Back broke and dancing because you're here beside me.

[pellnell]

Oh hey, guys, aquidis has finally seen Inglourious Basterds, and just like I predicted, some of the first words out of her mouth were, "I don't know how you can ship it."

Why I Ship It: The Bear Jew/The Little Man

Comments

[aquidis]

So maybe that's why I ship it, because under the veneer of stoic and detached violence, they're both real people with real emotions and desires, probably the most realistic of the Basterds.

Okay. I'm to a point where I understand the underlying framework of why you ship it--that your canon is based on more than just what's presented in the movie (and I've gotta say--I love how Tarantino is so meticulous in building his scripts, that the larger-than-life arc is supported by all the necessary shoring and mortar), and that Donny and Smitty are real people behind the Basterds persona.

But aside from their humanity and the party they play in the Jewish mythos, what is it about these two characters in particular that makes you ship them? I'm still not understanding that--to me it seems like you're almost manufacturing chemistry. I guess, I don't get how you get from watching the movie, where they don't interact, to shipping them, even with the backstory. Do they have a scene together in the script?

And regarding Donny: Yes, he's incredibly violent and psychotic

I gotta disagree with you there. Yes, I see the calm and the sadness behind Eli Roth's portrayal of him, but I don't see him as violent or psychopathic. He seemed to me the kind of person with a deep-seated need for vindication, but not someone who is overtly inclined to act on it (especially with violence)--he needs to psyche himself up and keep himself fired up to do acts that he knows are necessary (for the justice of him and his people).

I'm not sure that makes complete sense. I'd have to watch the movie again or read the script to confirm what I thought at first.

[pellnell]

I think what I love about them, on some level, is the desperation, like that these people are all they have, and, knowing my own human experiences, I could not get through four years with a tight-knit group of people without the possibility for those interactions.

Considering though that both characters are real and driven by emotion, the thing that intrigues me about the pairing is the capacity for them to affect and change one another. I'm constantly asking myself, "how did Smitty go from being the straight-A student to the struggling journalist to the military assassin?" And I wonder a lot about Donny's own motivations, especially after reading the deleted scenes in which he talks about wanting to kill somebody- and that person has to be a German- while cutting customers' hair in his dad's barber shop, buying his bat and fucking wailing on a fire hydrant outside, and then taking his bat to the Jewish members of his community to carve the names of their loved ones into the wood as some sort of protection. I feel like there's so much more going on underneath the surface of these characters, and their capacity for transformation when they interact is so great. I want to know the things Donny's going to say to Smitty to help steel him (and himself) for the things that they do, and I want to know how they would interact and communicate with one another, and since there's no precedent for it in the film, I have to invent.

I think it's really all about my own desire to understand how they would go about it, fucking and fighting and talking, because I love both of them as characters and I see a tremendous potential for them to affect one another.

I think Donny's a much more difficult character to read, whether you're talking about his personality or his sexuality in fanon. I'm inclined to believe in him as a symbol of uber-masculinity, but obviously there's much more to it. He's definitely had some sadness in his life. I doubt he would be able to maintain that level of control balanced with his own violent outburst if he hadn't. You should really read the script. His scene with Mrs. Himmelstein is a pretty fascinating look into his personality.

[aquidis]

I would like to read the script--can I borrow it from you sometime?

My biggest question is: what was the first moment you shipped them? When did you say "Oh, I wonder how Donny and Smitty would interact with each other?"

[pellnell]

Sure thing. There's a lot of backstory about Donny and Frederick that was cut from the film.

I think I sort of shipped them after the first time I watched the movie, more in a superficial way because I hadn't really thought about them within a human context. I was definitely more interested in Aldo/Donny at first. But, reading the script a couple days later, the scene that clinched it for me is when Smitty's crying in the truck, and it's not seen as being any less manly because it's his genuine reaction, and I think all of Donny's violence and talk is genuine reaction as well. At that point, I just really wanted to know how the two of them would work together, how they would relate to one another because on some levels, they're so fundamentally different, and on others, they're similar.