The explosive madness of Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained hits the theaters on Christmas Day 2012. On Sunday, December 16, 2012, I sat in with a select group of journalist for a press conference with writer/director Tarantino and stars Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Kerry Washington, Don Johnson, Walt Goggins, and Jonah Hill. Providing heaps of insight and laughs abound, below is the edited transcript from the morning’s meeting with this elite grouping of stars, followed by a link to the complete, unedited transcript.

You’ve talked about wanting to make a Western, but it is impossible to watch this movie without thinking about how slavery as a subject has been largely absent from Hollywood cinema in the roughly 100 years since Birth of a Nation. What sense of responsibility did you have in terms of making a movie that brings slavery out, front and center like this?

Quentin Tarantino: Well, I always wanted to make a movie that deals with America’s horrific past with slavery, but the way I wanted to deal with it is — as opposed to doing it as a huge historical movie with a capital “H” — I thought it could be better if it was wrapped up in genre. It seems to me that so many Westerns that actually take place during slavery times have just bent over backwards to avoid it, as is America’s way. It’s actually kind of interesting because most other countries have been forced to deal with the atrocities they’ve committed — actually, the world has made them deal with the atrocities they’ve committed — but it’s kind of everybody’s fault here in America. White or black, nobody wants to deal with it, nobody wants to stare at it.

I think, in the story of all the different types of slave narratives that could have existed in this 245 years of slavery in America, there are a zillion stories, a zillion dramatic, exciting, adventurous, heartbreaking, triumphant stories that could be told, and living in a world now where people say there are no new stories — there’s a whole bunch of them, and they’re all American stories that could be told, so I wanted to be one of the first ones out of the gate with it.

Now Jamie, although Kerry and Sam if you want to jump in on this too, I’ll just ask about…

Tarantino: Black question. (laughter)

When you read the script, what were your first impressions about being asked to play slaves in this movie?

Jamie Foxx: Well, I wasn’t asked play anything; I actually saw that the movie was already going and someone else was supposed to play the role, and I thought, Wow, here’s another project that I don’t know about. (laughter) Actually, I had a management change. To explain my acting hustle I said, “I don’t care what it is, it’s Quentin Tarantino and all these people here.” These people here can tackle any subject matter through artistic ability, that’s the first thing.

Reading the script — I’m from Texas, so being in the South, there’s a racial component — and I love the South, there’s no other place I’d rather be from — but there are racial components in the South; my being called “nigger” growing up as a kid — so when I read the script, I didn’t knee-jerk to the word “nigger” like someone from New York or LA would, because that’s something I experienced. What I did gravitate toward was the love story of Django and Broomhilda, and the firsts about everything in this film. When you see movies about slavery, as Quentin has made mention to this, we never get the chance to see the slave fight back, actually do something for himself. In this movie there are a lot of firsts. When we were shooting the movie we would comment on how these are some things people are going to see for the first time. For me, it was about the work, and we knew that coming into it there would be a lot of other things said about it, but it’s been a fantastic ride, thus.

Kerry Washington: I think a lot of times people in the past may have felt nervous about playing a slave because so many of the narratives that have been told in film and television about slavery are about powerlessness. This is not a film about that — this is a film about a black man who gets his freedom and rescues his wife. He is an agent of his own power, he’s a liberator, and he’s a hero, so there’s nothing shameful about that. It’s really inspiring, exciting, and hopeful.

I was very moved by the love story, particularly in a time of our history when black people weren’t allowed to fall in love or get married because that kind of connection got it the way of the selling of human beings. So to have a story between a man and his wife, at a time when a black people weren’t allowed to be husband and wife, was not only educational, but again, hopeful. We’ve seen this love story a million times about star-crossed lovers, it’s just that they don’t come from two different Italian families like Romeo and Juliet — the thing that stands in the way of them being with each other is the institution of slavery. Django’s out to get his woman, but he’s got to take down the institution of slavery to do it.

The other thing in terms of firsts was, I said to Quentin in our first meeting, I feel like I want to do this movie for my father, because my father grew up in a world where there were no black superheroes, and that’s what this movie is.

Sam, the character of Stephen…

Samuel L. Jackson: You ask one question [for the black cast members]… Oh, now you’re changing the question? (laughter) You don’t want to know how I felt about all this?

