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The Rewatchables ·

True Romance

year 1993decade 90sdirector Tony Scottgenre Drama
host Bill Simmonshost Chris Ryanhost Sean Fennessey
All 14 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 26:50

The Sicilian scene between Hopper and Walken

Five candidate scenes are set out: Clarence going back to Drexel, Hopper versus Walken, which might be the most famous scene of both careers, Gandolfini versus Alabama, the coke sale at the Beverly Ambassador when Slater shows up wired and talks Vietnam movies and Coming Home in a Body Bag, and the big three-way shootout, Tarantino's second three-way shootout in two movies.

Bill Simmons: A recap for anyone who has not seen the film in a while: Clarence falls in love with the woman his boss hires for him and they get married.

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie · 1:22:06

"If there's one thing this last week has taught me, it's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it"

Nominations: 'don't condescend me man', Drexel's crude line comparing himself to a woman's body, 'he must have thought it was white boy day', the gun line, 'she tastes like a peach'; the gun line is liked as a senior yearbook line for the high school students out there, and it is replayed with Clarence telling Richard that Lee Donowitz is not a pimp, credited to Clarence Worley, 1993.

The film

True Romance (1993)

Directed by Tony Scott · Drama

118 minutes

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Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Christian Slater Clarence Worley
Patricia Arquette Alabama Whitman
Dennis Hopper Clifford Worley
Val Kilmer Elvis
Gary Oldman Drexl Spivey
Brad Pitt Floyd, Dick's roommate
Christopher Walken Vincenzo Coccotti
Bronson Pinchot Elliot Blitzer
Samuel L. Jackson Don "Big Don"
Michael Rapaport Dick Ritchie
Saul Rubinek Lee Donowitz
Conchata Ferrell Mary Louise Ravencroft
Victor Argo Lenny
Paul Bates Marty
Chris Penn Detective Nicky Dimes
Tom Sizemore Detective Cody Nicholson
Gregory Sporleder burger stand customer
Frank Adonis Frankie
Michael Beach Detective Wurlitzer
Laurence Mason Floyd "D"
Ed Lauter Captain Quiggle (uncredited)

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

26:50

Most Rewatchable Scene

The Sicilian scene between Hopper and Walken

The Sicilian scene between Hopper and Walken

In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:26:50Read transcript
  • Five candidate scenes are set out: Clarence going back to Drexel, Hopper versus Walken, which might be the most famous scene of both careers, Gandolfini versus Alabama, the coke sale at the Beverly Ambassador when Slater shows up wired and talks Vietnam movies and Coming Home in a Body Bag, and the big three-way shootout, Tarantino's second three-way shootout in two movies.
  • A recap for anyone who has not seen the film in a while: Clarence falls in love with the woman his boss hires for him and they get married. — Bill Simmons
  • The recap is corrected: she is a call girl, not a hooker, there's a difference, she says; Clarence decides he has to emancipate her from the pimp, Drexel Spivey, played by Gary Oldman, which leads to a shootout, and he takes the wrong suitcase, full of cocaine, so they end up on the run.
  • One pick is Clarence versus Drexel as one of the great five minutes of the nineties; another insists it has to be the Sicilian story, Tarantino's favorite scene he has ever written, three-dimensional chess; a clip plays and a third goes with it 100 percent.
  • Christopher Walken playing a Sicilian is a ludicrous choice, the least Italian person imaginable, and he pulls it off; Hopper is at a fascinating career moment, having survived the nine stages of fame, a trailblazing filmmaker, an Academy Award nominated actor, villains and heroes, Shooter and Frank in Blue Velvet; a text the night before called him warm and powerful here.
  • Hopper's relationship with Clarence is set up in about three minutes; in the scene the gangsters surround the two men in a circle, it is the middle of the day but lit like three in the morning with a spotlight on them, and the dialogue is two guys telling crazy Tarantino stories, the antichrist and vendetta lines; the Drexel proposer is talked into it.
  • Drexel is one of a host's favorite characters: Gary Oldman was already famous from Dracula and talked about as a next great actor, yet audiences 25 years ago could not tell it was him under the hat and the affected Black vernacular; a clip of the negotiation speech plays.
  • Tony Scott and Oldman disagreed about where Drexel came from: Scott's version is that Oldman called in the middle of the night to say Drexel was his drug dealer; Oldman's version is that he had no drug dealer and was emulating kids he heard outside his trailer; Scott later had a big heat check of crazy interviews, clearly disliked Christian Slater and took credit for a lot.
  • Drexel is a complete Tarantino original, every word entertaining; shot flat the way Reservoir Dogs was shot in a warehouse, without the music, the swinging light and the Chinese food, the scene might not work at all, which is where Tony Scott makes this something different in the Tarantino canon and why it is called the best Tony Scott scene; the techno track is by an artist named Nymphomaniac, and Slater seems intimidated before answering all of Drexel's questions.
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33:33

What’s Aged the Best?

