As former "Welcome Back, Kotter" star John Travolta could easily attest, it's not a bad thing being the star of a hit sitcom, especially when one of the fans is Quentin Tarantino.

It's the sort of situation that "The Office" star B.J. Novak believes helped him out in becoming one of the namesake players in "Inglourious Basterds" -- Tarantino's hotly anticipated WWII revenge fantasy that follows Lt. Aldo Raines (Brad Pitt) and a group of Jewish-American soldiers on a mission to brutally dispatch of any Nazis soldiers they encounter as the Third Reich occupies France.

"He's a big fan of TV in general and I knew he was a fan of the 'The Office' when I met him. He even quoted his favorite lines from the show as me, which made me feel great," Novak gushed in a recent @ The Movies interview. "He knows about everything that's going on in pop culture and fortunately 'The Office' is one of those things."

Novak, 30, plays Ryan, aka The Temp, on "The Office," a show that's he's helped write and executive produce since its debut in 2005. A mild-mannered character that has occasional highs, so to speak, Ryan isn't anything like Novak's inglorious Pfc. Smithson Utivich -- a "Basterd" who's expected to take the scalps of his Nazi kills.

"I don't think anyone expected me to be scalping somebody on the big screen, and I don't even think Tarantino expected me to be," said Novak with a laugh. "The night before our weapons training for the film, he said to the group, I'm going to give close-ups to the top three scalpers. Then he pointed to me and said, 'Novak, I don't think you're going to make the top three,' which is exactly what I was thinking."