You can mention that, but you’ve worked with Quentin so many times I feel like the more interesting thing to ask you…

Jackson: I have intelligent things to say about this shit.

I want to talk about the psychology of this character that is, to me, maybe the most interesting character in the film. The relationship that he has to Calvin Candie, but also to the other slaves, and the small power he’s holding onto–

Jackson: Small power? I’m the power behind the throne. I’m like the “Spook Chaney” of Candieland. (laughter) Yeah, I’m all up in that. To tell this story you have to have that character, specifically in that type of setting. I got the script from Quentin, he called me and told me he wrote a Western, and he wanted me to read Stephen, and I complained about being 15 years too old to play Django. When I read the script I called him back and said, “So, you want me to be the most despicable Negro in cinematic history?” We both kind of laughed together and said. “Yeah! Let’s get on that.”

Not only was that a great artistic opportunity to create something that was iconic, and to take what people know as Uncle Tom and turn it on its head in a powerful way, it also gave me the opportunity to do some really nasty shit to the person who got the role I should have had. (laughter)

Tarantino: Payback’s a bitch.

Jackson: Yeah, it is. It was written beautifully that way, so I could do that. To tell this story, you’ve got to have that guy. Stephen is the freest slave in the history of cinema. He has all the powers of the master and literally is the master in the times when Calvin is off Mandingo fighting; he makes the plantation run. Everyone on that plantation knows him; everyone on that plantation fears him. He has a feeble persona that makes people disregard him in an interesting way, even though they fear him. They think he’s physically unable to keep up and do other things, but he’s around. We used to refer to him as the Basil Rathbone of the Antebellum South, and that’s what we tried to do.

I wanted to play him honestly, and I wanted everybody to understand that when Django shows up, that’s a Negro we’ve never seen before. Not only is he on a horse, he got a gun, and he speaks out. The first thing I have to do is let all the other Negros on the plantation know — that’s not something you can aspire to, so let me put him in his place as quickly as I possibly can. You gotta correct that and let them know, “You’re in the place you’re gonna be, and there’s no other place you can be. This nigger’s an anomaly, so don’t even think about trying to be that.” I wholeheartedly embraced that.

Tarantino: One of the things that really has to be taken into account — we know, because we have historical perspective that slavery is on its way out, it’s two years before the start of the Civil War; they don’t know that. They have to think that at least for the next 150 years, this is the way it is, there’s no end in sight. “All those Northerners, those bleeding heart liberals can say anything they want, it don’t mean nothing down here. They don’t understand us, and ain’t nothing gonna ever change.”

Jackson: Even at the end you hear me saying, “There’s always going to be a Candieland, this ain’t going away, this is here to stay.”

Leo, this is the first film you’ve been in, in quite a long time where you’re not the only name above the title–

Leonardo DiCaprio: And it sucks! (laughter) It’s very uncomfortable for all of us.

–but also where you are one of [the villains]. Can you talk about what made you want to take on this role?

DiCaprio: Obviously, Mr. Tarantino here was a major factor. You know, we all read the script, there was a lot of buzz about this script for awhile, and people were talking about the next Tarantino movie that was about to come out. The fact that he tackled this subject matter, like he did with Inglorious Basterds and created his own history, and tackle something as hardcore as slavery and combine it with the genre of having it be this crazy Spaghetti Western feel to it, with this lead character that obliterates the cankerous, rotting South, was completely exciting.

[Calvin Candie], as Quentin put it, is a character that represents everything that’s wrong with the South at the time. He’s like a young Louis XIV: he’s this young sort of prince that’s trying to hold onto his privileges at all costs. Even though he was integrated his whole life with black people, even being brought up by a black man and living with him his entire life, he has to find a moral justification to treat people this way and continue his business. The fact that he’s this Francophile but he doesn’t speak French point out that he’s a walking contradiction. He’s lives with and is brought up by black people, yet he has to regard them as not human. There was absolutely nothing about this man I could identify with. I hated him, and it was one of the most narcissistic, self-indulgent, racist characters I’ve ever read in my entire life.

