Junketeers gathered this morning at Manhattan’s Ritz-Carlton hotel for a Django Unchained press conference. The stars were director-writer Quentin Tarantino + Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Don Johnson, Walton Goggins and Jonah Hill. The Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Scott Foundas moderated.

For whatever idiotic reason the sound file conversion is way too problematic. It should be a simple process but it’s not. My fault entirely. I lack the patience. Next time.

From HE correspondent Clayton Loulan: “Tarantino made no promises about releasing a longer cut of the film” — WHAT? — “and said he fully stood behind this cut and wanted the film to play around the world before making any decisions that might change the story.

“QT spoke of Sidney Poitier as a ‘father-figure’ who had to remind him ‘you can’t be afraid of your own movie,’ as he weighed the idea of shooting some of the scenes with slaves in other countries such as the West Indies of Brazil, because he was troubled by the idea of asking hundreds of American actors to walk around through the mud, in chains.

“Waltz gave the least canned answer of the morning in response to a question regarding if there was any hesitation about working with Tarantino so soon after Inglorious Basterds. “There was no reunification, and there was no working again,” said Waltz. “[There] was just another mushroom of the fungus that was growing subcutaneously in me, all the time.”

“The conference ended, in an unlikely fashion, with everyone singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to Sam Jackson, Jonah Hill, Jamie Foxx and Don Johnson. They were all brought cake that nobody touched, until the junketeers wondered aloud if they could take it home with them.”

Loulan warning: “There are a few spoilers in the recording and it does begin in the middle of a response from DiCaprio.” Wells interjection: If you can hear it.