Tarantino takes a stab at Israel

September 16, 2009 - 11:32 AM by · 5 Comments
Filed under: A New Reality, General, Movies, Pop Culture, War 

Quentin Tarantino in Tel Aviv tries to get a waiter's attention. (Photo: AP)

Quentin Tarantino in Tel Aviv tries to get a waiter's attention. (Photo: AP)

There didn’t seem to be an influx of shady men in black suits rolling their own smokes, but director Quentin Tarantino’s visit to Israel this week still piqued a wave of interest.

The lauded filmmaker was making his first trip here to promote the Israeli premiere of his latest film “Inglourious Basterds,” his typically violent, quirky World Warr II-based epic that depicts a fictional Jewish-American band of vigilantes who take revenge on Nazis

Wearing an AC/DC shirt, Tarantino met reporters in Tel Aviv on Tuesday and said that the most important part of his visit was to gauge the Israeli audience’s reaction to the boundary-breaking film.

In an AP report, Tarantino called the bloodbath of the Nazi characters a different brand of World War II film.

“To me, taboos are made to be broken. They’re meant to be pushed over,” Tarantino said. “One of the things that I think is a drag a little bit about movies dealing with World War II for the last 20 years is that … all the movies have really focused in on the victimization of World War II.”

“I’ll be seeing it for the first time in an Israeli cinema. I’ll be seeing it for the first time with an Israeli audience,” Tarantino said. “I’m interested to see, ‘OK, are there laughs here? Does the suspense work here as well as it works somewhere else?’”

Appearing with Christoph Waltz, who plays a Nazi in the film, and Lawrence Bender, the film’s producer, Tarantino insisted that the film was an adventure story and not a Holocaust film.

It’s a bunch-of-guys-on-a-mission movie.” In writing it, he said, “I wasn’t influenced by Holocaust movies, I was influenced by adventure films.”

The Jerusalem Post reported that when asked why he made the character of the Nazi colonel played by Waltz (and nicknamed the Jew Hunter) so charming, Tarantino said, “I don’t judge my characters. I’m always surprised by my characters. Each of them has his reasons why. There are no heroes or villains [in the film].”

When a reporter wanted to know what the moral of his film was, Tarantino laughed. “I’m not a moralist. I don’t believe in morals.”

We Israelis are a tad touchy on the Holocaust subject, so Tarantino, who also visited Yad Vashem on his stay here, may be in for a few surprises at the screening on Thursday. However, most reviews agree that the overly gory film is more of an adventure film that won’t offend an Holocaust sensibilities.

Tarantino might also be surprised to discover, if he ventures out to a restaurant or orders room service, that most milk shakes on menus here actually cost more than $5 – and they’re not such “f***** good shakes”

“Garcon!!”

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