Jackson: You had to do it. (laughter)

DiCaprio: I had to do it. It was too good not to do. It was too good of a character in that sense. This man just writes incredible characters, and, of course, it was the opportunity to work with all these great people, too.

Dr. King Schultz, Christoph Waltz — can you talk about reuniting with Quentin on this movie, and was there any hesitation on either of your parts on working together again so soon after this very iconic character in Inglorious Basterds?

Cristoph Waltz: Neither, there was no reunification and there was no working again. This was just another mushroom of the fungus that was growing subcutaneously in me, all the time. (laughter)

Jackson: Process that! (laughter)

Tarantino: I had this same problem with Sam for about a decade. It’s hard not to write for these guys; they say my dialogue so well. For 10 years I’d write something cool; Kill Bill for instance. For seven months of the year and half I spent writing Kill Bill, Bill sounded just like Sam. They say my dialogue so well. The way I write, I always kind of fancy it as poetry, and they’re the ones that make it poetry; they come out of my pen. Sometimes it’s not even appropriate, but I can’t shut it off. I’ve been wanting to do this story for a long time and there was never a German, dentist, bounty hunter in the story. The next thing I know, I sat down and wrote that opening scene and he just flew right out of the pen, like it was the tenant of God, boom.

Don, your performance is very exuberant, which is something we seem to think of when it comes to Quentin’s actors: they always seem to be having a lot of fun. What is it about working with Quentin that brings this out in a performance?

Don Johnson: As Quentin told me, he said, “You sing in my key.”  I looked at Big Daddy Bennett as a character who had his fiefdom, and he was fully engaged in his fiefdom. As everybody has mentioned, they all though this was going to go on forever — until these two motherfuckers showed up. They messed up everything, so they gotta go.

Jackson: You tell ‘em Big Daddy! I love her. [Referencing the repeated line of one of Big Daddy’s slave girls]

Johnson: I enjoyed working with him. I’ll finish a take and I’ll look at Quentin and he’ll give me some sort of hand signal, and he looks like one of those Navy signal men or something like that, and I know exactly what he means, but I don’t know how I know it. We’ll do it again, and I’ll see him and this time the signal means something like, “Let’s bring that in on the other aircraft carrier.” It was fun.

Jackson: I remember the first day I got that, I went looking for Quentin, and the day I got there the slaves were in the field — you guys were coming up on the plantation for the first time, Jamie has his little Lord Fauntleroy suit on, and I was walking down that road through the cotton field. I didn’t realize until I got to the middle of the cotton field that all these extras were out there in their slave gear, and there was cotton and they were picking it, and there were these white dudes on horses with shotguns. Then I look back and Don was up on the porch of the big house and I was like, Oh shit, we’re doing this. It was almost like a “Twilight Zone” episode, it was crazy.

Washington: We were shooting on an actual slave plantation called Evergreen Plantation in Louisiana. That lent itself to all of us kind of disappearing into the story because you felt like you were making the film on sacred ground. You felt like you were reenacting this behavior where these crimes against humanity were actually committed. It started to infiltrate everybody’s acting and behavior.

Jackson: Crazy stuff like that happened, like when you got whipped [motioning to Kerry], all the bugs stopped making noises and the birds stopped singing. It was kind of like, “Oh shit, is this back?”

Johnson: My dresser, who helped me get my costume every day found out that her ancestors were buried in the cemetery on the plantation. That was a serious day, when she came to work and told me that.

Washington: And they were German.

Johnson: That’s right, they were German, I forgot about that.

Jonah, when you get a call from Quentin Tarantino asking you to play a role called “Bag Head #2” in a movie a movie about slavery, do you even ask to see the script at that point? Did it take you awhile to find Bag Head #2, or did you just say yes?

Jonah Hill: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know about you guys, but I got into this business to work with great filmmakers, and so I don’t care if he wants me to be an extra in one of his movies. I mean, I don’t even know what I’m doing the fuck up here with these guys; I only worked for like two days on the film. It’s kind of an ego stroke that you even want me here, because I don’t really have anything to do with it. I think it was the weekend that Moneyball had come out, and I met with Quentin and he asked if I would do it, and I was just overjoyed. There wasn’t any thought about it — he wanted me to be in the film, and I was just so excited to be there.

For the cast, what types of external sources did you use to help further create or further develop your character?

