I was writing a film criticism book on Sergio Corbucci, the director who did the original Django. So, I was kind of getting immersed in his world. Towards the end of the Inglourious Basterds press tour I was in Japan. Spaghetti Westerns are really popular there, so I picked up a bunch of soundtracks and spent my day off listening to all these scores. And all of a sudden the opening scene just came to me.

I remember when it was reported that I was going to do the film in this format, people were actually speculating, and I guess I understand it. They were like, "Yeah, okay, that all sounds really great, but why would he do it for a thing that's so set bound?" That's not very profound thinking when it comes to 65mm. It's not just for shooting travelogues, mountain scenery and nature.

A lot of them [Germaqn actors] could come in and we could speak for the next nine hours in English and there would be no problem. It was - but it was - English wasn't the language for them to read poetry in. And there is a - there's a poetic quality to my dialogue.

One of the songs that stayed in my head that I really considered a lot was an old folk song called 'John Brown' - not the abolitionist John Brown, but the one that Bob Dylan has covered and sung before. It's about a boy coming home from the Civil War, or maybe World War I even, and about his Mother seeing him all destroyed.

It's nice to get invited to the parties and to be able to hobnob and celebrate a job well done with your colleagues.

The only other animals that would be in the ballpark to be able to do it would be a gorilla, but it's not going to occur to a gorilla to strangle the life out of somebody. They might rip their head off, all right, but it wouldn't occur to a gorilla to just, I'm going to cut off your air.

I'll write for a while and then I'll find an appropriate song and in a weird way the music will keep me in the mood. I find music to define the mood of the movie, the rhythm the movie is going to play in.