10 Facts You Probably Didn’t Know About Django Unchained

Quentin Tarantino’s movies are epic, intrepid and reckless. The suddenness in his narration of the stories, with blood and gore, never cease to take you by surprise and immerse you in such a delightful visual treatment through choreographed blood splattering violence. Not just the tactile pleasure, In Tarantino’s movies, dialogues are also the bedrock. One can’t forget Harvey Keitel (Winston ‘The Wolf’ Wolfe) in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (1994) says “Just because you are a character doesn’t mean that you have character”. Roger Ebert had once said in his review that Tarantino has a knack to take a character and make it a character.

With his mordant sense of humour and insanely designed characters, his filmography indulge us, make us laugh with his unique dark humour and keep us entertained. Tarantino is one of the influential directors among his contemporaries. His characters are unforeseen and magnified to legendary subjects. Hans Landa played by Christoph Waltz, The Bride played by Uma Thurman and many such characters have gained the iconic status and can’t easily be forgotten. Tarantino’s films are one separate universe by itself.  He does huge actor ensemble in his movies with great finesse. The lead characters don’t always take the moral high ground in his films but there is a magic, which is Tarantino’s love for his filmmaking, that makes us want to root for those unworldly characters.

Also Read: How Pulp Fiction Condemns the American Nihilism

The wild buzz and roaring excitement for the release of the auteur’s new film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) prove them right. Tarantino is one of the directors who defined the cult status in his cinema. Leonardo DiCaprio and Quentin Tarantino join forces once again in this new arrival. It’s impossible to resist the fad to fancy this new film in the nearest theaters. This new venture has dominated the conversation among his fans and the wait will be over soon.

Let’s look at the duo’s previous collaboration in Django Unchained (2012) to uncover some details we didn’t know before. Tarantino treats his characters real and loves them and their personality even when they are not the upstanding members in Tarantinoverse. But there is one such character that the director himself dislikes in his entire filmography. Let’s jump into the Trivia to know who that is.

Here are 10 Things that You Probably Didn’t Know About Django Unchained (2012)

1. Leonardo DiCaprio was injured twice during filming of the dinner scene. Once with a hammer that broke and hit him in the head. For filming, he, then, handled a hammer that was made of foam. The second injury is an accident. A real glass broke while filming the dinner scene and caused Leo to bleed. When Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) smacks his hand on the dinner table, DiCaprio accidentally tramples on a small glass piece with his palm and began to bleed. He continued with the scene by staying in the character.

Quentin Tarantino admired Leo’s zeal and used this take in the film. DiCaprio’s hand was bandaged and he took up this ghastly scene a notch and suggested to smear the blood on Kerry Washington’s face. Tarantino and Washington both liked this. So, Tarantino got some fake blood together.

2. Jamie Foxx used his own horse, Cheetah, in the movie. The horse was a birthday present that he got it four years prior to the movie.

3. Will Smith, Idris Elba, Chris Tucker, Terrence Howard, Michael Kenneth Williams, and Tyrese Gibson were all considered for the role of Django. Quentin Tarantino actually wrote the role with Smith in mind, but Smith ultimately decided to pass despite his associates wanted him to accept the opportunity. Tarantino then offered the part to Jamie Foxx, who accepted.

Related to Django Unchained Facts: Every Quentin Tarantino Film Ranked

4. A bunch of white men are seen to be playing poker towards the end of the film. They are using severed ears from slaves as their currency in the game.

5. Quentin Tarantino has said that Calvin J. Candie is the only character he has ever created who he truly loathes.

6. Dr. King Schultz says he wants to re-name Eskimo Joe, the Mandingo fighter he tries to purchase, as “Black Hercules”. This was the real-life nickname of Ken Norton, the actor and boxer who starred in Mandingo (1975). This is one of the trademarks of Tarantino who loves to reuse names and relating characters amongst his scripts.

7. For the montage sequence of Django and Dr. King Schultz beginning their partnership as bounty hunters, Writer and Director Quentin Tarantino played the background music, “His name was King, He has a horse” by Luis Enriquez Bacalov, live on the set while filming.

8. Dr. King Schultz was inspired by the real-life Doc Holliday who was also a dentist turned gunfighter. Leonardo DiCaprio has revealed that the characters of Drexl Spivey from True Romance (1993) and Doc Holliday from Tombstone (1993) were inspirations on his role as Calvin Candie. True Romance (1993) was also written by Quentin Tarantino.

9. Django Unchained is Quentin Tarantino’s the most expensive film with a budget of one hundred million dollars.

10. In an interview, Quentin Tarantino revealed that initially, the mandingo fight scene, and the scene with the dogs, were longer and more violent than the scenes that took place in the final cut. He felt like he was going to “traumatize” the audience than he intended to. So, he cut both scenes down. There was a talk of splitting the film into two parts, like Kill Bill, but Quentin Tarantino eventually cast aside the idea and cropped a whole lot of the planned film.

Django Unchained Links: IMDb, Wikipedia