Quentin Tarantino by Ian Nathan

Quentin Tarantino by Ian Nathan

Author:Ian Nathan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: White Lion Publishing
Published: 2019-12-15T00:00:00+00:00


Louis Gara (Robert De Niro) shares a sofa with Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). De Niro accepted the role of introvert crook Louis because he went against the conventional image of a Tarantino character, communicating mostly through a series of grunts and shrugs.

This was Foxy Brown twenty years on, still sexy and indomitable. Only towards the end of the unbroken shot, she starts to dash, suddenly harried and urgent, and we realize this is a woman late for work. It’s a gorgeously subtle change: the smooth transformation from an expectation into the reality. From Foxy Brown into Jackie Brown, a woman with worries.

‘Some baggage,’ noted Tarantino, ‘can be very good.’30

When it came to Max Cherry, the job-sore bail bondsman looking for a way out, Tarantino drew up a wish list that included Paul Newman, 1970s hard man John Saxon and Gene Hackman, but Robert Forster had no baggage. Rather than the aura of the past with which Grier would enrich Jackie, Tarantino wanted Max to be a relatively blank presence – an ordinary guy, his better days behind him. Hackman would crowd out the movie with his authority. Forster was harder to place.

Tarantino knew him well, of course, from the likes of Medium Cool, Reflections in a Golden Eye and the TV series ‘Banyon’, which only lasted a season. He was another actor whose shine had dulled, and was making ends meet doing motivational speeches. That seen-and–fucking-done-it-all quality spoke volumes, extolled Tarantino, ‘Robert Forster’s face is backstory.’31 All the successes, and the heartbreaks, it was right there.

Forster also had prior with Tarantino. He had been up for the Lawrence Tierney role in Reservoir Dogs, but it hadn’t worked out. Tarantino promised to make good on it. Eighteen months before Jackie Brown they had bumped into one other in Forster’s regular breakfast diner. Tarantino told him to read Rum Punch, because he was currently adapting it. Five months later, Forster strolled back into the diner to find Tarantino sitting in his favourite spot, a script on the table in front of him. There was something sweet, the director reflected, ‘in giving him another day in court, seeing what a good actor he is.’32 He wondered how many more Griers and Forsters were out there.

Nothing in Tarantino’s work had given the slightest hint that he was capable of the gentle gravity of Jackie and Max hesitantly falling for one another. This was true romance. He described them as ‘people with decisions to make,’33 as if they were operating outside of his control. As if nothing in the film was predetermined by the fixtures of plot. This was life.

Continuing a flourishing partnership, he could picture Ordell Robbie in the capable hands of Samuel L. Jackson. Bridget Fonda was Ordell’s nagging beachbum girlfriend Melanie, and in a surprisingly comic turn Robert De Niro plays slovenly ex-con Louis. He and Tarantino had met at the Munich Film Festival, and talked about nothing but movies. When Lawrence Bender passed on the script, De Niro saw the ironic value in Louis.



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