50 Fun Facts About Django Unchained

Which musical out-earned Django Unchained on their shared opening day?

Les Misérables led the day with $18.1 million to Django's $15 million. Tarantino's film had the longer legs, though, and finished ahead in the US with about $163 million.

Who plays the title character in Django Unchained?

Jamie Foxx also worked on the soundtrack: he produced and sang on '100 Black Coffins', one of the songs written specially for the film.

Who plays the German bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz in Django Unchained?

Christoph Waltz had the part written specially for him. Bees startled his horse, which threw him, and the fall injured his pelvis.

What is the name of the plantation owner who holds Broomhilda in Django Unchained?

Calvin Candie insists on being called 'Monsieur', yet his lawyer warns visitors not to speak French to him: he doesn't know the language and it would embarrass him.

Who plays Broomhilda, Django's wife, in Django Unchained?

Kerry Washington's character is Broomhilda von Shaft. Tarantino chose the surname so that she and Django would be ancestors of the 1970s screen detective John Shaft.

Who plays Stephen, the fiercely loyal head house slave in Django Unchained?

Samuel L. Jackson said Stephen is the one who really runs the plantation, and it is Stephen who works out that Django and Broomhilda know each other and exposes the ruse.

Which Django Unchained actor really cut his hand on a glass in the dinner scene and stayed in character?

Leonardo DiCaprio slammed his hand onto a glass around the sixth take and kept going as it bled. The room gave him a standing ovation, and Tarantino kept the take in the film.

Which star turned down the title role in Django Unchained, later saying it 'wasn't the lead'?

Will Smith was deep in rewrites on Men in Black 3 and said there was no time for his input on the script. He still called the finished film brilliant.

Before turning bounty hunter in Django Unchained, what was Dr. King Schultz's profession?

Dentist. Schultz admits he hasn't practised in five years, yet he rides a cart topped with a giant wobbling molar, built for the film when its injured actor could not sit a horse.

Which pseudoscience does the villain of Django Unchained cite to justify slavery?

Phrenology, the reading of character from the shape of the skull, drives his dinner-table speech. It was inspired by a racist Civil War-era book in the actor's own collection.

Which Beethoven piece is heard in Django Unchained?

Für Elise is an anachronism here: Beethoven wrote it in 1810, but it lay unpublished until 1867, years after the pre-Civil War story takes place.

On which US holiday did Django Unchained open in American theaters?

Christmas Day. Making the date was a scramble: the 130-day shoot wrapped only in late July 2012, leaving Tarantino about four months to finish the film.

Along with Best Supporting Actor, which Oscar did Django Unchained win?

Best Original Screenplay. Tarantino won for his writing even though the Academy left him off that year's Best Director list.

Django Unchained's Dr. King Schultz actor won his first Oscar for which earlier Tarantino film?

Inglourious Basterds. He played SS colonel Hans Landa, a part Tarantino feared was unplayable until this actor auditioned and, in the director's words, 'gave me my movie'.

At the end of Django Unchained, Django destroys the plantation mansion using what?

Dynamite is an anachronism: Alfred Nobel invented it in 1866 and patented it the next year, after the Civil War, while the film's story is set before the war began.

Django Unchained opens with Django in a chained coffle of slaves in which state?

Texas. Schultz rides up there at night, shoots one of the slavers when a gun is pulled on him, and leaves the other to the men he had been driving in chains.

In Django Unchained, the plantation where Broomhilda is held lies in which state?

Mississippi. To get invited there, Schultz poses as a wealthy buyer of fighting slaves and passes Django off as his hired expert.

Which actor plays plantation owner Big Daddy Bennett in Django Unchained?

Don Johnson's Big Daddy wears a cream linen suit that the costume designer based on the actor's signature Miami Vice look, though she resisted rolling up the sleeves.

Which French novelist, Schultz tells the villain of Django Unchained, was black?

