It’s been fun watching the rumor mill crank into overdrive with respect to potential casting for Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Bastards. (Or ‘Basterds’ or ‘Sorry Michael Madsen, but there’s no part for you’; spell it however you want.) The Brad Pitt idea is credible and interesting, but then there are the others. What’s that, Lassie? Quentin wants the disinterred body of Estelle Getty to play Shoshanna? She’s thin enough, but she’s not even buried yet! Bad dog.
An interesting notion was that QT wanted Leonardo DiCaprio for Nazi Col. Hans Landa, the guy who sets a chunk of the plot in motion and acts as chief bad guy. I’ve only read the first thirty pages or so (I stopped out of sheer willpower, since I just want to see the damn thing) but those pages convinced me of two things. First, that Landa’s introduction could be a classic bit of Tarantino suspense and payoff, and second that DiCaprio isn’t at all right for the character.
Now The Playlist is reporting that a blurb in the print version of Entertainment Weekly claims the QT + LD thing is wholly false. It’s an unnamed source and only a small thing, but it’s in print, so it’s got to be correct, yes? Peter Bart would think so.