With the $65 million international weekend gross for Nazi-scalping, WWII-abbreviating adventure-comedy Inglourious Basterds proving a huge demand for movies in which true events are delightfully reimagined by Quentin Tarantino, the question now is, Which part of history will he tackle next? Why not American slavery? In a pretty great interview on Friday’s Charlie Rose, Tarantino reiterated his plans to one day make a movie based on the life of abolitionist John Brown — the guy whose unsuccessful attempt to start a slave revolt at Harper’s Ferry in 1859 fueled the movement that helped start the Civil War — who Tarantino told Rose is “my favorite American who ever lived.â€
Tarantino’s been talking about this for a while as something he’d like to do later on, possibly for his final movie. But in light of Basterds’ runaway success, doesn’t it sound like something he should start working on now? (Maybe he could even make Cannes next year!)
“I wouldn’t go the dreary, solemn, historical route,†he said on Charlie Rose, just in case anyone actually thought he would. “I just don’t like that musty thing.†Two weeks ago, a counterfactual Brown biopic following his successful seizure of an armory and subsequent slavery-ending, Civil War–preventing uprising (starring Christoph Waltz as an evil huge-pipe-smoking plantation owner and featuring a seventies soul soundtrack) would’ve sounded like a stupid idea. Today, though, it might just be the best one Harvey Weinstein’s ever heard. We suppose we’d rather watch that than one of those hypothetical Basterds prequels.
(You can download video of Tarantino on Charlie Rose by right-clicking here. Skip to about 42 minutes in for the John Brown stuff.)