New Interview: MTV • SimplyBrad.com

In part one, we found out how the duo met and how “Basterds” came to be. In part two of the conversation, they spoke about rewriting history. Now, in the final part of this sit-down with two Hollywood icons, they discuss making a WWII movie that even Germans can love.
On the movie’s five-chapter structure:

Quentin Tarantino: To me, [“Basterds”] is structured in an interesting way. It’s structured around three characters. The first chapter is the introduction of [Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans] Landa. The second chapter is the introduction of [Brad Pitt as Lieutenant] Aldo [Raine] and the Basterds. And the third chapter is — not the introduction of [Melanie Laurent as] Shosanna [Dreyfus] but setting her up. So they are three lead characters, and they have three separate stories going on. From chapter four to chapter five, now it’s the adventure film, and it just goes all the way. The characters start overlapping, and this happens and that happens. I am basically structuring the whole first half of the movie with a chapter each for my three leads — and then it’s just watching them comingle.

Brad Pitt: I was really intrigued by that structure. We’re used to the normal screenplay, which works in three acts and is usually in succession of events, and they’re all connected in some way. This worked more like a novel, in the sense that it was five distinct chapters, and one chapter would immensely focus on the detail of a moment and let that moment breathe and study it. And then we would jump through time — there’d be big gaps in time — and we’d move on to the next section. It’s like when a painter paints just the bends in a figure, but when it’s all together, the whole figure is there. I was really intrigued that it could work in that kind of structure — it was much more interesting that way. I mean big jumps in time, but yet, when we did get somewhere, there was minute focus on detail. And I’m exhilarated by it still.