Speaker 1: Hello, this is doctor sh Early. You are listening to
Shirley Copy Serious podcast. Scientifically speaking, it is the best
podcast out there. I'm glad you found it. What a discovery.
Look at you anyways. Again, this is doctor sh Early.
Not to be confused with Shirley. Please don't call me Shirley.
And as always, I'm quite serious. Enjoy.
Speaker 2: Hey, Jason, I was checking the calendar see if we
had any kind of cool dates coming up. It ain't
White Boy Day, is it?
Speaker 3: No, man, it ain't White Boy Day.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: I know I'm pretty, but as pretty is a couple
of us. I've already seen that movie and I ain't.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Shirley You can't be serious podcasts.
Ladies and gentlemen and guys girls out there in your
cars on your headphones with your radio. Let me just
tell you. Whatever you guys are doing, keep it up.
You look great, you look fan passed. You're so cool.
You're so cool. All right, everybody, we are here with
our big bad combination. It's the one that says bad mother.
This is the matchup between true romance and natural born killers. Now,
there may be some of you out there that do
not know the connection between these two movies, and I'm
excited to tell you that story. But without giving too
much away, let me just say Quentin Tarantino.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So here's the interesting thing that these movies have
in common with me. This is the time of my
life where I went to the movie theater to see
almost everything. I did not see either one of these
movies in the theater. I was like, what was I doing?
What was going on that weekend? Maybe there was some
other big movie that drew my attention. Here's what was
going on in the movie theater. So True Romance was
released September tenth, nineteen ninety three. Okay, so the three
biggest movies at the box office that weekend was The
Fugitive under big Yeah, I mean that really happened, idea.
Speaker 2: So that's the movie I was going to see.
Speaker 3: No doubt about it. Right Undercover Blues.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that is.
Speaker 3: I think that's Dennis Quaid and Kathleen Turner.
Speaker 2: Maybe no, no.
Speaker 3: And then third at the box office was True Romance. Okay,
right now. Then the weekend of August twenty sixth, nineteen
ninety four, that's the weekend that Natural Born Killers came out. Yes,
ninety four. I was in college. I had money at
my disposal. We went to the movies all the time,
and especially during the summer. Here are the movies that
were released that weekend. Okay, natural Born Killers, Camp nowhere,
it's pat oh and Police Academy seven.
Speaker 2: Okay. So this kind of helps answer the question that
I had, which is, how did one of these movies
become a big box office smash and the other one
was a box office failure? True Romance was competing against
The Fugitive. Yeah, the Fugitive was huge. I think it
grossed twelve point three on a twelve point five million
dollar budget.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing that I don't really understand about myself.
All the ingredients to be adjacent movie, right, Oh sure,
I mean, it's it's action packed, it's shootout, it's Tony Scott,
Tony Scott. I love Tony Scott movie.
Speaker 2: Tony Scott in his full on top gun tricked out
of Beverly Hills cop Too. It went under my radar
and I never saw it until about a week ago.
A week ago, you we could not see this movie.
And in the last thirty years.
Speaker 3: No, really, cow In fact, I didn't even I wasn't
even really sure what it was about. Like when you're like, hey,
we need to do this, I'm like, all right, you know,
oh yeah.
Speaker 2: I was telling somebody else about it this morning, and
I was like, oh, we're comparing, you know, Natural Born
Killers to True Romance. And she was like, is that
the Jamie Lee Curtis. I'm like, no, that's true lies okay,
because that combination did not make any sense to me.
I'm like, no, it wouldn't.
Speaker 3: It would an answer to the mystery. One of these
movies was a box office bomb. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The other one was a huge success because it was
competing against Police Academy seven Rights. I mean that was
its biggest competition, right, And so yeah, natural Born Killers.
I remember seeing that in the theater like that was
and I had just started college. That was August of
ninety four. I would have just started college, right, And
me and my guys who were from my high school
that I went to college with, we went out and
saw that movie and it blew my freaking mind.
