Quentin Tarantino isn't saying why he spelled the title of his World War II adventure, "Inglourious Basterds," the way he did.
The writer-director is enjoying having a little fun with his audience, similar to the way he credited himself and Uma Thurman, with whom he co-wrote the "Kill Bill" movies, by their initials Q and U.
"I'm never going to explain that," he said in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where "Inglourious Basterds" premiered. "When you do an artistic flourish like that, to describe it, to explain it, would just ... invalidate the whole stroke in the first place.
"[Artist Jean-Michel] Basquiat takes the letter L from a hotel room door and sticks it in his painting," he added. "If he describes why he did it, he might as well not have done it at all."
Tarantino's film about Jewish-American soldiers who hunt down and scalp Nazis opened last weekend atop the box office with $38 million.
The tricky phrasing hasn't seemed to trouble many people on Twitter, where "Inglourious Basterds" has been a top trending topic. As one user joked: "Tarantino created 'Inglourious Basterds' simply to watch Twitter go into fits about its spelling."
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