Details, Details: “Basterds” Fit In Tarantino World

Better than being a bastard, I suppose. 

Quentin Tarantino has kind of his own little film universe, where certain details, such as names, pop up over and over. This is something that the product placement gurus at studios must just love, of course. (”Hey, QT, are you sure the characters wouldn’t rather go to Dunkin’ Donuts than Teriyaki Donut…? Look at how the color scheme fits in. It fits! Look at that logo! Great, huh?”).

Eli Roth told the MTV Movies Blog that even though the next Tarantino film, “Inglourious Basterds” takes place in the 1940s, you can still count on seeing things from the Tarantino-verse. For example, the Red Apple cigarettes that pop up in other films from the director. Roth says:

“We have the ‘40’s version of Red Apple cigarettes…If you had cigarettes [in ‘Basterds’] they were Red Apple. They were the same ones that you see in ‘Death Proof,’ but the lettering, the style, the drawing, was the 1940’s version of it. Quentin is so detailed in the universe he’s creating - obviously this is a historical film, so this has to be based in history - but he worked in a lot of his little products.”

Great! So if you get bored by the reportedly too long movie (they’re working on it! the edit suite has the “busy” sign up!), you can look around for the little details and ponder how closely they emulate 1940s art direction. Good news for graphics aficionados.

Roth also explains some of the characters names:

“…[Brad Pitt’s character] Lieutenant Aldo Raine is named after the actor Aldo Ray and the character Charles Raine from ‘Rolling Thunder…My character Donny Donowitz’s [name came] from someone he knew. I think a lot of the names in this one specifically were from Quentin’s life — from his past, his childhood. In a strange way, it’s a very personal film for him.”

I don’t know if it’s that strange; all of Tarantino’s films are pretty personal. Ahh, the immortal Aldo Ray…

“Inglourious Basterds” opens on August 21st, hopefully new and improved after its Cannes debut in May.