Django Unchained is, in many respects, Quentin Tarantino’s most Tarantino-like film since Pulp Fiction. The “baghead” scene, in which a group of KKK members protest about their badly built face masks made out of burlap sacks, is one of the most iconic sequences in Django Unchained. Tarantino stated in a recent interview with Empire that even he was terrified by the possibility of filming the moment flawlessly.

“That has as much hysterical laughter as I’ve ever heard in any screening of any movie, and it happens all over the world. That was everyone’s favorite scene in the script,” Tarantino said on the Empire Film Podcast. “[Producer Amy Pascal], half the reason she wanted to make the movie at Columbia was because of that scene. But it was one of those scenes that, it was such a hit on the page, I started getting intimidated about would it be that good in the movie? Does everyone love it so much on the page [that it’s] gonna lose something in the translation once I get a bunch of actors playing the roles? Because it’s not based on one performance, it’s a whole lot of people. And it happens at a weird part of the movie.”

In fact, Tarantino was unimpressed by the reaction of visiting interviewers and directors when he displayed clips of the “baghead” sequence. However, when he pulled the footage from the picture for a short time, Sony producer Amy Pascal questioned why it had been removed. Tarantino responded by re-adding the sequence, then deciding how to proceed based on the results of the test screening. The “baghead” sequence caused viewers to erupt in laughter, reinforcing Tarantino’s decision to preserve it in the end.

“…we showed it to [Sony and The Weinstein Company] without that scene, and then afterwards [Pascal] was like, ‘What the fuck happened to the baghead scene?’ and I said, ‘Here’s the deal. I wanted you to see the movie without it so you would know that we don’t need it. Now, let’s put it back in for the first market research screening. Let’s see what the audience response is and from that point we’ll figure out what to do,'” Tarantino said. “Because I wasn’t that confident that it was going to get the greatest response. Because I just saw it one person at a time.”

They put the scene back in, and it brought the house down at the first audience screening:

“Then we have the first market research screening, and the entire theater just breaks into laughter for five minutes straight. It brings the entire house down, and right when they needed to be brought down – it’s a heavy section. And so it was like, ‘Okay well I guess this scene is going in the movie.’”

Tarantino emphasized the importance of context in storytelling by offering this amazing bit of knowledge. While the KKK sequence may not have been funny on its own, its incorporation in Django Unchained’s larger story heightened and deepened its humorous purpose. In the end, it worked as a satirical takedown of the KKK, exposing the organization’s weakness rather than its fake bravado. Django Unchained, like many of Tarantino’s works, presents re-imagined historical scenarios that intentionally mock individuals in positions of authority.