Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose Quentin Tarantino loves all kinds of movie, but the spaghetti western has long been his favorite. He said when he would finally make one it would be in the sergio carbochy universe. Now teeno has helmed a spaghetti western set against backdrop of american slavery. It is called django unchained. Here is the trailer. Good, cold evening gentlemen. Im led to believe the specimen i came to acquire. When i hear the trumpet sound whats your name . Django. And youre exact lets one im looking for. Hey, stop talking to him. Calm down. Im simply a customer trying to conduct a transaction. Last chance fancy pants. Very well. You kill people and they give you a reward. They are big on the reward. I need your help. Im looking for the brittle brothers. I dont know what they look like, but you do, dont you . They got my wife and they sold her but i dont know who took her. That means we visit every plantation until we find her. Once the final burden, brother,alize dead in the dust, i agree to give you your freedom, and ill take you to rescue your wife. Where are we going . Yeah whooo you have my curiosity. But now you have my attention. How do you like the bounty hunting business . I like the way you die, boy. He is a rambunctious sort, aint he . Whats your name . Django. Rose i am pleased to have Quentin Tarantino back at this table. Welcome. Thank you. Its good to be back at this table. Rose where did this movie come from . Well, i had the idea for it not a story, but i kind of had the idea for about eight years or so. And the idea was in its simplest form was a man who was a slave during the antebellum south, before the civil war, who would get free through some circumstance which i hadnt figured out yet. And then he would become a Bounty Hunter. In particular what he would be doing it happened all the time back then you know, people would do a stagecoach robbery in wyoming, get a price on their head, and then theyd go to the south and hide out on plantations as overseers. It it was ripe picking to do a story like that so that was the idea floating around. And i got the i came up with the story that was just the idea i came up with the story towards the end of my press tour for inglorious bastards. I was working on a book about it. Rose a subtextual film book. Those those are the only kind i write. The thing about it most of the western directors are really terrific, whether anthony mann, or whoever. They all the good ones all have their own version of the west that they made their characters roam. And carbochy had the most brutal, violent west, and surreal version of the west imaginable. And i think part of the reason was because he was still dealing with the fascism left over from world war ii, being under mussolini. And his bad guys really kind of ruled the day in his movies. None of his other archtypes can fill the role, except in contrast to the bad guys, and the bad guys represent fascism. The bad guys take over one of his western towns, completely like a nazi occupation. Im writing that, and want character, the pityless nature of everything. Its a rough nomans land world. Life is cheap and death is expensive. So im writin writing this piece, and the thing that is nice is it doesnt matter what the director is thinking. Its about you making your case. Its about me seeing the movies and making my case and either i do or i dont. Either i convince you or i dontquence you. At some point im writing this and i think, well, you know, im dying into this and digging it, and im think thinking, truthfully i dont know if he was thinking any of these things but i know im thinking it, and i can do this. So in almost every way, my film writing led me to my next film, and then using that fascistled bleak baron, brutal, violent, surreal west as a jumping off point, what is the true american . And that would be being a slave in the antebellum south. Rose so you had a movie. Yeah. Rose django unchained. Uhhuh. Rose the search for the lead, you got jamie foxx. Uhhuh. Rose theres a story you went through about five or six people not that you offered them the part, but you discussed it with them . Rose foxx seems perfect for me. Now i cant imagine rose you can imagine will smith but now i cant imagine anybody but jamie. Rose he has that sort of well, it seems obvious now. To tell you the truth, when he walked through the door it became obvious even though before i met him it wasnt quite obvious. Rose what did you see when he walked in the door and made it obvious . Well, he came over to my house, and we discussed the piece. And there were a lot of little factors. He really understood what i was trying to do. He really appreciated the script. He loved the story, and he liked what it said. He wanted to live in a world where django unchained already existed. And hes from texas. Hes from the south. Hes not an l. A. Boy or new york boy. Un, hes from texas. And rose hes talked before how the n workforce used against him all the time. Year, hes experienced race were close enough in the same age he was he knows what its like to be black in the 70s, which still had its rough places, especially in the south. So one, he got the piece 100 . He really knew what i was trying to do with django. Rose and what were you trying to do with django . Well, just the story itself. You know, i wanted to i wanted to go into the bleakest time of americas history, the truly the biggest sin that the country committed and the sin that were still paying for to this day, we havent gotten past the sin. Part of the reason we havent gotten past it is we have to almost lie about it, lie by omission. And i wanted to throw out there on the table. I wanted to take a modernday audience and stick them in the antebellum south and see what America America was like at that time in that part country. And deal now, i want to do it in an entering way, and me the way to do that is to do it as a genre pies because it seems like most of the time whenever it has been dealt with, at least in the last 30 years or 40 years, its been either historical with a capital h which i think kind of put it at an arms distance, kinds of puts it a little bit under class, to observe and here are the facts. And we