Speaker 3: I know you've made this claim before that nineteen ninety
four is the greatest year for movies of all time. Yes,
I don't know that. I totally agree with that, but
I do know that nearly every weekend I was seeing
something at the movie theater.
Speaker 2: Well, it was a time. I mean, from ninety two
to ninety four, you witnessed an absolute shift in what
kind of movies people were going to go.
Speaker 3: Watch, right, And Quentin Tarantino is largely responsible for that shift,
don't you think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I would say ninety percent responsible for it.
I mean it was him. It was hugely him. Now,
obviously the audience wanted something different, and things go in cycles,
and so you had the kind of gritty the good guys.
I don't always win stuff from the seventies into the eighties,
where you know, people may be crappy for three quarters
of the movie, but they turn out to be okay
at The prime example is any Bill Murray movie.
Speaker 3: He's a jerk for three.
Speaker 2: Quarters of the movie, and then the last act of
the movie where like, okay, turns out he's a lovable guy. Yeah,
redeemed right. And so yeah, when Tarantino jumps into the scene,
he brings back that unpredictable style of the seventies in
an entirely different way. And that's why I still maintained
nineties is the best decade for movies ever.
Speaker 3: So he went from video store clerk to Reservoir Dogs
to true romance to pulp fiction to natural Born Killer.
I mean it goes from nothing to one thousand miles
an hour in just a year or two.
Speaker 2: A high school dropout, he has got a book out now,
which is his He goes and addresses the movies that
he watched during the seventies that influenced him as a
human being and a film ultimately a filmmaker. So his
mother was from Kentucky. She meets a guy in La
Quick Romance, they get married, she gets pregnant before Quentin
is even born. Dad moves away to Hollywood because he
wants to be an actor. Quentin Tarantino did not know
his father, so his mom would date people, and you know,
she was getting by, so she would have roommates and
these people, including his mom, would take him to movies
like Deliverance or Joe, which is if you don't know
that movie, it's Peter Boyle and Susan Sarandon in her
first movie.
Speaker 3: It is a mind f okay it is, yeah.
Speaker 2: But he fell in love with movies as a kid
because he got to watch grown up movies as a
little kid, going with his mom's boyfriend, and his mom's
boyfriend sometimes was black, and so he got introduced to
the blaxploitation movies of the seventies as well. And so
at some point he figures out how to get a
couple of movie scripts, and once he gets them, he's like,
this is terrible, Like this is not what I was
expecting at all. Because he would read books. He'd read
pulp fiction, interesting books, yeah, and he loved that writing.
But then he sees these movie scripts and the first
two of them it's just terrible. It was hard to
get back then. You know, there wasn't Drew script rama
back then. And so the third one that he comes
across is a script by Walter Hill really yes, called
Hard Times, And he said when he read that, suddenly
he saw how a script could be something that was
made to read, not just something to start the process
of a movie.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: And so it's funny because with Natural Born Killers, it's
a different script than what we get in the movie, right,
it says he gets story credit and it's real short.
I was watching it was like, whoa they just blew
by Tarantino's name like in a half second, where everybody
else had gotten two seconds of opening credit time. And
then it says screenwriting, and it lists the two producers
and Oliver Stone, right, And so I heard, Hey, the
original script is out there, you can get it, and
so I read the original script. Now Tarantina will say,
I've never watched the whole movie. I watched up until
the scene with Rodney Dangerfield house work. I want to deployd.
Speaker 3: Well, you look nice, Mallory, Yeah, he.
Speaker 2: Look, And then I was like, no, I'm done. He
disowned it. He doesn't like it. He told people not
to go see it. And I have to say, having
read the script, it's actually very much like the movie
The World Coming On in Man. The big difference is
that Oliver Stone puts more emphasis on the crime spree
at the beginning, and does that weird crap with the
Indian that they kill. That is new. But basically everything
else was in Tarantino's script. Now, what was in Tarantino's
script that was not in the movie is this big
courtroom scene where they're being tried for some of the murders.
One of the murders in particular, Mickey Knox is representing himself.
So he's asking a witness who was you know, her
brother was murdered. He's asking her all of these questions
and I'm sorry spoiler here if you haven't read the script.