Washington: In a way, I think “outside source” is a contradiction in terms. I can only speak for myself, but the source is the script. The script has a source; I can point it out to you. [pointing at Tarantino’s head]

Tarantino: On the same line, we’ve got the first issue of the Django Unchained comic book. The thing that’s interesting about the comic book, more to the last question’s point, we keep the entire script in the comic book. Some of the sequences and big chapters we dropped — the ones we didn’t even bother shooting because we didn’t want a four-hour movie — are in the comic book. I gotta say, I’m as excited about the comic book as I am about the movie; it’s boss!

Johnson: I can tell you that that period of time is one of my favorite periods in history in early developing America, because it’s full of deceit, and it’s rich in human character, or lack thereof. From the Native Americans to slavery, I’ve read a lot about it. Blood and Thunder is a great book that I read before I started this film. There’s a lot of outside material, and for me, I like to start with outside information and just research — then start layering it into my character. You know, the ethics of the time, the social graces of the time. Did they have indoor toilets? No. How were manners created? So I start form the outside and then I slowly start to bring it all inside

This film is probably your most straightforward in terms of chronology. Was there an earlier cut where you fractured the timeline as you have in past films? In general, how did you find this particular movie in the editing room?

Tarantino: It was a conscious decision right from page one not to do my normal narrative tricks; to have separate chapters, or all of a sudden look at the piece from a different character’s point of view or perspective accumulate somewhere else down the line — this had to be Django’s journey from beginning to end, it had to be his odyssey. As the terrains changed, as Django and Schultz cross all over America to get to Broomhilda; that journey was so important.

A couple of times, Harvey [Weinstein] would say, “Well, can we do a Kill Bill volume one and volume two type of thing?” It wouldn’t work here. It worked in Kill Bill because it was very episodic. It would be completely unsatisfying. People would have a right to get up in arms at the end of the first movie if we did that. You need to see Django start his journey and complete it in one scenario. That’s what was really important about it.

As far as the film taking shape in editing, because there are so many different emotions in this movie, there’s the exciting Western adventure aspect of it, there’s the gallows humor like comedy that runs through it — especially with the pairing of these two guys [Foxx and Waltz], there’s the pain of the story, there’s the catharsis of the story, there’s the suspense, and hopefully at the very end, there’s the cheering. If the audience isn’t cheering at the end, then I haven’t done my job. So balancing all those different emotions so I got that cheer at the end, was the biggest issue when the editing is concerned. Frankly, when it came to the pain, I could have gone forward, I have more of a tolerance. Part of it was, I wanted to show how bad it was, but then I don’t want to also traumatize the audience so badly that they can’t enjoy the movie and be where I need them to be in the last reel.

This is one of the most outrageous and courageous films to come out of Hollywood in awhile, yet it’s being very well received — why do you think that is?

Tarantino: Well, hopefully because it’s a good movie, and that’s not a smart-ass answer. When you talk about this, you always seem to have to go down the dirt road of having to talk about the horrible time of that past, and that’s fair enough, but I hope that if you leave your house and go to a movie theater and pay for a ticket, to sit with a bunch of strangers and watch this movie, you’re going to have a great time at the movies — and I think so far, so good.

Jackson: Quentin always writes movies he wants to see. We watch a lot of the same kind of movies, and we talk about that stuff all the time, so he writes movies that he wants to see. He generally writes a role in there that I’m gonna do, because I want to see myself in that kind of movie. I think I represent a lot of moviegoers; he represents a lot of fans, also. When you get it right, you get it right. It’s an entertaining film. Yeah, you know there’s some stuff in there, and some of it’s horrific, but it’s a great film. When you come out of there, you feel like you got your money’s worth, and ultimately that’s what happens.

Washington: I also think the theme, the impetus for all the adventure and action and all of it is, love. It’s a completely universal theme — everybody wants to be loved, so badly, that their prince would slay the dragons.

Jackson: Oh, that’s some girlie shit — it’s Shaft on a horse. (laughter) It’s Shaft in the Old West with a little Hong Kong ballet thrown in there.

Washington: Something for everybody, something for everybody.

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For an unedited full transcript of the entire interview, visit Movie Reviews From Gene Shalit’s Moustache.