousand times worse, to me, that wouldn't be exploitative, that would just be how it is. If you can't take it, you can't take it.
Tarantino is well aware where to draw the line while showing violence in movies.
"The only thing that I've ever watched in a movie that I wished I'd never seen is real-life animal death or real-life insect death in a movie," Tarantino said. "That's absolutely, positively where I draw the line. And a lot of European and Asian movies do that, and we even did that in America for a little bit of time. ... I don't like seeing animals murdered on screen. Movies are about make-believe. ... I don't think there's any place in a movie for real death."
During the interview on NPR, Tarantino shared some moments on sets, talked about the heroic character in the movie and his connection to African-American culture.
On mispronouncing "Django" as "D-jango" where "D" should be silent:
"I thought everyone would know how to say the name 'Django.' Even if it wasn't from the spaghetti westerns, at least from Django Reinhardt you would know how to say it. And people would read the script [and say], 'Oh! D-jango Unchained. OK!' And people would say it all the time. Frankly, I considered it an intelligence test. If you say D-jango you're definitely going down in my book."
On giving a spin to the movie with an epic touch:
"I like the idea of telling these stories and taking stories that oftentimes - if played out in the way that they're normally played out - just end up becoming soul-deadening, because you're just watching victimization all the time. And now you get a chance to put a spin on it and actually take a slave character and give him a heroic journey, make him heroic, make him give his payback, and actually show this epic journey and give it the kind of folkloric tale that it deserves - the kind of grand-opera stage it deserves."
On his early connection to African-American culture:
"[My mother's] boyfriends would come over, and they'd ... take me to blaxploitation movies, trying to, you know, get me to like them and buy me footballs and stuff, and ... my mom and her friends would take me to cool bars and stuff, where they'd be playing cool, live rhythm-and-blues music ... and I'd be drinking ... Shirley Temples - I think I called them James Bond because I didn't like the name Shirley Temples - and eat Mexican food ... while Jimmy Soul and a cool band would be, you know, playing in some lava lounge-y kind of '70s cocktail lounge. It was really cool. It made me grow up in a real big way. When I would hang around with kids I'd think they were really childish. I used to hang around with really groovy adults."