He's asking these questions like just trying to get under
her skin. And then as it seems like he's finished
and he's resting his case, he grabs a pencil and
plunges it into her chest on the witness stand, murdering
her in front of the jury.
Speaker 3: Interesting, okay.
Speaker 2: One of the things that he mentions in there is
unruly Julie, which is the girl who is a Wayne
Gale's secretary, go to girl. But he calls her unruly
Julie in the script. That would be meaningless if you're
watching the movie. Because she's mute. They only call her Julie.
They don't call her unruly Julie. They call her Julie,
but he refers to her as unruly Julie. Which I'm
just thinking, you're making this because you want people to
read it. You want people to read this script. And
so when he had read Walter Hill, he saw how
that could be done.
Speaker 3: By the way. Side note, I listened to an interview
with Stephen Desusa, the guy who wrote Diehard. He hates
Walter Hill. He friggin hates Walter Hill. Which I always
find it interesting because there's going to be a character
in True Romance that is based off of another director
hating a producer, which we'll talk about later.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he's thirteen years old and he says, Okay,
I'm going to try to write my first script. Man.
So he tries to write an ABC after school special.
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, it didn't go so well.
Speaker 2: Nineteen seventy seven, he starts writing a script that he
calls Captain Peach Fuzz and the Nchovies Bandit.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Can you guess what movie from nineteen seventy seven he
was referencing on that one.
Speaker 3: That is based on Smoking the Band.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he made it twenty seven pages. Then he saw
Paradise Allly with Sylvester Stallone and he's like, okay, I'm
going to write that Three Italian Friends movie calls it
Brooklyn VR to quote Tarantino and he's like, yeah, the
VR don't mean it, just like reservoir docs.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: That's made me.
Speaker 3: Okay, thirty five pages on that one, okay.
Speaker 2: And then he's working in the video store working with
a guy named Roger Avery Quentin Tarantino is the guy
in the video store that everybody goes to for movie
recommendations because his knowledge of cinema is so fast. Right,
but he's making minimum wage. Right, did you work in
a video store? What was your high school job?
Speaker 3: I worked at Mazio's Pizza. Yeah, but I frequented the
video store near my house. And I did hear him say,
they said, man, did you go to film school? He goes, no,
I went to films, right, yeah, that's what he did.
And if you're a student of films, if you're.
Speaker 2: Thinking about Christian Slater Clarence intro romance, just hey, it's
his birthday. What's he going to do? He's going to
go watch a Triple Kung Fu feature, right, Yeah. And
so as he's working in the video store, he's finally
comes up with this idea that he's like, I'm making
this my own story. I'm not just copying somebody else's story.
So this is the script that I'm actually going to finish.
That script was true romance.
Speaker 4: Yea.
Speaker 2: Now, he as I mentioned, quit high school, like he
was skipping school and his mom got onto him He's like,
I just skipped one day and then skipped another day,
and I kept skipping the days and it was like,
this is great. And then the school called his mom
and she bawled him out, and he was like, I
don't want to go back and finally she was like, fine,
don't go back to school. Yeah. And this was right after,
by the way, he had been grounded for stealing an
Elmore Leonard novel from kmart.
Speaker 3: I saw that and I wanted to talk to you
about that. Yeah, because I am an Elmore Leonard fan.
Speaker 2: I know. That's why I had to mention it.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you. I just got into him basically a
couple of years ago when Justified came out. I was like, man,
this is fantastic. I mean, more from this guy. But
I see a lot of similarities between Elmore Leonard's work
and Quentin Tarantino's work. Yes, you take interesting, sort of
edgy people and you make them likable or interesting in
some way. I mean it's the same formula drug dealers
and pimps and prostitutes, and.
Speaker 2: You take standard trophy characters, but you do them in
an entirely different way.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So after high school, after he drops out of high school.
He said, not a year has gone by that in September,
I don't say, Thank God, I don't have to go
back to school. And so he lies about his age
and he gets a job as an adult movie theater usher.
Speaker 3: Somebody's got to clean up.
