Then Quentin started dropping hints that maybe he would cast me in Inglourious Basterds. I figured it would be a small part, but then it was, "Pack your bags, we're going to Germany." And he warned me, this wasn't walking into a bar and telling jokes. So I put on 40 pounds of muscle, so that when I come out of the cave with a bat, I would be physically imposing. I went back to Boston to get my accent back; I talked to World War II veterans. If I'm going to hold the screen with Brad Pitt, I had to bring it.
Q: Staff Sgt. Donny Donowitz doesn't do any scalping -- he's too busy bashing heads with his bat. Doesn't every member of the Basterds owe Raine 100 Nazi scalps?
Q: Ah, he doesn't owe any scalps. He's more the enforcer. The beating scene, that was a six day shoot, and I was waiting to get out of the cave. And finally, on day five, I let the guy have it. And by the end of the day, I wanted to crawl in a hole and die. When you're the director, you know it's fake, but you're thinking of it like it's an empty puzzle and you have to get all the pieces. But as an actor, you're thinking of the most painful breakup you've ever had, of people who have died, so when the day is over, it's very real to you. Any time there's killing, as fun as it is to watch, it's painful to shoot.
Q: Physically as well?
A: The fire scene at the theater was like 2000 degrees. It was supposed to stay ten feet away from us, and I got burned really badly. I had fire gel on my body, but not on my hands, because you need to see my hands, so when you see me wincing, that's for real. It paralyzed us, because we had to keep on shooting. At least we weren't on fire. Imagine if the flames were actually on us! Imagine a car that's on fire and you're trapped inside. It was terrifying.
Q: And on the screen behind them, your film-within-a-film, Nation's Pride. Very Leni Riefenstahl...
A: This had to impress Hitler! [Laughs] I did that in five days, with my brother as the second unit director. We had five stunt guys, and 120 set-ups, 200 shots for this little film. Quentin gave me an extra day with Daniel Brühl and we cut the whole thing together. It really helps the propaganda.
Q: Funny, I always thought Hitler committed suicide with Eva Braun. That's not the case here...
A: I love Schindler's List, but I think what Quentin does is allow you to bring your own associations. A lot of people, myself included, had fantasies after 9/11 of killing people, so this taps into a very real emotion. And it's grounded in a sense of reality since we used French, German, Italian.
Q: You had a whole backstory for Donowitz that never made it to the screen.
A: Quentin's basically written a prequel. If he does it, he's going to use some of the scenes we shot that didn't make it in. He's thought every character through before, during, and after the war, what he would have gone on to do. There are sixteen different storylines. We could use it as a play, as a graphic novel, as a radio serial. He truly has created a universe here.
