Quentin Tarantino on Brad Pitt’s ‘buongiorno’ bit in Inglourious Basterds, how he’d written it for himself: ‘It just killed’

As Tarantino had himself succinctly said in an earlier interview, Aldo (Pitt’s character) is a man who can be nobody but himself, thereby explaining why he failed so spectacularly when attempting any accent but his own southern one. But did you know that Tarantino had written the part of Aldo for himself, but post casting, even he couldn’t help but accept that only Pitt could have pulled it off the way he did.

In an interview with Universal Pictures’ All Access, Brad said, “Quentin wrote that part for himself, why he handed to me in the end (I don’t know), but I am most appreciative,” as the filmmaker laughed and added, “Nobody else is wondering why I did that by the way. The joke is on an American’s lack of learning another language. In my mind, Brad pulled it off a little bit more, but when he said it that way, it was first at script reading, and it just killed. It brought the house down.”

That sequence explains, clear as day, what you need to know about Aldo as a professional. He is an expert at warfare, but improvising and all that trickery that goes into winning a war beforehand is not his thing. And not only does that bit show us who Aldo is, but it provides comic relief as well. Two birds, one stone, you know how the story goes.

Another thing that is one of the main highlights of the movie is of course how it all ends. Tarantino retells history and it is bloody and funny, just like he likes them to be. Hitler dies, he is killed. In real life, he died by suicide. And here is how the director conceived the conclusion: “Everything is going right, the basterds have taken over the theatre, but I still have to figure out what I am going to do about Hitler. I don’t want it to be like a double, or sneak him in the back or stuff, so at 4 am, I decided, ‘just kill him.’ So I took a piece of paper and wrote on it, ‘just f**king kill him,’ put it by my bedside table and went to bed. And I thought I would decide it in the morning if it is a good or bad idea, and I woke up and realised ‘it is a great idea,'” Tarantino had revealed on Jimmy Kimmel’s show.

That seemingly sat well with the viewers, because as history is witness (pun intended), Inglourious Basterds was not only a critical hit, but a straight up commercial success, earning 322 million dollars of its 70 million dollar budget.

You can revisit the film on Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.