Speaker 2: And then he works at video Archives, that place that
he worked at with Roger Avery in Manhattan Beach, California.
He and Roger Avery are working with actors. They're doing
stuff in the theater. He comes up with some script
ideas for this movie called My Best Friend's Birthday, and
they spend months and years kind of putting this very
cheap thing together. But many of the lines from My
best Friend's Birthday end up in his True Romance script.
And so he's written this giant thing, as I said,
dropped out of high school. Punctuations terrible. He's got lines
drawn and pages pasted with glue, and it's all handwritten
and about three hundred pages long and bound with rubber band.
And he gives to Roger Avery, and he said, Roger
Avery is the only other human being in the world
who has read that original script other than me of
true Romance. True Romance. Okay, now, as it happens the
character of Clarence in True Romance, Christian Slater's character is
Quentin Tarantine.
Speaker 3: It is Quentin.
Speaker 2: It's easy.
Speaker 3: Do you like to get pie?
Speaker 5: Do you see a good movie?
Speaker 2: I love to get pie after.
Speaker 5: Would you like to go get some pith?
Speaker 4: I love some.
Speaker 2: Pie, jung Fu movies. Working at the video store like
comic book store. He works at a video store. Yeah,
And as it happens, since it is him and he's
writing a script, he has Clarence writing a script as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when Clarence gets involved in these big adventures with
these drugs and pimps and mafia and all of this.
While all that's going on, he's also writing this script
about two mass murdering love birds. And that script is
Natural Born Killers.
Speaker 6: You ain't saying nothing here.
Speaker 3: You told me this, and that blew my socks off.
I think that's a fantastic, very interesting nugget. The idea
that Clarence is the author of Natural Born Killers the
Quentin Tarantina universe is fascinating to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And Roger Avery not only reads this script, which
is basically two scripts in one right, but he types
it out in proper script format. Of they're friends. You know,
just imagine these are like twenty something year old guys
working in a video store. They're hanging out in somebody's
apartment talking about the script and like, yeah, well, you know,
this joke works, but this one's not as good, and
I don't know that anybody's going to want to make
a three hour movie. Maybe we should take the script
that Clarence is writing out and make that a separate script, right,
And so this is all Roger Avery, who is a
pre producer of Quentin Tarantino's movies, had some sort of
falling out and they didn't talk to each other for
about twenty years until just the last couple of years.
And now they have a new podcast that is called
Video Archives, named after the really the video rental place
that they used to work together at. Yeah, they want
to sell them. The plan is if we sell True Romance,
then I think I can get thirty thousand dollars for
that and that will be enough for me to make
this other movie that at this point is just an
idea in his head. Okay, just an idea. He just
has this idea in his head. But he's at this party.
He's thinking they could they're going to get thirty thousand
dollars for the scripture romance, and he's going to be
able to write this to make to direct this just
idea at this point, which is a dialogue driven heist film.
Speaker 6: Oka.
Speaker 2: And so he's at a party and he meets this
guy named Lawrence Bender. Lawrence Bender worked as a grip
on the Tales from the Dark Side, the movie with
Christians later no the series, oh right, exactly. In eighty nine,
he teamed up with Sam Raymi and they made the
film Intruder together. You've seen that? No, no, me neither
you hear of it? Yeah? No, that's kind of what.
Speaker 3: What I thought too.
Speaker 2: So basically, this is a guy like we've met these
guys before, like, oh yeah, I was involved in this film. Wow,
that's amazing. What are you doing now?
Speaker 3: Not much? Yeah? Right right right.
Speaker 2: So he's he's done it. He was a grip and
he helps Sam Raimi write a movie that nobody watched, right, okay,
and so they he meets Tarantino at this party. Tarantino says,
I've got this, you know, I got this heist film.
But it's really all about the conversation and Laurence Spender's like,
that sounds really good. You should write it, and so
that's what he does. Tarantino goes and writes the screenplay
in three and a half weeks, brings it back to
Lawrence Bender and he's like, this is the movie I
want to make, and I'm going to sell my true
romance script to make it. And Laurence Spender's like, listen,
you may be able to get real money for this, right,
this may be something that you can get real money for,
not just pitoy money for. So let me see what
I can do. And so he options the script and
for three months they work to get Reservoir Dogs made.
