The Twelfth Man.

Django Unchained isn’t just a glorification of gratuitous violence and foul language, EVERYthing about Django is gratuitous. There’s an extra character in it, like the crowd noise as the invisible twelfth man in a football game, only in this case, it’s the frequent and persistent voice of worried studio execs and concerned friends trying to reign Quentin in. If you listen closely, you can hear it throughout the film.

“Hey, so uh, Quentin… maybe seven blood packets instead of twelve in this scene? Also, I’m not sure you need that sorta ‘gurgle-slurp’ noise after the slaver gets his head caved in.. but I’m sure you know best, haha!”

“Quentin, buddy! Hey, I know this is about slavery and stuff, but what if we just said the N-word, like, ten fewer times? I think people get it, you know? I mean, just a thought.”

“Yo, Q-Ball. I’m loving this, buddy, I really am, but… this shot of the underside of Django’s hairy nutsack? What if we just shot it from, say, from a little further away? Maybe we try one your way and one my way? I dunno, just spitballin’ here.”

“Hey, T-Squared, I know you like putting yourself in your own movies and stuff, but… I dunno, does your character really need an Australian accent in this one? I’m worried it’s going to come off… silly. But hey, one man’s opinion.”

To see Django Unchained is to watch Quentin Tarantino studiously ignore that voice. You know Tarantino could easily make a refined movie that every asthmatic, private school-educated film critic would love, just by dialing back his peccadilloes half a tick. The beauty of Tarantino is that he doesn’t want to, and that he doesn’t. As brilliant an audience manipulator as he is, he’s still that video store clerk who can’t spell, who just loves sticking it to the shrivs and poindexters who’ll never fully appreciate something this rowdy. He’s like a comedian who constantly hears people tell him that he’s clever enough to be funny without swearing. “Yeah, but I like swearing. That’s what’s funny to me.”

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“Nope, not hung enough.”

I’ve already seen Django Unchained and I’m just counting down the minutes until I’m allowed to tell you about it, but in the meantime, as with any Tarantino project, Django’s creation story is almost as rich as what eventually made it to the screen. In a recent Village Voice profile, for instance, Quentin says he was inspired by the tale of Jody the Grinder, a character from black folklore with a monstrous penis. Yeesh, who’s writing this black folklore, Jackie Treehorn?

In 2006, when Tarantino sat down to write the script for Death Proof, his contribution to Grindhouse, the first scene he came up with revolved around the tale of Jody the Grinder, a character from black folklore with, as Tarantino put it, “the biggest dick.” Jody, so the story goes, was perhaps a bit too generous with his anatomical endowment. When his master finally caught Jody in bed with both the master’s wife and his daughter, that was it for Jody.

Post-hanging, Jody ended up in hell. “He met the devil, f*cked the devil, and the devil sent him back to Earth, with a curse to walk the Earth for eternity, f*cking white women,” Tarantino says today, laughing.

Look, I don’t want to crap on your mythology or anything, but becoming a giant-dicked invincible f*ck machine doesn’t sound like much of a curse. Also, I really hope that this myth isn’t the reason that giant, dick-shaped sandwiches are called “grinders” in certain parts of the country.

He ultimately couldn’t fit the tale of Jody the Grinder into Death Proof, but his interest in that kind of “uber-masculine black male figure of folklore” carried over into the character of Django. Tarantino saw him as a kind of black Paul Bunyan or Pecos Bill, whose adventures would have been disseminated (and exaggerated) through “spoken history passed down by slaves, about this one guy, throughout the course of time.”

You ever notice how white ghosts be all “booooo…”? If that ghost was a brother, he’d be all like “Well hello, dere…”

Also of interest – and this part I can tell you about because it’s out now – Django won’t have the episodic, non-linear structure Tarantino has become known for.

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Making a Tarzan movie sounds like a horrible idea, but if you’re going to do it, you might as well cast a tall, handsome, Swedish version of Ryan Gosling that loves to party like Alexander Skårsgard. I’m not saying he’s handsome, but theaters should probably invest in a gutter system to collect all the melted panties. Skårsgåååård is reportedly director David Yates’ (Harry Potter) first choice for the role, and it’s nice to see handsome people finally catch a break.

An imposing physical presence at 6’4″, Skarsgard is Yates’ choice to play the vine-swinging hero, sources tell Variety.

Skarsgard doesn’t have an offer and the studio hasn’t finalized any casting decisions for the film, which has yet to go before the studio’s greenlight committee. However, with a summer start date being planned, it is expected to be greenlit before the end of the year, as WB is high on Yates and wouldn’t tie up his schedule with a movie it has no intention of making.

Should Yates convince Warners brass to sign off on Skarsgard’s casting, the Swedish thesp would play John Clayton III, known around the world as the famous “ape man” Tarzan. Years after he’s re-assimilated into society, he’s asked by Queen Victoria to investigate the goings-on in the Congo. Tarzan teams with an ex-mercenary named George Washington Williams to save the Congo from a fierce warlord who controls a massive diamond mine.

Wait wait wait, so it starts with Tarzan wearing a suit talking to the queen, and he has to go back to the jungle  and keep from going native? Holy crap, this is like the movie version of Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer. JUST TAKE MY TEN DOLLARS ALREADY! Oh, and did I mention it’ll be a 19th century colonial interracial buddy-cop movie where one of them is an ape man? Because sh*t yeah, that just happened:

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What with Looper, The Master, Argo, Seven Psychopaths, and all the other must-see movies hitting the theaters in the past month, you may have forgotten all the hype for Tarantino and Django Unchained. Django‘s set for a Christmas day release, and according to reports, may be ready in time to play the Rome Festival next month (I’ll be attending, but between my yacht parties and manservants, who knows if I’ll have a chance to see it?).

Anyway, Jamie Foxx has to become a bounty hunter under the tutelage of Christoph Waltz (a bounty hunter/dentist) so he can rescue his wife Broomhilda von Shaft (yes, that’s her character’s real name) from evil Leonardo DiCaprio, who runs a big plantation where he holds gladiator-style slave fights. Sam Jackson and Don Johnson both have Colonel Sanders hair and fit in there somehow as well. Oh, and Jonah Hill shows up for the first time, appearing to play some kind of Klansman in a scene very reminiscent of O Brother Where Art Thou (am I crazy, or is the guy under the bag who yells at Jonah Hill in this the same guy who played the Klansman/political candidate running against the incumbent in O Brother?). I’m assuming Jamie Foxx eventually gets captured, and all hope looks lost until president Daniel Day-Lewis eventually comes along, frees the slaves, and beats Jonah Hill to death with a bowling pin. Goddamn that would be awesome.

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I’ll probably get cyber-lynched for saying this, but I think Django Unchained has officially leapfrogged Dark Knight Rises for my most anticipated upcoming movie (with The Master also in the mix). It doesn’t open until Christmas, but last night during the BET Awards (which Samuel Jackson also hosted), they released a new 60-second spot, which offers up some new footage of Sam Jackson. I figured you’d want to watch it so I included it below. I mean Samuel Jackson in a movie? You don’t see that every day.

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