Henry Louis Gates Jr. Talks to Quentin Tarantino: A Podcast Special

Hear The Root’s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., chat with the Django Unchained director about the n-word and a possible sequel.

A Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds trilogy? The historical accuracy of the n-word in 

Django? The unlikely connection between the slavery-themed film and The Birth of a Nation? How Django fits into Hollywood’s overplayed, often offensive white-savior stereotype? You name it, and The Root‘s editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr., and Quentin Tarantino — whose latest film, Django Unchained, a “postmodern slave-narrative Western,” as Gates describes it, opened on Christmas Day — likely covered it in this exhaustive interview.

When asked why he wanted to combine a slave narrative with a Western, Tarantino said this:

It’s two separate stories I’ve always wanted to tell. One, I’ve always wanted to tell a Western story. Two, I’ve always wanted to re-create cinematically that world of the antebellum South, of America under slavery, and just what a different place it was — an unfathomable place. To create an environment and again, not just have a historical story play out — they did this and they did that, and they did this and they did that — but actually make it a genre story. Make it an exciting adventure.

Listen to the whole interview by clicking here.

Also, read it in three parts:

Tarantino Unchained Part 1: Django Trilogy?

Tarantino Unchained Part 2: On the N-Word.

Tarantino Unchained Part 3: White Saviors.