As that's happening, another company picks up his true Romance script,
and yet another company picks up the natural Warren Killers script.
And as it turns out, the company that picked up
his true Romance script has a secretary who works there
who used to be the secretary for Tony Scott. Interesting, okay,
and so she's talking to Tarantino and he finds us
out and he's like, oh my gosh, I love Tony Scott.
By the way, there is a great bit that I
remember from back in like nineteen ninety four when the
internets were new with Tarantino talking about how Top Gun
is homo erotica.
Speaker 3: I've heard this, Yeah, I've heard this.
Speaker 5: What is top Gun?
Speaker 3: You think it's a story about a bunch of fighter pilots.
Speaker 2: It is a story about a man struggled with his
own home.
Speaker 3: Such way, that's it. That is what Top Gun is about. Man,
So I'm not going to go there.
Speaker 2: But anyway, he was excited about meeting Tony Scott, and so.
Speaker 3: She let me. Let me just stop you there, because
I don't want to glaze over this because Tony Scott,
his brother is Ridley Scott, who we know from Gladiator
and Blade Runner and Alien. But Tony Scott takes a
back seat to nobody. Top Gun. Yeah, Beverly Hills Cop two,
which we both enjoyed. Yeah, Days of thunder Man on Fire,
Crimson Tide, Oh yeah, the Last Boy Scout.
Speaker 2: Yep, he's a rock star.
Speaker 3: He makes great movies and it's tragic.
Speaker 2: You know, we went into his whole story whenever we
covered Top Gun. Of course, a guy with just incredible
abilities who then just one day walks to the edge
of a bridge.
Speaker 3: And jumps off still just baffles me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So he's still alive. Tarantino's excited to meet him.
The secretary shows him the scripts for True Romance and
Reservoir Dogs, and he's like, I want to direct Reservoir
Dogs and she's like, well, Tarantino really kind of wants
to do that himself, right, That's that's his baby, and
he wants to that. And he's like, okay, I want
to drew True Romance and she's like, well, the production
company I'm working for now already has it and they've
got a director attached. And so he's like, but it
could be me. I'm Tony Scott. I mean right right,
I'm not this guy. I got this pit, little nothing
guy here. I didn't do Top Gun. Yeah, and she's
like that's true. And so they had to pay the
director they had attached, like one hundred thousand dollars just
to not direct it.
Speaker 3: Great money, yeah, great gig if you can get it.
Speaker 2: Yes, we can pay that guy one hundred thousand dollars
and get Tony Scott done. Where do I sign a check? Right?
And so that's what happens. Tony Scott becomes attached to
this movie. Now, unlike the Oliver Stone experience, Tarantino says
he absolutely loves true romance, and it's not necessarily because
they kept his script exactly as it was. Apparently it
had that nonlinear thing that he does in pulp fiction
and reservoir dogs. You start off where the characters seem
to know more than you, and then you kind of
catch up to them in the middle, and then by
the end you know, the cops are planning this thing,
the mafia guys are planning this thing, the people. The
director has no idea what's going on. The drugs are here,
the guns are here, and the characters don't.
Speaker 3: Brilliant. Yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 2: And so in the other major point, Clarence and Alabama
die in the original script. Yeah, But Tarantino said, the
way that Scott did it, the way that he handled
it and made it what it was, it would have
been wrong to kill him at the end.
Speaker 3: Well, Tony Scott fell in love with the characters, and
it wasn't like this defiant thing where like I'm changing
I'm the director, I'm changing this. He's like, listen, I
just love these characters. I couldn't let him die. Yes,
And that to me is like all right.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you watch that movie, I would feel
that if they would have killed those characters and been like,
what the.
Speaker 3: Heck I know now? Mickey and Mallory, on the other hand.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and here's this alternative ending was filmed to Natural
Born Killers where McKee and Mallory are killed by the
narrator for The Sandlot.