The way the film looks; the dialogue; Gandolfini

The way the film looks; the dialogue; Gandolfini

In the discussion (10)
Approx. transcript time · 00:33:33Read transcript
  • Young Gandolfini: he is basically auditioning for Tony Soprano, and this and his Get Shorty role (transcribed 'bare') are the two poles of that character, sweet, charming, evil, menacing and violent; the film was one of the first DVDs a host bought, so he was always the guy from this movie.
  • Floyd, who gives the directions down Beachwood to the Beverly Ambassador, was an A++ in the nineties and the DVD era, a spirit animal for anyone getting baked at two in the morning; the whole idea of Pineapple Express came from Judd Apatow and company loving Floyd and asking what would have happened if he chased the Italians.
  • Unlike Tom Cruise in Tropic Thunder working to go viral, Pitt just lies on the couch with a couple of improv lines; the Floyd stuff is largely improvised, as are Hopper's eggplant and Walken's cantaloupe lines; Floyd is the most important character because he gets everyone together for the shootout, and 'don't condescend me' is a favorite line.
  • Brad Pitt has an alternate path as one of the great character actors, fifteen non-essential but memorable parts up through Burn After Reading, but he was so handsome he had to be a leading man; Seven is a character he put thought into before material started being created for him; the Tarantino relationship continues through Inglourious Bastards and the coming Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
  • Dennis Hopper is so likable that even the Speed villain was hard to root against; the Clarence-Clifford scene is economical writing, 'you're just like your mother', three years apart, a recovering alcoholic who only has a Seven Up, telling you why Clarence would throw it all away; two lines are lifted, 'you're just like your mother' from Hopper's own line in Rumblefish and the beer line from The Last Picture Show.
  • Pre-internet, movie quotes and pulling from the past mattered more; a host's column threw in movie lines because that is how he and his friends connected, and Twitter gifs have given it a renaissance.
  • Sizemore and Penn together are the twelve-episode Fox cop show we never got; the hosts saw a Reitman live read at the Ace Hotel with Slater and Arquette, the Duplass brothers as the cops, J.K. Simmons as the estranged father, Kevin Pollack as Walken's part, Jon Favreau as Gandolfini's, Keegan-Michael Key and Paul Scheer as Drexel and Elliot Blitzer, May Whitman in several parts and Jason Segel as Floyd.
  • Coming Home in a Body Bag is funny right on the heels of forty Vietnam movies; Saul Rubinek's Lee Donowitz as Joel Silver, Bronson Pinchot as his assistant, Boris the bodyguard who hates cops, and Dick Ritchie constantly asking whether the producer knows he is an actor; Donowitz is one of a host's favorite movie characters, saved for the Dion Waiters argument.
  • The Hans Zimmer score is distinct and gives the movie levity; according to a host it is based on a composition from the 1500s by Carl Orff that Terrence Malick used in Badlands, which Zimmer redoes as an homage, and Arquette's opening voiceover mimics the Badlands voiceover; the film pulls the best parts of other things.
  • Asked for a single best out of all of it, one goes with the way it looks, the peak of Tony Scott's neon vision of urban America; another is still responding to the dialogue, over the top and offensive on purpose because it is pulp; a third says Gandolfini, like watching Michael Jordan at North Carolina.
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43:39

What’s Aged the Worst?