Alexandre Dumas. The villain has named a slave D'Artagnan after the Musketeers hero, unaware that the novelist's own grandmother was an enslaved African woman in what is now Haiti.

Sergio Leone made the Dollars films, but who directed the original Django in 1966?

Sergio Corbucci. Tarantino hit on the idea for his own film while writing an essay on Corbucci's brutal Westerns for a planned book about directors.

Which star of the 1966 original Django makes a cameo in Django Unchained as a slave owner at the bar?

Franco Nero suggested playing a horseman in black who haunts Django's visions and turns out to be his father. Tarantino declined and cast him as an Italian drinking at the bar instead.

Which rapper performs '100 Black Coffins', the Django Unchained track produced by its lead actor?

Rick Ross recorded one of four songs made for the film, a rarity for Tarantino, who usually reuses existing music because he dislikes 'giving that much power to anybody' on his movies.

Which comedy star cameos in Django Unchained as one of Big Daddy's hooded raiders?

Jonah Hill had been offered a bigger part, a gambler who loses Broomhilda at poker, but turned it down over a clash with The Watch. That role was cut, and he returned for the raid scene.

In 2013, Django Unchained overtook which 1990 film as the highest-grossing Western to date?

Dances with Wolves had grossed about $424 million worldwide. Django passed it largely on overseas ticket sales, which supplied nearly two-thirds of its $450 million.

Which hero of German legend, Schultz tells Django, walked through hellfire to rescue the original Broomhilda?

Siegfried. Schultz says that when a German meets a real-life Siegfried it is 'kind of a big deal', and that as a German he is obliged to help Django rescue his own Broomhilda.

A 2014-15 comic-book sequel to Django Unchained teamed Django with which classic masked hero?

Zorro. Because his heyday came decades before Django's, co-writer Matt Wagner planned to put a new man behind the mask, but Tarantino insisted on the original Don Diego de la Vega, now grown old.

Which filmmaker refused to see Django Unchained, calling it 'disrespectful to my ancestors'?

Spike Lee told Vibe he would not see it, then tweeted that American slavery 'was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a Holocaust.'

Tarantino's abandoned sequel novel, Django in White Hell, was reworked into which film?

The Hateful Eight. Tarantino found that Django's morals did not fit the snowbound story he was developing, so he dropped the character and rewrote it as a film of its own.

In Django Unchained, Dr. King Schultz hails from which Rhine city?

Düsseldorf. Schultz turns his home city into a cover story, posing as a big-money buyer from Düsseldorf who needs Django as his expert on fighting slaves.

Which Jim Croce hit, first heard as a 1973 film theme, features in Django Unchained?

I Got a Name was the theme of The Last American Hero. It came out as a single the day after Croce died in a plane crash in September 1973, making it his first posthumous hit.

Which star was first lined up as Mandingo trainer Ace Woody in Django Unchained, before Kurt Russell replaced him?

Kevin Costner bowed out over a schedule clash, and so did his replacement, Kurt Russell. The part was then folded into Billy Crash, the character played by Walton Goggins.

Django Unchained was the first Tarantino film not edited by which longtime collaborator, who died in 2010?

Sally Menke had cut every Tarantino film since Reservoir Dogs. After she died on a hike in the heat of Los Angeles's Griffith Park, Fred Raskin, an assistant editor on Kill Bill, took over.

Django Unchained editor Fred Raskin lost the BAFTA to William Goldenberg's work on which film?

Argo. Goldenberg was up against himself that night, as co-editor of fellow nominee Zero Dark Thirty, and Argo's editing went on to win the Oscar too.

Before her punishment scene in Django Unchained, the actress playing Broomhilda spent time confined in what?

A coffin-size metal hot box, sunk into the ground. She agreed with Tarantino to wait inside it before the cameras rolled, and said the hours there gave her nightmares about being trapped.

The actor playing Stephen in Django Unchained said the character had 'the same moral compass' as which public figure?