Speaker 3: Really yeah, the guy.
Speaker 2: Who's like, hey, guys, come on, and like he's showing
them the way out of the jail. Like they're like,
how do you know about this? He's like, I come
here to think sometimes. That's the guy who narrates The
Sandlot who at the end is calling the game for
Benny the jet.
Speaker 3: Gosh, that's right, he plays older Scottie Small's.
Speaker 2: Right, right, And so in Natural Born Killers he just
kind of seems to show up out of nowhere, guide
them to where they can sort of escape, and then
he just disappears. But in an alternative ending that they filmed,
he killed them.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to get into the cast of these
movies because they are both fantastic casts right right. And
I've got trivia nuggets that I'm dying to tell you.
Speaker 2: I just want to say, I want to pull out
one quote that I heard about True Romance because I
think it just nails it. Tony Scott's handling of Quentin
Tarantino's script came off like the cinematic equivalent of a
cocaine flavored bubble gum.
Speaker 3: Cocaine flavored bubble that's perfect.
Speaker 2: That's that's exactly right. Like they're both so warm and delicious,
and yet they're dealing with violence and drugs and debauchery,
and it's all just fan freakantastic.
Speaker 3: Cocaine flavored bubble gum. I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it so Now, once production actually is about
to begin on both of the movies, like they're very
close to starting, both True Romance and Natural Born Killers,
Reservoir Dogs comes out right, it's released before these two movies,
and at that point it's such a good movie. It
does so well at the film festivals that they just say, hey,
if you want to direct Natural Born Killers, you can.
This is an interesting story. You told me this the
other day, and I was like, quite understand this.
Speaker 3: But you go.
Speaker 2: And they said the same thing about True Romance, even
though Tony was already attached to it. They said, listen,
if you want to direct it, you can, and Tony
will be the executive producer. He won't even won't mess
with your mojo, right, you know, you've established yourself as
a quality director with Reservoir Dogs, and so you can
have either one of these movies. And he turned them
both down. And you had the same question I had,
which is why I would you write that? So the
reason that he gave is they were all first movies.
Reservoir Dogs, big splashy first movie. By the way, Harvey
Weinstein tried to get him to take the torture scene,
the aircutting scene out of Reservoir Dogs, right, and he said,
it's the most important scene in the.
Speaker 3: It is, it's the most memorable scene too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Harvey was used to getting his way and
he said, it's the most important scene in the movie.
I'm not taking it out. Wow. And that is the
way he's been for all of his scripts. He's like,
the way I write my script is the way I
write my script, and I'm not changing it for you
or anybody else. He's like, I would write these things
and people would say, do you really think they're going
to leave you? Let you leave that in there, And
he's like, who's day? Who is this day that's going
to stop? Me, because he said, I had the bravado
to go. If you don't want to make the movie
the way I wrote it, then I can go over
to this other production company. I don't have the maker. Yeah,
and he yeah, the bravado worked out for him anyway.
He had made Reservoir Dogs as a big, splashy first movie,
and he says, your second movie is more important than
your first movie because you could be just a lucky
flash in the pan. And so your second movie has
to be of higher quality. Now, keep in mind has
not written pulp fiction at the time. They're offering him
directing True Romance and directing Natural Born Killers. Right, he's
going on a wing in a prayer here that he's
going to make a second movie that's not that is
better than Reservoir Dogs, that is better than Natural Born Killers,
and that is better than True Romance.
Speaker 3: My second movie has to be better. I don't know
what it is yet, right, that's crazy. Yeah, and he
knows he's got two very quality movies in his back pocket. Yeah,
pretty ballsy man. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So a lot of comparisons have been made with Natural
Born Killers to Bonnie and Clyde.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So to me, this is more Charles Starkweather, who
is kind of a he was just kind of a
bully with a gun, huh. And he went on a
rampage in Nebraska, and he took his thirteen year old
girlfriend with him and shot her parents, and shot a
gas station attendant for six bucks and went on a
wild killing spree. And to me, these people resemble that
couple more than Bunny and Clyde.
