How Five Bottles Of Wine Got Brad Pitt To Do Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Inglourious Basterds’

Brad Pitt isn’t sure how he agreed to play the part of Lieutenant Aldo Raine in Quentin Tarantino’s new film, “Inglourious Basterds,” but he has a hint it involved alcohol.

At the Cannes Film Festival in France on Wednesday, Brad revealed how he came to sign on for the role of Lt. Raine, the leader of a crack team of Nazi-killing soldiers, in the iconic director’s new film.

“Quentin came to visit, sometime at the end of the summer with the script and all I know [is] we talked about back story, we talked about movies ‘til the wee hours of the night and I got up the next morning and I saw five empty bottles of wine lying on the floor – five! And something that resembled a smoking apparatus,” Brad told a room full of reporters, who erupted into laughter. “I don’t know what that was about, and apparently I agreed to do the movie.”

Brad, who sported a short, cropped hairdo and moustache for the role, said not long after the patchy evening, he was on set.

“So six weeks later, I was in uniform,” Brad continued.

The dad of six said he believed in Quentin’s project and was proud to share it in Cannes – a place he thought they’d always get to show it.

“[Quentin had] been working on this script eight years and he said that night we’re gonna make Cannes. I knew it instantly upon reading it,” Brad said of the film festival’s acceptance of the film. “These ones don’t come along very often.”

And Quentin too shared his admiration for Brad, whom he said he always wanted to work with.

“Me and Brad have been sniffing around each other for a while — the longing looks across the room and everything. The little notes, ‘I like you. Do you like me? Check box, no box, check one,’” he laughed. “One of the questions I get often times is, ‘What actors would you like to work with?’ and Brad is always been one of the ones I’ve said, but I don’t work like that, it’s all about my characters.”

Quentin said it was while writing “Inglourious Basterds,” that it hit him – Brad would be perfect for Lt. Aldo Raine.

“The thing about it is [I thought], one of these days I hope I write a character that will be terrific for Brad and if that is the case, then that collaboration will go to the moon, it’ll be a Babe Ruth home run,” Quentin continued. “Somewhere pretty quickly into the text of writing Aldo, I was like, ‘OK! This is the one for Brad.’ And then I started getting f***ing nervous. I was like, ‘S**! If he doesn’t do it… what the f*** am I gonna do?’”

“He had me at hello,” Brad interrupted, quoting Renee Zellweger in “Jerry Maguire.”

“I had him at bonjour,” Quentin laughed.