A key figure in 1970s Blaxploitation movies like “Three the Hard Way” and “Slaughter,” Jim Brown let Hollywood know he could draw a large audience to the theater. The combination of Tarantino and Foxx resulted in the biggest box office of the director’s career, but it took a bit of time for the two to catch up creatively. “I was just getting to know Quentin Tarantino, so he was, again, a bully,” Foxx said on The Howard Stern Show. “‘Don’t fuck with my movie,'” he recalled hearing Tarantino say. Foxx may have been trying to emulate powerful artists like Jim Brown or Fred Williamson, which wasn’t exactly what QT was looking for.
Foxx made sure to let Stern know that Tarantino was coming from a place of passion, wanting every word to feel authentic. “But that’s what you want. You want a director who, even if you go off the cliff, you know you’re going over the fucking cliff.” Known for his great impressions over the years, dating back to his “In Living Color” days, Foxx began doing a fairly accurate version of Tarantino to recreate what happened on set when the actor tried too hard to You can see it well:
“‘You’re not Jim Brown! He’s a fucking slave and then, and then, he becomes the hero, but he loses that sh*t.’ The door opens and he walks out.”
The way Foxx goes from calm, insecure and defeated Django to becoming one of the fastest guns in the South to rescue his love Broomhilda von Shaft (Kerry Washington) from Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) is quite remarkable. If he had kept that same attitude throughout “Django Unchained,” the ending wouldn’t have had the impact it did. When asked if he would work with Tarantino again, Foxx didn’t hesitate. “A thousand times.”