Tony Scott's 'persuader': slapping Patricia Arquette before her heavy scenes

Tony Scott's 'persuader': slapping Patricia Arquette before her heavy scenes

In the discussion (9)
Approx. transcript time · 00:43:39Read transcript
  • Smoking in movie theaters and at the payphone is the first offering; for the most part the film could come out right now, but Gandolfini beating Patricia Arquette for ten minutes probably would not, and Drexel probably could not be done today.
  • Whether the Sicilian speech could be done today: Tarantino is still doing that stuff and people get bent out of shape in 2018's outrage society, a cycle that will repeat with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood; he grew up around Black friends and feels he has access to that experience, always has Sam Jackson in his movies, and Jackson is quoted every time saying Quentin is not a racist.
  • The Sicilian speech was based on a story a Black friend told Tarantino, put in a white guy's mouth to be more offensive; it also fits a true-to-life lonely guy who reads history books; the hosts worry we are losing the ability to distinguish creator from creation, and that characters with reprehensible values are still worthwhile to watch.
  • Tarantino comes from a tradition of pulp crime about gritty, bad people; nobody in this film is good, Clarence and Alabama included; a host who is a white man has never been the target of the material; the eggplant speech is put down but has not aged badly, the country has changed; Hopper's character knows he is going to die and needles Walken's with the worst thing he can think of, which movies should still be able to do.
  • The Gandolfini-Arquette scene is defended as something that could still happen in 2018: everybody is bad so the behavior has to be over the top, she is the hero, she wins the scene and kills him after surviving the pounding, no different from Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, and it is not read as a domestic violence scene.
  • The scene gives the film tremendous gravity and ends the fantasy: Alabama is a pinup dream with an invented name, the Cadillac and the snap drive to the desert are a dream, and this is the consequence; it happens away from Clarence, who has been seeing Elvis in the bathroom, and shows who these men really are, changing the stakes.
  • Gandolfini sets it up almost like a masochist, letting her get a shot at him and stab him, almost flirting before he hits her, then the speech about the first time you kill somebody shows he is a psycho she has to defeat; the one thing that might get legislated is that Tony Scott shoots the violence beautifully, slow motion through the shower, the mirror, art-film touches, which could be read as glamorization.
  • It is basically three scenes cut together, a lot of time watching her get beaten before she kills him in thirty seconds; today it would be reversed, him knocking her around for thirty seconds and her beating him for three minutes; it smashes into Bronson Pinchot's arrest right after, caught in a car with a woman and his cocaine spilled, and it is the most important scene because afterward anything is possible and the two leads really could be killed.
  • The actual answer is the anecdote that Tony Scott used what he called a 'persuader', occasionally slapping Arquette before shooting to get her where she needed to be emotionally, until she approached him asking for it before heavy scenes, which he joked was the English School of Directing; indefensible and weird, from the Maxim oral history, a 1957 story rather than a 1993 one, likened to sixties and seventies directors brawling with actors like Charlton Heston and the Belushi SNL sketch about it.
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52:43

Casting What-Ifs

Tarantino wanted Joan Cusack as Alabama; Tony Scott wanted Drew Barrymore; Jack Black (as transcribed: 'Jack Plack') ...

Tarantino wanted Joan Cusack as Alabama; Tony Scott wanted Drew Barrymore; Jack Black (as transcribed: 'Jack Plack') was cut as a theater usher; Val Kilmer wanted Clarence; Tom Sizemore was first cast in Gandolfini's role and recommended Gandolfini

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:52:43Read transcript
  • Tarantino wanted Joan Cusack for Alabama in the late-eighties script, which one host calls genius from the man who put John Travolta in Pulp Fiction; another doubts she has the sex appeal for the character, though she is sexy in The Addams Family, reviving a sixty-episode argument over whether she could pull off a sexy role.
  • Tony Scott, misnamed Ridley at first, wanted Drew Barrymore; a year before Mad Love she could have pulled off Alabama, had career baggage from drug and alcohol trouble, and might have become a star of the A list from it, whereas the film, which only made twelve million (as transcribed: '$12 billion'), did not propel Arquette, who is iconic in it and had a host's high school girlfriend curling her hair the same way.
  • Alabama is totally fake, a creation like the manic pixie dream girls discussed a few episodes ago; on the commentary Tarantino is unembarrassed about not having a girlfriend until 25 and inventing his dream girl, one who watches kung fu movies, eats chicken, drinks beer, smokes and is funny; Arquette was the perfect actress to embody it.
  • Jack Black (as transcribed: 'Jack Plack') was cut as an usher in the kung fu theater; Val Kilmer desperately wanted Clarence, but Tarantino originally saw the role as a David Carradine type, an older loser, so a Kilmer version would have been a man approaching middle age rather than a cool guy at a Detroit comic book store.
  • Tom Sizemore was initially cast in Gandolfini's role, was not comfortable with the scene beating up Arquette, asked to play the cop instead and recommended Gandolfini because they had been in a play together, giving him his big break.
  • A riff on Sizemore's heat check against De Niro in Heat, 'for me, the action is the juice', with the long dramatic pause, an ISO Michael Mann keeps giving him, Sizemore as Michael Mann's Joe Akeem Noah (as transcribed); what does not add up is that a year later he played the disgusting warden in Natural Born Killers, so perhaps domestic violence in his past, dating Heidi Fleiss and substance abuse made the scene hit too close.
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57:21

