Quentin Tarantino wants Joseph Gordon-Levitt to get in on the slave-torturing fun in Django Unchained

By Sean O'Neal | October 21, 2011 | 6:20pm

Aux Features Film

Quentin Tarantino continues to amass an impressive stable of likeable white dudes to be all-in-good-fun racists for his rollicking slave adventure Django Unchained, with Variety now reporting that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is in talks to join his Inception co-star Leonardo DiCaprio, plus a cast that already includes Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Don Johnson, and Gerald McRaney. The report doesn’t specify which role Gordon-Levitt is up for, though it’s possible he’s in the running for one of the many, smaller, redneck-y parts that are left over, or that he’ll star as the heartsick twentysomething who falls in love with his own personal slave, who just happens to be Django’s wife. It could be just like (500) Days Of Summer, only with slightly less torture.

It’s equally possible that Tarantino is crafting an entirely new character just to make use of Gordon-Levitt’s talents, perhaps utilizing his song-and-dance skills and lithe, acrobatic physicality in a series of vaudevillian interstitials where he does Al Jolson songs in ironic blackface. Or, you know, maybe something else. If Tarantino is writing him an original part, it wouldn’t be the first special allowance made to get Gordon-Levitt in the film: Shortly before the casting was announced, Sony changed the release date of his bike messenger movie Premium Rush from January to August, conveniently relieving him of grudging promotional duties that would have otherwise kept him from the shoot. So it seems that it everything will work out, and winter 2012 will see Gordon-Levitt in both Django Unchained and Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, suggesting that Joseph Gordon-Levitt just really, really likes slavery.