all know the facts, more or less, or theres been movies like, mandingo or goodbye uncle tom which in many ways i think are much clorls to the truth than the capital hmovies. So i wanted to do it like a an exciting western adventure. And as genre movie first that uses slavery and the antebellum south as a backdrop in order to tell this adventure. And the adventure he was down with and i was down with is of a black male rising up, becoming a cowboy, becoming a spaghetti western here oh, becoming a folkloric here oh, and goes out and saves his woman. Shes in the pit of hell, and hes going to go and extract her. Rose the pit of hell is where . Mississippi. Rose is that where leonardo comes in . Yeah, he has a plantation. Rose plantation. Its the fourth biggest cotop plantation in mississippi. But why its famous is because they have mandingo fights there. And Everybody Knows about candie because hes the procurer of mandingo fighting slaves. Rose how did you get leonardo . You called him up and said, would you like to play in my movie . And he said yes. Leo has always been a fan of my work, my writing, and i think whenever i finish a script, leo gets a copy of it. I dont send it to him. I think he just procures it. He can do things like that. Rose he has somebody who yeah, year, he knows somebody. And so he had read the script and i got word he would be interested talking to me about playing the character candie. When i wrote the scrirnth i never made is clear Calvin Candies age, but it was supposed to be an older guy. I had somebody a little bit in mind when i was writing it, but me being me, i forget the last time i saw them was in 1991, and it actually has been 20 years since then. Maybe theyve changed. They had a rude awakening. Hes kind of a really old man. Thats not what i was thinking about. Just 90s doesnt seem that long to me. But, anyway, so i go to it talk to leonardo about the whole piece, and he, like me, has been fasinated this part of history, too. And hes the one that actually brings the phrenology aspect into the piece. Thats the one thing this thing is missing, and i think it needs to be there because it was the pseudoscience that allowed these southern buj waz feel comfortable about doing the inhuman stuff they were doing. What fascinated me about the ideal of leonardo playing it, once we had our meeting, i walked away and, okay, let me think about the piece now with a younger man. Let me go through the paces in my own mind to see if that changes anything for the good or for the bad. And one of the pretexts that i wanted to get at in this movie is how the southern arstockeracy could allow themselves to do this. And actually think its okay, talk themselves into it being proper and right. To me this whole thing of, you know, town town aristocrates, southern aristocracy, its just european aristocracy, brought over ad hoc. They kept what they liked. They chucked out what they didnt like and made up a bunch of stuff to go along with it at their own bidding. And so with that in mind, you have to think about it. If you were a plantation owner back then, you know in a real industrial kind of farm, that would be back then in america at that time, Calvin Candie owning the fourth biggest plantation in mississippi, thats like owning dole pineapple. Rose thats a good business. So if he owns a property, a parcel of land thats 40 miles long or 65 miles long. So he has all these slaves that work and live on the plantation. Now, them he absolutely owns. Theyre his property. He can do with them as he sees fit. Not only does he have all of them. He also has all the ton of white workers that work there and work as overseers or doing the other things. Theyre paid, and they can leave, but, you know, the slave theyre slave wages, too, almost. But they have their children and their wives and stuff. So you have literally a Community Living on this plantation, in this ground. For all intents and purposes, those plantation owners were kings as far as that land was concerned. All right, not barons. Not burger mighters, kings, and kings with the powers of life and death. The leo part about it, him being younger, i thought of Calvin Candie as an evil king an evil ruler. Then i thought about him playing the role, and i that you want rather than the evil king, he like his fathers father and his father, they were the cotton men. But hes not a cotton man. Hes bored with it. Hes grown up around it his whole life and the farm takes care of itself and he indulges in hedonistic vices, and hedonistic hobbie hobbies to keep himself interested. Rose and he said yes. How about Christoph Waltz rose you wrote him in because you loved him from inglorious bastards. Hes an amazing human being, and i cant imagine to not do my next movie with him. I have to say it was not a super conscious decision to write him in. The opening scene in the movie came up. I wasnt quite prepared to do it and it came up and i just wrote it, and the next thing know i had this german walking around. And i thought i guess thats christof. Rose this is a seen where dr. King schultz, Christoph Waltz, tells django he thinks hes found his wife and he should play it cool. Do you mind telling me what the hell you are doing . He didnt call her by name but shes a young lady with marks on her back and speaks german. Its not wise to assume in this instance, i think its pretty safe, point being, dont get so carried away with your reputation. You lose sight of why were here. You think i lost sight today . Yes, i do. Soon taginizing candie. Youre going to blow this whole charade or more than likely get us both killed, and i for one dont intend to die in this country in mississippi, u. S. A. Im not antagonizing. Im intriguing him. Him. Do you remember that . Of coursey remember. What you said was this is my world. And in my world youve got to get dirty. So thats what im doing, getting dirty. Rose hes great in it. Hes just wonderful. Truly magnificent. Rose the voi the accent, the speech, the tone. In particular, him and sam jack son, its as it they and these this one, too its like its like they sing my dialogue. They dont say it. They sing it. Rose take a look at this. This is another scene in which the plantation owner Calvin Candie played by