The Joey Pants “That Guy” Award

Saul Rubinek

Saul Rubinek

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 00:57:21Read transcript
  • Two candidates: Ed Lauder (as transcribed), Eddie Albert's sidekick quarterback in The Longest Yard, the head coach in Youngblood, in a hundred sports movies, the bald lieutenant type of the seventies and eighties and the lieutenant here; and Saul Rubinek, whose name people do not know though they know him from things, with the 'I treated you like a son' tirade quoted; he is not Mandy Patankin (as transcribed), he is a that guy, and he wins.
  • This is the iconic Saul Rubinek performance to end all his performances, so it goes in Joey Pants while he stays eligible for Dion Waiters; two more are thrown out, Victor Argo as one of Walken's men and Conchata Farrell (as transcribed) as the casting agent at Michael Rappaport's audition, with the 'thanks so much, Mr. Ritchie' brush-off.
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1:00:29

The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance

Saul Rubinek

Saul Rubinek

In the discussion (11)
Approx. transcript time · 01:00:29Read transcript
  • There are individually probably five Dion Waiters winners, like an Oscar category where every nominee could win; Val Kilmer cannot crack the top five and sits sixth; his Elvis is fine, and his 1993 of The Real McCoy, Tombstone with the all-time Doc Holliday, and this is incredible; a Doors episode is offered to Chris Iron (as transcribed) whenever he is ready.
  • The field: Gary Oldman's Drexel, the white pimp who thinks he is black; Brad Pitt's Floyd, so great it spawned Pineapple Express; Christopher Walken pulling off a Sicilian; Gandolfini as the most evil hitman; Hopper counts with only two scenes; and a surprise entry, Saul Rubinek; Pinchot is left out for having too big a part, and Kilmer (as transcribed: 'Kim') and Rappaport are in too many scenes.
  • A Pinchot tangent: he got the script finishing Perfect Strangers, was Serge in both Beverly Hills Cop films, the roller coaster scene was shot over two days with the cast throwing up or sedated, and his run from Risky Business through Perfect Strangers to this is not bad; he became a punching bag unfairly, like Andrew McCarthy, light comic actors who could star in 1989 but not 1999; the elevator scene with Sizemore and Penn bluffing Elliot is great.
  • A Walken question: his only two Tarantino scenes are the watch speech in Pulp Fiction and this one, which is nuts; a Pulp Fiction episode would spend thirty minutes on the watch speech.
  • Rubinek is shouted out for a Joel Silver impersonation at the height of Joel Silver on cocaine, doing the most with the least while Oldman, Gandolfini and Pitt had a lot to work with in their parts, smoking and driving on the PCH asking Elliot why he is calling on a Sunday.
  • Cannot really decide for the first time; it is something between Pitt, Rubinek or Walken, and Oldman is loved too. — Chris Ryan
  • Oldman is in three scenes and out of control and might have the line of the movie with white boy day; one host has Saul Rubinek in a walk because he has never done anything else, which is where another wanted to go; all the other characters' actors went on to Oscars and Emmys, while Rubinek's highlight reel starts here.
  • Rubinek did not know he was doing Joel Silver; the character is written as just a producer and Tony Scott, who hated Silver, made him Silver, so Scott gets a lot of credit for molding the performance; it probably hurt Rubinek's career.
  • Rubinek is the eleventh man who should not be able to score twenty points in seven minutes, the definition of the award; favorite moments are the taunt about knowing Elliot's name, the Body Bags 2 taste line and the 357,000 dollars someone is stealing; he was 20 to 1 heading in with Oldman applauding in the stands, Twitter expected Floyd or Drexel, but watched closely Rubinek is the correct winner.
  • Earlier the cast is called the best Dion Waiters field the show has had, better than Heat, with Sam Jackson, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman and Saul Rubinek in five-minutes-or-less performances; it is self-aware, actors knowing they have six pages and lighting them on fire, which Craig the producer, seeing it for the first time, noticed.
  • During aged best, the Lee Donowitz discussion is saved for a fascinating Dion Waiters argument.
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1:07:13

Half-Assed Internet Research

Tony Scott changed the ending so Clarence lives; Elvis's estate refused any Elvis music; Drexel's eye came from the D...

Tony Scott changed the ending so Clarence lives; Elvis's estate refused any Elvis music; Drexel's eye came from the Dracula prop box; Rubinek did not know his audition was Joel Silver; the hotel deal was shot at the abandoned Ambassador Hotel; Sizemore lay with feathers in his mouth for days; Walken asked to shoot Hopper's half first; Warner Brothers wanted the title Reckless Hearts; the money exchange moved from a zoo to Six Flags; Gandolfini stayed in a dingy hotel; Slater and Arquette had an off-screen romance

