Quentin Tarantino has confirmed that he originally had Adam Sandler in mind to play Donny Donowitz, otherwise known as the Bear Jew, in Inglorious Basterds.
Tarantino mentioned this when he appeared alongside Judd Apatow on a recent episode of Bill Maher’s podcast Club Bastards [per Variety].
There, he confirmed that the Bear Jew was written for Sandler, but he was unable to commit to the film because he had already signed on to appear in Apatow’s Funny People, which was shooting at the same time.
“I feel bad because when I did Funny People with Sandler, I wasn’t aware that that was the exact time you were trying to use him for Inglorious Basterds,” said Apatow.
“Obviously he should’ve done yours because of the whole thing of it,” Tarantino replied. “I mean, you start with the fucking video cassette of you guys as kids. But yeah, the Bear Jew was going to…I wrote the Bear Jew for Adam Sandler.
“When I was doing [2000 comedy] Little Nicky, he’s telling me like, “Oh man, I get to fucking beat up Nazis with a bat? Fucking script! Fucking awesome! I can’t fucking wait! I can’t fucking wait!” He was like telling every Jewish guy, “I’m going to fucking play this guy who beats up Nazis with a fucking bat.’”
The role eventually went to Eli Roth, but Tarantino later joked that it was difficult to find a Jewish actor who wasn’t working with Apatow at the time. “Here’s the problem. [Apatow] wrapped up all the good Jews,” Tarantino said. “That was the problem. Seth Rogen and all the good Jews were doing Funny People. I’m killing Hitler with baseball bats and there’s no good Jews available! David Krumholtz, nobody! All the good Jews were all wrapped up! I’m doing the Jewish male fantasy!”
Ironically, Tarantino and Apatow had met through Sandler, when Tarantino cameoed in his Little Nicky. “I was like hanging out with that crew for a while. We went to a bunch of different things together. But also Freaks and Geeks had just went off the air or it was on its way to go off the air and I had missed it, but that whole Happy Madison crowd was like crazy for it.”
Tarantino also recently made the headlines for saying there are “no real movie stars” in Hollywood anymore as a result of the “Marvel-ization” of the film world.
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