Speaker 2: Well what's interesting. I mean, you get two life events
that are being fictionalized and made into art, so you
have art imitating life. But then Oliver Stone takes it.
And I mean the quote on the poster is about
the influence of the media and how you know these
true crime things are taking they're recycling real dramatic, traumatic
events for entertainment purposes. And then after the movie comes out,
you have not one, not two, but three, four, maybe
five different copycat killers that you have life and imitating
art imitating life imitating art.
Speaker 3: This movie really spoke to people, and in not a
good way.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think back to ninety four. You have oj
you have Lorraina Bobbitt, you have the Menindez Brother got
Tanya Harding, You've got Nancy Kerriganntanya Harding, you have a
lot of kind of these splashy news stories where people's
craziness is on full display.
Speaker 2: They were an absolute influence on how this movie turned
out because they started making it before all of those
things happened, right right, and then in the midst of
making it and rewriting Tarantino's script and all of this,
they're like, the media is taking all of these atrocious
things and just plugging everything they can for ratings, right.
I mean, we all saw the OJ thing. It's just crazy.
Speaker 3: And you know, people forget the Meninda's brothers, who they're
back in the news right now. Yeah, that was everywhere
before OJ took over and sucked all the auction of
the room. Yeah, Loreena bob It. I don't know if
people still remember that, but I definitely do.
Speaker 2: So if you don't Google search it, don't click images.
Speaker 3: Don't make your wife mad while you're sleepy. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Okay, So we've talked about how these movies came to
be that both just absolutely fan freakantastic according to some
We won't give our final judgement a time for our
final judgment, but they are both ranked in the top
two hundred and fifty movies.
Speaker 3: Of these movies spoke to people, for sure, And.
Speaker 2: I remember seeing Natural Born Killers very close in time
to the time that I saw Pulp Fiction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean same summer.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of interesting that those things were all
kind of playing out as they did. But we need
to know. I mean, these movies have an incredible cast.
Both of them have an incredible cast, and I can't
wait to start talking to you about them.
Speaker 3: Okay, so the cast. Let's go to True Romance since
it's the first one. Sure. Okay, so you've got Christian
Slater as Clarence Warley.
Speaker 4: You're paid read what are you? Theater checker?
Speaker 3: Get paid a check up on the box office?
Speaker 4: Girls, make sure they're not ripping the place off.
Speaker 5: Non theater checker, call.
Speaker 3: Girl, Arkansas. Dave Rootable, Arkansas, Dave root You know we
grew up with Christian Slater, right. He was in Legendibilly Jean.
He was in Young Guns too, he was in Heathers
Gleaming the Cube. But check this out. Yeah, do you
remember a movie called Pump Up the Volume?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: Can you tell me what that movie is about? I
didn't watch the movie, But isn't he like a DJ
or something. He might be the world's first podcast host
because he your wave radio dealer. He has the shortwave
radio show where everybody tunes in and listens to him
and he just kind of talks about whatever he wants
to talk about. And I'm like, Christian Slater might be
the very first podcaster.
Speaker 2: Fantastic.
Speaker 3: Okay, Now he plays Clarence. Val Kilmer wanted this part.
I just played Iceman for you. Can Can I be Clarence?
Speaker 2: No? No? Can I be one of the bad guys? Now?
Speaker 3: Who can I be? You can be Elvis? Oh cool?
Speaker 2: I get to do the hair now we won't see
your face.
Speaker 3: That is totally insane to me, So we might as
well just talk about that. Val Kilmer plays the mentor.
He doesn't play Elvis. He's the mentor.
Speaker 2: Now. Of course, the opening conversation of the movie, it's
about him, you know, not gay. But if I had
f a.
Speaker 3: Guy, right and yes, yeah, now, the Elvis estate would
not allow this movie to use any of his song
and really not his likeness. You can't even tell it's
Val Kilmer. Yeah, okay. So Christian Slater does a great
job as Clearance. I think he's fantastic. He's perfect in
this part. Val Kilmer is a little bit too heroic
at this time for me to totally identify with that character.
