#271: Inglourious Basterds / Top 5 Quentin Tarantino Scenes

EXT. FILMSPOTTING STUDIOS. DAYTIME. LOS ANGELES. TWO HITMEN SIT IN A WHITE HONDA CIVIC.

KAHUNA
You really think you should be drinking while we’re casing a joint?

NEIL VEGA
What is this an intervention? You’re gonna get all Betty Ford on me?

KAHUNA
No, I’m just saying. Don’t you want to be, you know, alert, on top of your game, in case they come out? I mean, you never hear of a doctor tying a couple on before going into surgery, or an actor downing a fifth before his big monologue...

NEIL
Oh, oh, oh contraire mi amour. Exhibit A, Richard “Ginny Wolf” Burton, my friend. Drank like a sailor between acts, sometimes between lines. Peter O’Toole: never appeared sober on a set in his life.

KAHUNA
Larry the Arab?

NEIL
The same. And you know the Titanic.

KAHUNA
Not that Jimmy Cameron-Celine Dion video from the 90’s?

NEIL
No, I’m talking about the boat. The mother-effing R-M-S herself. Grand old lady is going down. It’s a panic, right? Everyone’s scrambling. You’ve got Astors and Guggenheims about to waltz with Davy Jones. No one’s thinking. No one’s doing what they should, you know, looking for Queequeg’s coffin. Except one guy. Wally Pipp. Second class passenger. Waltzes on up to the pantry, no one’s paying him any mind, they’re too lost in "Nearer My God To Thee" to notice the portly little guy making his way to the liquor locker. He opens it up. What does he see? Bam. It’s a Valhalla of booze. We’re talking the Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio of moonshine: 500 year-old Scotch from Robert the Bruce’s personal collection, Beowulf’s mead, Miles Standish’s Ouzo. It’s all there. And Wally Pipp figures, well, “I’m going down, I’m going down pickled!” And he just starts drinking. I mean WC Fields wetdream drinking. Three hours straight. Just as he's polishing off Joan of Arc’s favorite cabernet. Good night Mrs. Calabash, wham, he blacks out.

KAHUNA
What a way to go.

NEIL
But that’s just it. Seven hours later, the Carpathia comes by to start plucking Kate and Leo from the water, everyone’s dead, hypothermia. Guess who they pull from the water, still breathing? Wally effing Pipp. He drank so much, his blood was 70% alcohol. It wouldn’t freeze.

KAHUNA
Wow. Now that’s A Night to Remember.

NEIL
Now you’re talking. Pussy Galore and Kenny Moore on the high seas.

KAHUNA
He was in "Longest Day," right?

NEIL
Exactamundo. The Duke Does D-Day. Great war movie. Not like this latest travesty, you seen this thing, this "Inglourious Basterds?"

KAHUNA
No.

NEIL
Quentin Tarantino, movie clerk. It’s his new film. What a piece of refuse. But that’s why we’re here. These two guys that Mr. Wallace wants us to take out, Adam and Matty, they won’t shut up about it. They’ve got this Filmspotting show and they spend thirty minutes geeking out over the genius of "Inglourious Basterds" and the performance of Christoph Waltz as Nazi Hans Landa like it should be hanging in the frigging Louvre. And if that’s not enough, they devote the entire rest of the show to all things Johnny Destiny, including a list of their Top 5 Quentin Tarantino Scenes. All this dead air wasted over a guy that can scribble some clever dialogue and pepper his scripts with annoying movie references. It’s exhausting. Man, I’m hungry.

KAHUNA
You want a get a taco?

NEIL
Ah, forget it. Where we gonna get a taco 'round here? It’s Chinatown. 

Plus, music from the "Reservoir Dogs" soundtrack.Listener Feedback, Massacre Theatre -- presented by In Review Online and Pixar Talk.

:13-30:17 - Review: "Inglourious Basterds"
Music: Steeler's Wheels, "Stuck in the Middle With You"
31:04-35:14 - Massacre Theatre (Winner: J. Wilcox)
35:15-49:15 - Polls, Notes, Feedback
Music: Sandy Rogers, "Fool For Love"
50:13-56:50 - New DVDs/Donations
56:51-1:13:35 - Top 5: Tarantino Scenes
1:13:36-1:16:39 - Close/Next Show/Outtake

NOTES

- Adam alluded to this during the review... he has a theory about Hans Landa, or at least something worth considering. Some are buying it, some aren't.

- List of film references in "Inglourious Basterds"

- Daniel Mendelsohn's "Inglourious Basterds" article in Newsweek

- Follow more notes and corrections at http://twitter.com/filmspotting.

- Jeff Goldsmith's Creative Screenwriting Podcast can be accessed through iTunes here.