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 01:07:13Read transcript
  • Tony Scott changed the ending because he loved the characters; originally Clarence died and Alabama got away with the money, and apparently both versions were shot; one host dislikes Clarence being shot in the eye and maimed, wanting a shoulder wound if he lives; another loves that Scott liked him too much to let him go, classic sentimental Tony.
  • A joke about a Ringer montage of characters ending up on the same perfect Mexican beach with their kids and 300,000 dollars in a suitcase: Red talking to Alabama, Shawshank, Paul Walker and Jordana Brewster from Fast 7, about two miles from Zawantaneo (as transcribed).
  • Elvis's estate would not allow any Elvis music, so Charlie Sexton's Graceland, basically Sexton doing Elvis, opens the film; the music is a 1993 mishmash, a late-period Aerosmith song feels out of sync for a Tarantino film, and one host calls the music a missed opportunity that belonged in aged worst when Pixies-type bands were available, though Soundgarden's Outshined is what Floyd would listen to; the fifties stuff, the Big Bopper on the phone with Dick Ritchie and the Burl Ives song feel Tarantino; Drexel listening to techno is odd, Wu Tang would fit, but the techno gives the scene its unsettling vibe.
  • Drexel's weird eye came from the Dracula prop box; Oldman's account is that over tea at the Four Seasons Scott could not explain the plot but described a pimp who is white but thinks he is black, and that was all he needed to hear; Rubinek's account is that at his audition Scott told him he had Joel exactly right, and he had no idea who Joel Silver was.
  • The hotel drug deal was filmed at the abandoned Ambassador Hotel where Robert Kennedy was shot, near the end of Beverly by the 101, now a dog and cat hospital with the neighborhood schools renamed RFK; a host's daughter practiced at Virgil High School next to it for half a year without his knowing; in the Maxim oral history Sizemore recounted that his death was got in one take at the start of the shootout, so he lay on the ground with feathers in his mouth for days.
  • Scott intended to shoot Walken's part first; Walken begged him to shoot Hopper first and found his character watching Hopper's half play out; Warner Brothers was going to change the title to Reckless Hearts until Arquette, Slater, Scott and Tarantino threw their bodies in front of it; the money exchange was meant for a zoo and ended at Six Flags when the location fell through; Gandolfini got into character as Virgil by staying in a dingy hotel and not showering or changing his underwear.
  • Slater and Arquette seem to have had sparks on and off the set, evident in how they connect: Scott's account that Christian was instantly attracted and Patricia fell in love with him, a true romance; Arquette on a romantic, magnetized sexual attraction; Slater on love at first sight made tricky by being in a relationship; the phone booth scene is called one of the more believable sex scenes in movie history, with Slater really going for it.
  • Earlier, during aged best, the Pineapple Express origin story is flagged as stepping on the internet research.
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1:12:56

Apex Mountain

Saul Rubinek

Saul Rubinek

In the discussion (7)
Approx. transcript time · 01:12:56Read transcript
  • Obvious non-candidates like Brad Pitt are taken out; Rubinek is a slam dunk, never more of an Apex Mountain candidate, a theater actor in On Golden Pond doing his best work, also good in the cable movie And the Band Played On and an all-time Law & Order guy with some forty episodes; big winner of this podcast.
  • Christian Slater: a yes from one host that the others contest, going Heathers instead, then calling that too early and picking Pump Up the Volume because he invented podcasting, which is granted as a good point; nobody picked Broken Arrow or Hard Rain, and Broken Arrow was Travolta's real comeback when the wheels came off.
  • Patricia Arquette: Boyhood is floated because she won the Oscar for it, then withdrawn; personally and subjectively this is her film, but career-wise it has to be the Oscar; the category is defined as when they were at the peak of their powers with the most options and respect, and she was pretty unknown here with a rough seven or eight years after, so it is not this.
  • Tony Scott is an unequivocal yes for one host, over Man on Fire, because his commercial hits had faded, people doubted him, and this led to Crimson Tide, his career never in better shape than between the two; the others contest that yes, countering that it was a flop, that Crimson Tide is his apex, and that he made Top Gun, one of the biggest hits of all time, which launched Tom Cruise.
  • The counter is that in the mid-eighties Top Gun was not received as a Tony Scott movie, the narrative was Tom Cruise as the biggest star in the world, whereas with True Romance Scott was part of the narrative; the Top Gun case is acknowledged, and a favorite Tony Scott movie is conceded not to be the same as apex; the category is elusive like the MVP award; the film is also the most critically acclaimed of his, at 92 percent.
  • Bronson Pinchot: Beverly Hills Cop, a massive hit that made him a breakout star, with the espresso with a twist of lemon; Sizemore: Heat, since 'the action is the juice' is the definition of Apex Mountain; Chris Penn: Reservoir Dogs, Nice Guy Eddie, agreed.
  • Walken: hell no, he is The Deer Hunter; an early-nineties case is made, hosting SNL in fall 1992 with Trivial Psychic and Stock Talk, this film in 1993, Pulp in 1994, a Walken-sance with everyone in on him and Jay Moore (as transcribed) doing the impression, plus King of New York, Wayne's World 2 the same year and Things to Do in Denver, but the Russian roulette in The Deer Hunter has to be his apex.
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1:19:03

Is This Movie Better With…?

