Will Smith has 10 turtlenecks in different shades of black, depending on how “Serious Actor” he feels that day.

Will Smith has gotten obnoxiously boring since the Fresh Prince of Bel Air flip-turned him into a beloved, international superstar. Despite becoming known almost as much for his obnoxiously over-styled fashion children as his acting, Quentin Tarantino graciously offered him a chance to expand on his increasingly narrow goody-two-shoes persona by playing the lead in Django Unchained. But Will Smith turned it down. Now, he explains to Entertainment Weekly why, and his answer tells you everything you need to know about how it comes to be that guys like him and Tom Cruise with their pick of every script in town so often end up in generic movies.

Smith tells EW that he turned down the part because his character would’ve been second-fiddle to the bounty hunter (played by Christoph Waltz) who teaches Django his trade . “Django wasn’t the lead, so it was like, I need to be the lead. The other character was the lead!”

That’s right, Will Smith thought the character who SPOILER ALERT (seriously, ignore this next part of the sentence if you haven’t seen the film) dies three quarters of the way through was the lead. Did he actually read the whole script, or did he just skim his character’s lines to see how important they seemed? “I dunno, Q, this lead role just doesn’t seem lead-y enough, you know? I love the rags-to-riches story, but it starts off a bit unglamorous for my tastes.”

This next blockquote is also a little spoilery. And a lot head-slappy.

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[via Fck Yeah Dementia]

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“HW, did you ever hear the philosophy that once a man admits that he’s wrong that he is immediately forgiven for all wrongdoings?”

Oral history articles are like my crack, and I’ve seen Pulp Fiction about a billion times, so Vanity Fair’s new oral history of Pulp Fiction was of obvious interest. Casting is a particularly tricky part of development, and it’s always fun to play the “what if” game (Nick Nolte as Han Solo?!? Nic Cage as Superman?!?). Some Pulp Fiction what-ifs and almost-weres include Daniel Day-Lewis as Vincent Vega, Paul Calderon as Jules Winfield, and Matt Dillon as Butch.

Harvey Weinstein was dead-set against giving the role of Vincent Vega to John Travolta. “John Travolta was at that time as cold as they get,” says Mike Simpson, Tarantino’s agent at William Morris Endeavor. “He was less than zero.” Simpson had given Weinstein a “term sheet” of Taran­tino’s demands, which included final cut, a two-and-a-half-hour running time, and final choice of actors. “One of the actors I had on the list was John Travolta,” says Tarantino. “And it came back: ‘The entire list is approved . . . except for John Travolta.’ So I got together with Harvey, and he’s like, ‘I can get Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Penn, William Hurt.’” By then, according to Simpson, “Daniel Day-Lewis and Bruce Willis, who was the biggest star in Hollywood, had both gotten their hands on the script and wanted to play Vincent Vega.”

John Travolta was washed up before Pulp Fiction, he was amazing in Pulp Fiction, and he hasn’t really done anything great since. Casting Travolta wasn’t like Christoph Waltz, where Tarantino discovered this amazing actor that no one had seen before. Travolta was around, but no one else thought he had it in him. I don’t know how many times Tarantino had to watch Look Who’s Talking coked out of his face to see that role in Travolta, but it’s one of the all-time serendipitous castings, where persona and role lined up just perfectly. It’s also fun to imagine Daniel Day-Lewis doing Pulp Fiction lines all perfectly enunciated in his Daniel Plainview voice. “Now HW, eating a bitch out and giving a bitch a foot massage ain’t even the same thing!” (I know that’s a Jules line, but I don’t care).

Bruce Willis’s interest in the project relieved Weinstein’s concerns that the movie lacked bankable stars. With the main role of Vincent Vega already cast, the only option for Willis was Butch, the boxer—which Tarantino had promised to Matt Dillon.

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This week on the Frotcast, we bring on Justin Halpern, who just got tapped to make an I Suck At Girls pilot for Fox, based on his book. Justin shares some stories of his days working as a PA for Tarantino’s A Band Apart productions, including one about a leopard-print dice cup and Samuel L. Jackson, and we both share PA stories. In addition, we talk Manti Te’o, discuss Killer Joe (which Brendan and Bret finally saw), and argue Oliver Stone vs. Brian DePalma. Enjoy, and check out Halpern’s new NBA podcast with Paul Shirley.

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According to numerous news outlets, from E Online to Rolling Stone and the Hollywood Reporter, Tarantino “used the N-word” backstage at the Golden Globes, where he won best screenplay (full list here). That’s what their headlines say, “TARANTINO USED THE N-WORD BACKSTAGE!”, while the stories provide little else. Because that’s what we do now. We ignore context so we can have a juicy headline to shout while we soak up sweet, sweet clicks.

Less than a minute into his press conference backstage at the 70th Annual Golden Globes, the Django Unchained winner dropped the N-word. The usually bustling press room fell silent for a second; a reporter could be heard letting out a whistle, as in, “Oh, boy.”
The filmmaker’s choice language came as he fieldied a question about his controversial, slavery-era spaghetti Western. Tarantino was not apologizing.
Critics who think the N-word should not have been spoken by his 19th century characters, the mile-a-minute Tarantino argued, are “saying I should massage. They’re saying I should whitewash. They’re saying I should lie.”
Don Cheadle, a winner for House of Lies, who took the stage right after Tarantino, couldn’t resist picking up the thread.
“Please no [N-word] questions,” Cheadle told reporters. “Black people questions are all right.”
For the record, Cheadle said he hadn’t seen Django, but was looking forward to checking it out. [EOnline]

Quentin Tarantino shocked reporters at the Golden Globes last night when he used the N-word while addressing use of the slur throughout his new film Django Unchained, for which he picked up the award for Best Screenplay, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“They think I should soften it, that I should lie, that I should massage,” Tarantino said, referring to widespread criticism from critics and filmmakers like Spike Lee that has been leveled against him for using the word in his film. But the director said that setting the film in the pre-Civl War era South, as well as his own artistic integrity, kept him from doctoring his script. “I could never do that when it comes to my characters,” he said.
Tarantino also noted that slavery continues to exist across the globe (“go to Malaysia,” he said), and criticized the United States for a legal system that he believes has a bias against African-Americans. “Drug laws put so many black males in jails,” he said. “The way private and public prisons trade prisoners back and forth. It’s like they are not even hiding it anymore.” [RollingStone]

The Hollywood Reporter and a bunch of others are running virtually the same story. So… what actually happened? Quentin Tarantino said “n**ger” instead of “the n-word?” And then everybody ran and tattled on him that he used a naughty word without saying how or why? “Quentin said a naughty word and everyone was like ‘ooooh,’ it was so crazy Jenny almost dropped her trapper keeper!!”

F*ck all of you with this stupid story. (For the record, I use those stupid asterices in my swear words because your dumb work filters will block my site if I use to many naughty naughties). Not that Louis CK needs his ass kissed any more by people like me, but his N-word bit has scarcely been more relevant than now:

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