Casting What-Ifs
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.