Michael K. Williams

Michael K. Williams

In the discussion (1)
Approx. transcript time · 01:19:03Read transcript
  • All three would fit; the definitive choice is Michael K. Williams, who could easily have had the Sam Jackson part or fit any Drexel scene, and another agrees; Buscemi as Dick Ritchie or Elliot Blitzer is considered but he looks a little old even in 1993, since Dick is meant to be going out against the DiCaprio and Wahlberg generation, and Buscemi is more of a Coen Brothers guy.
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1:20:05

The Ruffalo / Hanna / Rubinek / Partridge Overacting Award

Boris and Monty, the bodyguards

Boris and Monty, the bodyguards

In the discussion (2)
Approx. transcript time · 01:20:05Read transcript
  • There is only one choice, the bodyguards, called Bruno and Boris and then corrected to Boris and Monty, going for it the whole time with about three lines including hating cops; Rubinek might win this one too, which would be three awards.
  • Rubinek could almost replace Ruffalo as the award's namesake, with 'I treated you like a son and you stabbed me in the heart' as the new 'they knew'; after 57 episodes it is jokingly declared the Saul Rubinek award, to be quoted on a rom-com episode with Amanda; the bodyguards are congratulated since it cannot go to Rubinek if the award is named after him.
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1:20:59

Picking Nits

How much a theater manager would pay for a call girl; Alabama has only been a call girl for four days; whether Claren...

How much a theater manager would pay for a call girl; Alabama has only been a call girl for four days; whether Clarence and Alabama could walk out of the Beverly Ambassador past a thousand cops

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:20:59Read transcript
  • How much money does a movie theater manager have to spend on a call girl for an employee's birthday; the economics of call girls in 1993 are unclear; Alabama has only been a call girl for four days, the movie trope of the hooker who has only been one since last Thursday.
  • An LA tidbit: the movie theater is the Vista on Sunset, used for all the exteriors rather than Detroit; Tarantino tells the story of putting the Sonny Chiba triple feature on the Vista marquee so his movie nerd friends drove by and called him about it.
  • Would Slater and Arquette really get out of the Beverly Ambassador, both covered in blood, carrying a suitcase past a thousand cops without a sideways look; not according to Tarantino.
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1:22:06

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie

"If there's one thing this last week has taught me, it's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and ...

"If there's one thing this last week has taught me, it's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it"; "It's not White Boy Day, is it?"; "don't condescend me man"; "I'm not a whore. I'm a call girl. There's a difference"; "I'm the Antichrist. You got me in a vendetta kind of mood"

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:22:06Read transcript
  • Nominations: 'don't condescend me man', Drexel's crude line comparing himself to a woman's body, 'he must have thought it was white boy day', the gun line, 'she tastes like a peach'; the gun line is liked as a senior yearbook line for the high school students out there, and it is replayed with Clarence telling Richard that Lee Donowitz is not a pimp, credited to Clarence Worley, 1993.
  • 'It's not White Boy Day, is it?' is what Zach Mack, one of the producers, immediately emailed when the episode was announced, perhaps because three white boys are talking about this movie; 'fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch' was considered, but the film may not have created it since a stepfather said it in the eighties.
  • A lot of what Tarantino wrote here entered the culture: 'I'm not a whore. I'm a call girl. There's a difference'; 'When I'm with somebody, I'm 100%'; the minor and major importance line about believing her; Walken's character's Antichrist and vendetta lines and the 'angels in heaven' speech; Sizemore's appreciation of Clarence, 'I like this boy'; and Marty's (as transcribed) 'Motherfucking Charlie Bronson. Mr. Majestic.'
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1:24:28

Probably Unanswerable Questions

Are there really 17 tells for a lying man and 20 for a woman? Why wasn't Patricia Arquette a bigger star? What is Ala...

Are there really 17 tells for a lying man and 20 for a woman? Why wasn't Patricia Arquette a bigger star? What is Alabama doing right now? Where did Dick Ritchie and Floyd live? Did the Italians kill Floyd?

