The Aughts (and The Aught-Not- Haves)

Sometime in early 2008, Quentin hinted that he heard my voice in his head when he was writing his character The Bear Jew for “Inglourious Basterds.”  I was flattered, but I didn’t think too much of it, because who knew how the character would ultimately wind up.  But I realized that he might actually ask me to be in his film, so I’d better start getting in shape just in case. I also formed a new company with my friend Eric Newman, a producer who I’d been wanting to work with since we met on the “Dawn of the Dead” remake.  We named the company Arcade, because that’s where we liked to hang out when we were eleven years old.  We started looking for scripts to produce, and I also started working out a new idea I was forming, a science fiction film.  Something big and fun, with lots of mass destruction.

Journal Entry:  June 27th, 2008

Do I write because I’m lonely, or am I lonely because I write?

Saturday night around dinnertime it usually hits me: I will be spending the evening by myself, watching a movie, noodling around at the computer, searching for some creative inspiration.  While others are going out to dinner and the movies with their wives and girlfriends, I’m by myself, wandering around my house, in circles, burying myself deeper in music and books.  I watched  “The Man Who Fell To Earth” tonight, and found myself identifying with David Bowie’s alien more and more.

Writing a movie’s fucking hard. So many ideas, so many ways to go with a story, how do you know what’s right?  It’s difficult to concentrate when Quentin keeps hinting that he’s almost done with the script and that he’s still hearing my voice as Donowitz…

July, 2008.  I finally got the call to go off to war and beat Nazis to death with a baseball bat.  Quentin took me to dinner the night before he left for Berlin and casually dropped it that I needed to really create a 360 degree character, and that this was going to be much more complex than “Death Proof.”  I still didn’t know if I had the part. I told him I wasn’t going to do the work until I knew had the part, and he said “Oh you got the part – so listen, Donny’s got to be a 360 degree character, you have to know him like you know your best friend…”  And that was it.  I told Quentin that this time I wanted to get more than one take, and he agreed that was fair.  I knew that my life was going to change forever from doing this.  Quentin was presenting me with an opportunity to completely reinvent myself.  I was not just going to be the “horror guy.” I had to push myself out of my comfort zone into an area I knew existed that I had never thoroughly mined.  I never had a reason to.  But now I did, and in order to do the role justice I had to drop everything and focus 100% on become The Bear Jew.

I began a rigorous training program that included lifting weights 7 days a week.  My trainer, Ravi, put me on a strict eating schedule, eating high protein meals eight times a day.  I wanted to put on serious muscle, and knew I’d have to maintain it through the entire shoot.  I went back to Boston and researched the character and fine-tuned my accent, which I already had from growing up.  I told Quentin that if he needed any help shooting inserts or completing scenes I was there for him, and he said that he’d never done that before on any of his films, but he’d keep it in his mind.  Then in early September he called me and said “Get on a plane, you’re shooting ‘Nation’s Pride’.”

I arrived about a month ahead of the other Basterds so I could figure out what I was going to shoot.  There were a few lines of dialogue that Quentin was going to film, and the long close up of Zoller that Shoshanna would see through the booth, but other than that he just needed guys firing guns.  I came up with all sorts of bits with a growing pile of bodies, throwing people off towers, and a baby carriage sequence.  Quentin loved it, and we both realized that what we had done in Grindhouse had been a warm up for this, both as an actor and as a guest director.  The shoot was incredible, and by November we had done my beating scene, and I dove into ‘Nation’s Pride’.  We flew my brother Gabriel to Berlin and he worked the 2nd camera, as he did on “Hostel Part II” and even going back to the David Lynch video “Thank You, Judge.”  Gabe and I got Quentin nearly 200 shots in 3 days.  I cut the film while Quentin shot La Louisianne, and by Christmas had it finished.  We spent Christmas in Paris and then New Year’s in Berlin at a party at director Tom Tykwer’s house.  It was an amazing cap to an exhausting six months, but we weren’t finished yet.

>>>NEXT: The Donut, Not The Hole (Click here to print.)

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.