Quentin Tarantino Reveals The Best Character He's Ever Written
For more than two decades, Quentin Tarantino has created many of modern Hollywood’s most unforgettably wild, profane and violent characters. At a recent film festival appearance, he revealed which of them he holds in greatest esteem.
As reported by Screen Daily’s Tom Grater, Tarantino — speaking at the Jerusalem Film Festival before a screening of 1994’s Pulp Fiction, which was being shown on a 35mm print from the director’s personal collection — said that the best character he ever concocted was Hans Landa, the villainous Inglourious Basterds Nazi played by Christoph Waltz in an Oscar-winning performance.
“Landa is the best character I’ve ever written and maybe the best I ever will write. I didn’t realize [when I was first writing him] that he was a linguistic genius. He’s probably one of the only Nazis in history who could speak perfect Yiddish.”
Despite his fondness for Landa however, Tarantino almost left him — and his WWII story — on the shelf, because he was unable to find the right actor to play him.
“I was getting worried. Unless I found the perfect Landa, I was going to pull the movie. I gave myself one more week and then I was going to pull the plug. Then Christoph Waltz came in and it was obvious that he was the guy; he could do everything. He was amazing, he gave us our movie back.”
While Tarantino also reasserted that he’d end his directorial career after completing his tenth feature (he’s currently helmed eight, the most recent being last year’s The Hateful Eight), the jury remains out on whether or not he’ll stick to that promise. And Tarantino himself left the door open for going back on his word, stating “I am planning to stop at 10 [films], but at 75, I might decide I have another story to do.”
You can read more about Tarantino’s Jerusalem Film Festival appearance here.
Watch a scene with Landa:
(Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP)