In the discussion (5)
Approx. transcript time · 01:24:28Read transcript
  • Is it true there are seventeen things a guy does when he lies and a woman has twenty; googling turns up nothing but this scene, Tarantino may have been talking out of his ass, why seventeen, and listeners are asked to email the mailbag if there is truth in it.
  • Why wasn't Patricia Arquette a bigger star: she has a wholly distinctive vibe, voice and look that did not translate to Julia Roberts type movies; she was on Medium a long time, was a star of Ed Wood and Flirting with Disaster and was in Lost Highway, but never a blockbuster; summoning the spirit of Wesley Morris, she was market-corrected by Drew Barrymore with the rom-coms and Charlie's Angels, weird but not too weird for guys, while Arquette is cool, a little weird and more hard-bitten.
  • What is Alabama doing right now: working in the boatyard with Red in Mexico, Clarence definitely dead, probably from complications of poor eye surgery; a deep-web Tarantino database supposedly has her hooking up with Harvey Keitel's Reservoir Dogs character and going on the run as a professional bank robber, which was the plan when Clarence died.
  • Where exactly did Dick Ritchie and Floyd live: honestly Los Feliz, or up Beachwood in the hills since the directions say go down Beachwood, around the Beachwood Cafe, looking like the Los Feliz or Franklin Hills; a Ringer video series visiting movie locations is wished for.
  • Did the Italians kill Floyd, the most important question of the movie and maybe of a host's life: they leave the first time, Gandolfini leaves the second after asking whether they want to smoke, they cock their guns and it just ends; in the 1992 draft Floyd's last line is 'well, you go down Beachwood' with no killing; killing him would only leave a trail, so he lives, or dies of lung disease two years later; Kevin Corrigan, one of the most Irish guys of all time, plays an Italian gangster.
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1:29:11

Who Won the Movie?

