Unfortunately, every time I have somebody play an instrument, it's always like, they don't know how to do it.

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.

One thing I don't understand is that average American movie-goers cannot watch a movie for three hours, yet they'll watch a stupid, boring, horrific football game for four hours. Now, that is boredom at its most colossal.

Frankly, Django is an American story that needs to be told, when you think of slavery existing in this country for 245 years. In slave narratives there were all types of tales and drama and heroism and pain and love that happened during that time. That's rich material for drama! Everyone complains that there are no new stories left to tell. Not true, there are a whole bunch of them, and they're all American with a capital A.

Movies are not about the weekend that they're released, and in the grand scheme of things, that's probably the most unimportant time of a film's life.

I just grew up watching a lot of movies. I'm attracted to this genre and that genre, this type of story and that type of story. As I watch movies I make some version of it in my head that isn't quite what I'm seeing - taking the things I like and mixing them with stuff I've never seen before.

I've always equated the writing process with editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that's like my last draft of the screenplay.