Leodardo Dicaprio. Here it is, roll tape. Whats your name, boy . His name is django freeman. Where did you dig him up . What turn of events brought django and myself together . I heard youve been telling everybody them mandingos aint no damn good, im curious, what makes you such a mandingo expert . Im curious what makes you so curious. What did you say, boy . Calm down, butch. No option given. None taken. Mr. Candie, i would appreciate if you could direct your line of inquiry toward me. One, you do not have anything to drink. Can i get you a tasty refreshment . Yes, ill have a beer. Rosco, a beer for the man with the beard and i will have a polynesian pearl diver, do not spate rum. Rose you wrote every line of this dialogue. Yes. Hes quite loquacious, isnt he . laughter when i look at leonardo doing that, its almost like hes and i dont think hes that familiar with it its like hes channeling Vincent Price or vicko bono, if he lost 250 pounds. Rose when you put this affect, you got kerry washington, too. She plays she plays djangos wife, broomhilda. Rose and there are some terrible lashing scenes in the movie. Theres a flashback where django remembers him the reason they got the reason theyre in the predicament at the beginning of the movie is they tried to escape together and they got captured. So they whipped whip kerry, and whip broomhilda, and burn runaway rs into kerrys cheek and djangos cheek and sell them separately. Once django gets free and becomes a Bounty Hunter now he needs to track her down and save her. In the movie he has a flashback where he remembers her whipping. And its a you know, its a very disturbing scene. You actually never see the whip actually touch her back, but its just in kerrys face. Un whenever you see ive never qiept bought it when i see movies where people get whipped because i just know that pain is so unimaginable that people would be losing it a lot more than they ever do in movies. Its almost like brandoesque, and i never bought that. Kerry dug deep in herself to actually give a true human representation of what that must be like, and its kind of shattering. Rose uniform seen roots. Youve seen documentaries about slavery. What is it you think you can tell us that is not told in those renderings of history . Well, in the case of documentaries, its not so much i can tell something that a documentary cant. Documentaries can do a really good job. Thats a different story. Im doing a dramatization. In the case of roots im a perfect age for equip roots. I think i was in seventh grade, going to a mostly black school when it came out and i, like almost everybody else in america, was glued to the tv set for the seven, ability days that aired. However i mean, i dont think roots actually aged that well, if you look at it 30, 40 years later. Partly is some of the casting. Some of the casting is really good, but some of the it especially the white people is really cheesy tv actors playing roles really beyond them and kind of cheapening the whole process. But the thing that really gets me about roots and a lot of people ive talked to it is you watch this whole thing thats on for 16 hours or something, and youre actually living the lives of these people, and putting yourself in that place. And if you remember, want last episode of it, are as lloyd bridgees, one of the most hate of all the racist guys in the movies, and chicken george, played by ben vereen, one of the guys youve been following the most, and at the end of the movie, they have lloyd bridges and they tie him to a tree and chicken george is going to whip him. Hes going to give him a peeling to end all peelings. And youve been waiting 16 hours for this. And, naturally, he does the thing that they normally do in these movies like, no, no, no, i cant do that. That would make me as bad as you. And when he said that, all over america if, 100 Million People said, no whip his. laughter rose he had it coming he had it coming. Its about time for payback. You dont have that problem in my movie. Rose you get payback. You get payback. Rose you also say the movies that youre making, youre not making them for today. Youre making them for 30, 40 years from now. I think you have to think like that. Do i want a lot of people to go see this movie . Absolutely. Do i want to go into a theater and feel the audience had a good time at the movies whatever you constitute that tept yet, i do. If i want laughs, i want to hear laughs. If i want them to cheaper tend like i do in this movie, i want them to cheer. And if theyre not cheering in the right way how do i need to influence so they are cheering the way i want them to do. Thats just now. I mean, this is most if you think about Something Like, say, the wild bunch, what it made on the friday it opened, does that mean anything now . No its the wild bunch. Its got to last for a long, long time. Im looking forward to, you know, kids who arent even born hearing about django unchained. Theyre going to grow up nay world with django unchained exists. About paul make the wild bunch . Yes. Rose why would you put him in john ford and people who made movies about the western . I would put sergio leon eddie number one. Rose you would . In particular because of fist full of dollars. Rose hes number one. Hes number one to me, kind of number one of all time, not just his western work. Hes my favorite director. As far as western directors are concerned, after that, i would actually probably my next three guys i hate to rate them after that, but my next three who are my favorites would be sergio carboshy, sam peckenpa, and it whitney who did a lot of roy rogers movies and other movies as well. Hes my favorite of the old salty dogs. Rose really . Because . His. S are fantastic. One of the things about his movies thats actually very interesting is his movies are also quite violent for the day. In fact, in retrospect the people who kind of like those wrnz refer to him as the peckenpaw of the 40sand 50s. He was never quite as violent but it was rough stuff. Rose what dont you like about john ford and George Stevens and those george steve tens only did one western. Rose what giants . A more than day western purpose westernesque. Its a soap opera. Dynasty. But i cant stand john ford gli kn