Quentin Tarantino

Quentin Tarantino

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:29:11Read transcript
  • The choices: Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Tony Scott, Quentin Tarantino, Sonny Chiba, Floyd or Saul Rubinek; Sonny Chiba is the Johnny Chan of the movie, a big winner who did not really do anything; since it was not a hit, it has to be Tarantino, who was minted and became someone to watch for the next twenty years, giving him sustainability after Reservoir Dogs.
  • Slater is underrated on this pod: by this film he was Christian Slater in every movie, the Jack Nicholson impersonation that had been exciting in Heathers was now held against him; he is a good actor and believable in the part even though a case can be made the movie is about a schizophrenic, wish fulfillment in his head, a dream woman, a classic bag-of-money scenario, note-perfect gangsters and everyone liking a loser from a comic book store.
  • Tarantino wins it because it proved Reservoir Dogs was not just a weird indie fluke, established a narrative, led to Pulp Fiction and is belatedly great, the most personal of his films with Clarence as his proxy; Tony Scott was another's runner-up, since the movie needed him and the Gandolfini scene in the wrong hands would go badly, and Tarantino directing it in 1993 would have shot it closer to the ear-cutting scene in Reservoir Dogs; he was famously not on set, and started Pulp Fiction about three months after this came out.
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It is the 25th anniversary month of True Romance, a much-imitated movie that landed like an atomic bomb in 1993, a roller coaster with a ton of actors now all famous; it really holds up, though it is probably ten minutes too long and a little fat in places, with some of the great scenes of the nineties.
Approx. transcript time · 00:02:02Read transcript
The film came out when he was 15, the age when the coolest thing you have seen is the coolest thing ever; the run of Reservoir Dogs in 1992 and True Romance in 1993, with Wu-Tang Clan's album a month later and the Beastie Boys' Check Your Head, changed his life by introducing a whole world of movies, soundtracks and records; Tarantino was a big bang for him, and for all its problems the movie still rocks.
Approx. transcript time · 00:02:16Read transcript
This is one of those movies that shows you about a hundred other movies through posters, films playing in the background, songs you would never have heard and actors you would not have expected in these parts; Tarantino and Tony Scott introduced new things the way Wu-Tang and the Beastie Boys did.
Approx. transcript time · 00:03:43Read transcript
The sensory overload is a big brother movie: Slater and Rubinek discussing Kubrick's Fear and Desire, first real exposure to Walken and Hopper; the Tarantino dialogue was unique before being ripped off, with the Oldman and Sam Jackson drug-deal scene opening on an explicit sexual conversation that simply was not in movies, bad people made likable, and the hosts bought and read the published scripts from Walden Books or Brentano's.
Approx. transcript time · 00:04:12Read transcript
Tarantino was building a cinematic universe: Elmore Leonard and seventies crime influences, recurring lines and the theme of cops having to act, from Tim Roth's monologue to Sizemore's 'act, motherfucker'; Lance the comic store owner shares a name with Eric Stoltz's Pulp Fiction character, and Alabama is mentioned in Reservoir Dogs as a former bank-robbing partner of Harvey Keitel's Mr. White.
Approx. transcript time · 00:05:42Read transcript
Tarantino in person would seem the obnoxious video store clerk archetype who knows more than you, but his vision on screen was bracing; the film is one part autobiography, one part fantasy, with Christian Slater as his stand-in; a 500-page screenplay was basically three movies, including Alabama on the road with Mr. White and the Natural Born Killers material; he sold True Romance for fifty thousand dollars to fund Reservoir Dogs, Tony Scott wanted to direct both, and he was a Manhattan Beach video store clerk friendly with Roger Avery (as transcribed) before going zero to sixty.
Approx. transcript time · 00:07:08Read transcript
One host saw True Romance in the theater first and circled back to Reservoir Dogs, which played Sundance but was not a box office hit; nothing like this existed in 1993, a generic, weak period for movies from 1990 to 1992 when William Goldman was writing frustrated essays, before the Sundance-era directors arrived; 1994 and the 1996 to 2000 run are called among the best movie years ever.
Approx. transcript time · 00:08:47Read transcript
Tony Scott's rendition of the script looks like Beverly Hills Cop and Top Gun, shot by Jeffrey Kimball with Hans Zimmer music, and critical recognition of what he brought only came later, posthumously hip; back then critics saw the Hunger artist turned slick Bruckheimer guy after Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop 2, Days of Thunder and the Costner miss Revenge; Last Boy Scout brought backlash and a famously miserable production, with Joel Silver and Scott not getting along, which influences True Romance; all sizzle no steak was the knock, but with a good writer and star he is awesome, and Tarantino polished dialogue on Crimson Tide.
Approx. transcript time · 00:11:13Read transcript
Christian Slater's run: Heathers, a dark, important indie with Winona that could not get made now, Pump Up the Volume, which jokingly invented podcasting and Alex Jones, then Robin Hood and Untamed Heart as the next-Jack-Nicholson promise faded amid arrests and substance problems; a former child actor in The Legend of Billie Jean, he had his hair dyed for this, was the sell of the movie, was really good, and then had a lost decade; Brad Pitt, fresh off Thelma and Louise with heat, was never considered for the lead, and Val Kilmer, who had worked with Scott on Top Gun, would have been too old.
Approx. transcript time · 00:13:41Read transcript
Box office: a budget of 12.5 million against a 12.3 million gross, a bomb, with the studio unsure how to test-screen or market it; reviews called it way over the line, Patricia Arquette reportedly found the script racist on reading it, the dialogue is still scandalous, and the Madonna conversation makes you ask whether this is really happening in a movie.
Approx. transcript time · 00:16:46Read transcript
The legacy is peak Tony Scott throwing all his pitches, a complete game with fifteen strikeouts and seven walks: car scenes, a shootout, beautiful men and women, humor and clicking dialogue, plus his signatures of steam from grates, wet streets, neon, blue light on faces, a painterly look and a train.
Approx. transcript time · 00:17:45Read transcript
The movie made LA look like another planet to a teenager; the young cast partied through a moment of shady producers and auditions that the film reflects, one of several early-nineties Hollywood-on-itself movies like The Player and Swimming with Sharks; living in LA now makes Floyd's Beachwood directions to Sunset Boulevard land.
Approx. transcript time · 00:18:46Read transcript
One of the craziest casts the show has had, with the most five-minutes-or-less great performances of any movie; Craig, the producer on the pod, had not seen it and noticed all the actors going for it; acting in a Tarantino script after plodding half-court movies is like a Doug Moe offense, and the voice is one in ten billion, every character sharing the patter in one dude's brain.
Approx. transcript time · 00:20:07Read transcript
The 1993 domestic grosses are read, Jurassic Park through Demolition Man, smart popular movies but nothing like this, with Dave the rare one with a voice; further down the list Alive, The Piano, Falling Down, Menace to Society and Poetic Justice have point of view; the tax of the Tarantino era was the imitators, Amongst Friends, Two Days in the Valley and Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead, though B-minus Tarantino beats C-minus anything.
Approx. transcript time · 00:22:51Read transcript
The running Pulp Fiction argument resurfaces: one host calls it a 90 percent masterpiece with fifteen minutes to cut and Bruce Willis's girlfriend submarining it, the others say it is a full-blown masterpiece and accuse him of inventing burner accounts, and a Twitter poll and a Pulp Fiction episode are threatened; 'you're my number one boy, Chris Ryan' closes it.
Approx. transcript time · 01:32:16Read transcript
The film is on Amazon and YouTube but not streaming elsewhere or much on cable, a movie that could never be shown on TNT and needs HBO, Showtime or Epix; this is episode 19 of the 20-episode run, with one more next week and maybe a special in October.
Approx. transcript time · 01:33:20Read transcript