Clarence Thomas. He was describing Stephen as a house slave who sides with his oppressors, and a Boston Globe review of the film drew the same parallel with the Supreme Court justice.

Tarantino says the masked riders led by Big Daddy in Django Unchained are not the Ku Klux Klan but which group?

The Regulators. The Klan was not founded until after the Civil War, so Tarantino presents these raiders as its forerunners and plays their home-made hoods for laughs.

The snowy winter sequences of Django Unchained pay homage to which 1968 spaghetti Western?

The Great Silence plays out in a blizzard-bound Utah. Tarantino said he liked its action in the snow so much that he gave his own film 'a big snow section in the middle'.

What are the first names of the Speck brothers, the slave traders Schultz confronts as Django Unchained opens?

Ace and Dicky. Schultz shoots Ace when he raises a gun, then pays the trapped Dicky for Django and writes out a bill of sale before leaving him to the freed men.

Django Unchained filmed at Evergreen Plantation, a National Historic Landmark in which state?

Louisiana. Shooting a whipping scene in the state, the actress playing Broomhilda recalled, 'everything stopped' at the first crack of the whip: 'It was like nature knew we were going back.'

Which actor plays two unrelated characters in Django Unchained, one of the Speck brothers and bodyguard Butch Pooch?

James Remar dies twice in the film: Schultz shoots his slave trader in the opening scene, and Django kills his bodyguard moments after Butch has gunned Schultz down.

Django's hat in Django Unchained came from the hat-makers behind a hero's hat on which TV Western?

Bonanza. Tarantino screened the series for his costume designer, who went to the makers of Little Joe's hat and had them give Django's version 'a little more swerve'.

Shortly before playing the villainous Stephen in Django Unchained, its actor starred on Broadway as which historical figure?

Martin Luther King. Fresh from playing him in The Mountaintop, the actor says he complained to Tarantino that he couldn't be the hero and was now being asked to play the most hated man in cinema history.

A snowless California winter forced Tarantino to move Django Unchained's snow scenes to which state?

Wyoming. The sets were shipped to Jackson Hole after what a producer called California's first snowless winter in a century, on a shoot that ran to 130 days.

Quentin Tarantino cameos in Django Unchained as a mining-company escort from which country?

Australia. Tarantino puts on the accent beside Australian actor John Jarratt, and Django talks the escorts into freeing and arming him with a tale of bounty money waiting at the plantation.

Which Italian composer wrote the song 'Ancora qui' for Django Unchained with singer Elisa?

Ennio Morricone. Three years later he wrote a full score for Tarantino's next film and at last won a competitive Oscar for it, after five nominations that came to nothing.

Which singer wrote the ballad 'Wiseman' for Django Unchained, only for Tarantino to leave it out?

Frank Ocean. Tarantino called the ballad 'truly lovely and poetic' but said 'there just wasn't a scene for it', so Ocean posted it on his Tumblr that December.

Django Unchained's Dr. King Schultz has been likened to the heroes of which German novelist?

Karl May. German friends showed Tarantino the 1960s Karl May films in Berlin; the novelist wrote his best-known Westerns before ever visiting America, yet claimed to be their hero, Old Shatterhand.

Django's fancy valet outfit in Django Unchained was modelled on which famous painting?

The Blue Boy. The script asked for powder blue, which the costume designer feared would look like polyester, so she slipped Gainsborough's portrait into her research book until Tarantino asked for it.

Which TV detective star's coat inspired Schultz's faux chinchilla one in Django Unchained?

Telly Savalas, TV's Kojak, once wore the coat that inspired the fur. To balance Schultz's other big coat on her slightly built actor, the costume designer ordered a hat that was 'a marriage' of a high hat and a bowler.

Why do historians doubt slave owners staged death fights like Django Unchained's?

Slaves were too valuable: Yale historian David Blight says owners would not risk such an investment in a fight to the death. Such fights do appear in the 1975 film Mandingo, about a slave trained to fight other slaves.