Friday, February 21, 2025

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‘Inglourious Basterds’: The Accidental Title Called An “Artistic Flourish”?

It’s Quentin Tarantino week! The pop-cultural force has a hurricane in theaters this week called, “Inglourious Basterds,” and of course he’s everywhere. Much has obviously been made about the curious spelling of the title of the film and in various interviews, when asked why the title is misspelled, he’s given two answers. One is generally, “I’m not telling you why, it’s a secret,” and the second is “it’s just an artistic stroke,” like he told Vulture this week.

Now let’s appropriate the comment he made in Vulture’s post to explain our thoughts on the matter.

Not sure I buy the “artistic flourish” thing because if you read the script throughout, sometimes he spells it completely correct and sometimes he doesn’t and there’s really no rhyme or reason to it. I think he just hand wrote the title and that version became the final one, but he easily could have spelled it correctly and would have never known the difference.

Yup, that’s pretty much what we still think. Here’s some evidence. The title page from the leaked script that everyone and their grandmother has read? He clearly scribbled in his own handwriting.

Then just one page later on the table of contents, the title is now spelled, “Inglorious Basterds.” One out of two words ain’t too bad when it comes to Quentin’s spelling.

Then on page 17, the title comes up again and once more, it’s the second choice of spelling, “Inglorious Basterds.”

One page later, the Chapter section comes up again. Guess how it’s spelled? But we’ll give Quentin this. At least he consistently spells “Basterds” incorrectly.

Err, sort of. After several pages of getting it right, on page 24, Tarantino calls them, the “Bastreds.”

But maybe the spelling of ‘Basterds’ is a purposeful affectation that the soldiers have chosen themselves? But on page 81 even Gen Ed. Fenech (Mike Meyers) calls these bastards, basterds. How would a British General thousand of miles away know this? Or is it just that Tarantino just really believes this is how bastards is spelled?

Now we don’t mean to be stickler pricks, lord knows our spelling ain’t for shit either, but we’re upfront about it. What we’re saying is this: Tarantino, in his excitement, probably quickly scrawled the title on a blank sheet of paper as his cover page, faxed it to Lawrence Bender his producer and all the other key folks (of course it was on the Internet about five minutes after this) and when people asked him about this he likely just said, “oh, it’s just a flourish.” Our point is he could have spelled it, “Ichlorioushez Basterdz” and that might’ve ended up the final title as well (after all, who’s going to question the great Quentin?).

One of our contribs Drew Taylor adds this awesome note: Did you ever read “Killer Instinct,” Don Murphy’s book about the making of “Natural Born Killers”? He talks about how Tarantino is a terrible speller and how they had all these problems because of it [ed. lol].

Inconsistency seems to be the name of the Tarantino game these days. In several interviews this week he’s said that everything in Chapter One and Two of ‘Basterds’ is old, written several years ago. But then when he’s asked what is new he says, everything with Shosanna and the cinematheque, essentially Chapters Three, Four & Five (we’d find you links, but it’s pretty much in every single interview he gives and there’s 5,000 of them out there).

However, Chapter One is nothing more than a set-up to get the story in motion: (spoilers ahead, but it’s all in the synopsis) Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) kills the family of Jewish French girl Shosanna (Melanie Dreyfus) which years later leads to the ultimate revenge on the Nazis. Sure, Chapter One is also there to display the awesome detective skills and relentlessness of Landa, but more to the point, it gives Shosanna her burning drive for vengeance (which, spoiler! she gets in the end) that drives the narrative forward. So which one is it Quentin?

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9 COMMENTS

  1. I love this blog – but maaaaaannnnn the Basterds coverage has been non-stop and just kind of dorky and obsessive. Please stop. Please? And all for a movie that you don't even seem to like very much. (I saw it, liked it a lot… but I just don't CARE about the spelling of Basterds or the f-ing cut Maggie scene (Again? No. Really?… AGAIN??… Answer: yes. Again…)

    There's other stuff going on in the film world. 🙂

  2. I just heard an interview with Tarrantino on Fresh Air yesterday and he mentioned dropping out of Middle School to pursue acting classes. Spelling, math, people-skills, these are all things he might have learned had he stayed in school.

    Remember, kids–if you want to be successful, stay in school. Or… um… drop out and make kitschy, inane and violent films that earn the accolades of sycophants the world over.

  3. I think it has turned out to be 'a happy accident' with continuous momentum. That's a nice little serious (spelling!) buzz working well for promotion… Well done, well mistaken Quentin!
    DaVooz

  4. Interesting article, but I don't think that chapters 1 and 2 being old, and 3, 4, and 5 being new is necessarily inconsistent. He could well have written the beginning with Shoshanna with a rough idea of where it would later go (which is most likely the case, as the original idea was said to have been planned be more heavily revenge-oriented, but the revenge aspect was toned down quite a bit after Kill Bill).

    So just because the other parts of the story were "new", that doesn't mean he didn't know what direction it would ultimately go in.

    I do, however, think you're right about the title. The evidence suggests it was just a case of bad spelling that Tarantino tried to pass off as "artistic" to save face. Personally, I would think it was a much cooler title if he'd just admit that.

  5. I think it was a mistake, but he managed to turn it in to an "artistic flourish".. Essentially what it comes down to is he doesn't really give a shit about spelling much, it's not his forte, he doesn't give a shit, I don't give a shit, I mean who really would? He's got plenty of other forte to rest his laurels on. But he *does* find the spelling humourious, and especially people's reaction to it after his script leaked on the internet. I certainly suspected spelling was the last thing on his mind when that happened. But what drove it home for me, that I knew he thought it was fucking hilarious, and the fact that there is a debate over what the hell is going on what does it mean, is when we see the title card of the movie itself in the opening credits, and it's the same terrible scribble and butchered spelling just scanned in right off the script. Mother fucker's a genius, and hilarious to boot.

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