AE: First of all, congratulations on your latest movie. Aside from the critics in Cannes, I didn’t understand how 2 hours 28 minutes passed. I guess past 10 years in your life feel the same way for you.

Quentin Tarantino: I’m pleased…When I first had the idea 10 years ago, I got very excited. I kept on writing. I had this script for 10 years. My close friends were making fun of me. I actually was inspired by an old movie with the same name. The name of the movie excited me. I wanted to do a movie with the same name. I didn’t want to do a movie that was longer than Pulp Fiction. But I kept on writing. When I start writing, it’s difficult to shut down my brain.

AE: I believe the stories you write excite you the most…

Quentin Tarantino: Very good observations. It is exactly like that. I do anything that excites me. Sometimes I don’t even look for cause-consequence relations. People who make movies, live and die for movies. I’m the student of cinema. I’m always excited. I wouldn’t want this excitement to ever end.

AE: Inglorious Basterds will be talked about a lot… Did you pick the story on purpose? So that the movie would promote itself?

Quentin Tarantino: I used to watch movies from 1940s. Not the American propaganda movies, the real movies of that time. In most of the movies made in 2nd World War, the directors had their own experiences. Most of those directors now live in Hollywood. They couldn’t make movies anywhere else because of Nazis. I started to write this story in 1998. I knew it was going to be a great movie on the third chapter. If my characters lived during that era, they would have changed history.

AE: Your movie was criticized in many different ways. How would you evaluate your own movie?

Quentin Tarantino: I wish I was only interviewed by smart journalists like you!!! In my opinion, the opening of the movie was great. I would have wanted to make that scene silent. I’m a fan of German cinema of 1920s. Dialogs were very sharp in those movies. I can’t say anything about the movie being considered to be long. I make movies, and this is what critics do. They don’t have to like me or the movies I make. I should also say this, I would have wanted to be a movie critic if I wasn’t a director.