You're not going to believe Val Kilmer as a nerdy
comic book can't get a date free? Yeah yeah, somebody
friend has to hire a prostitute for him to get
laid on his birthday. Kind of deal now, Patricia Arquette, I.
Speaker 5: Made the chaos of that day when all I could
hear was a thunder of gunshots, and all I could
smell was the violence in the air. I look back,
and I'm amazed, and my thoughts were so clear and
true that three words went through my mind, endlessly repeating
himself like a broken record. You're so cool. You're so cool,
You're so cool.
Speaker 3: Who I knew from Dream Warriors Part three. She's also
Rosanna's sister.
Speaker 2: Nieder Elm Street Part three, Dream Warriors.
Speaker 3: Yes, Nightmare on Elm Street three, Dream Warriors, Yes, thank you,
thank you. She plays Alabama Whitmen. Huh which they Tarantino
got the name Alabama Whitman from a Pam Greer movie
Women in Cages, where her name was Alabama.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Tony Scott wanted Drew Barrymore Thank ninety three, Drew Barrymore. Right,
Quentin Tarantino wanted Joan Cusack in this role. Nope, right not.
She's funny, quirky. Yeah, she's not sexy. She does taste
like a peach, that's right. Yeah, So they settled on
a Patricia Arquette. And here's the quote from Tony Scott
from the moment Christian Slater saw her. He had a
witty for her.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The attraction between those two actors was very real on
screen off screen. Oh really did they date? I guess
well apparently according to Christian slatery he kind of doesn't
really say yay or nay. But basically they were both
in relationships. They were both very tempted, and they both
tried to stay as professional as possible. Right, And but
I mean, how do you look at that in this movie?
She's fantastic.
Speaker 2: She is oozing sexuality. She is and kind, loving, fun, spunky.
Speaker 3: I love you, baby.
Speaker 2: She is great and she delivers a great performance. I mean,
you start with that first scene where you know she's
she goes in and she spills her popcorn on him,
and they hang out and she's talking to him and
it's all delivered. And then she is sitting on the
billboard sign. Is that what it is out there? Like
she's out of outside of the apartment, you know, crying
like boohooing.
Speaker 3: She is a fantastic actress. She does such a great job.
Speaker 2: So just you know, great actors and looks to boot.
You know, you and I were talking.
Speaker 3: I think one of the keys for why she's so
kind of low key, trashy sexy. Yeah, you and I
both agreed the fact that she does not have perfect teeth.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: She looks like she was in the trailer park last
week and she got some lipstick and she's got a
nice rack, and that's what she's going on. You know,
she's slept with two guys. Okay, now you've got Dennis
Hopper as Clifford Worley. That's Christian Slater's dad. I knew
him from Hoosier's Yeah sure, and then of course later
from Speed and water World.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I didn't see either one of those.
Speaker 3: We're going to correck that. Yeah, well I saw Easy Writer.
Speaker 2: How about that? Did you see Easy Writer?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So maybe no, But I hope that the next person
that you're mentioning is going to be Christopher walking Do
you know who I am?
Speaker 6: Mister Wooley, I give up? Who are you? The anti Christ?
You got me in a vendetta kind of mood in
Tully Angels in Heaven. You never seen it evil so
singularly personified as you did in the face of the
man who killed you. My name is Vincent Cocatia. I
work as console from mister Blue little boyle, the man
your son stole from. I hear you were once a cop,
so I can assume you've heard about this before. Am
I correct?
Speaker 2: I've heard of Blue Blue boil alad because the interchange
between Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walkin is one of the
best interchanges in all fantastic history, right, yeah, and actually
in speech.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: It comes from a conversation that Quentin Tarantino actually had
with a black friend, you know, tells him this is
the history, and this is why the Sicilians are all
dark haired and all this that used to be blonde
of blue eye, just like the northern Italian right, And
he says, he meets a Sicilian and he starts telling
him this, and the reaction wasn't so good. This is
kind of intense. I need to keep this idea for
a script.
Speaker 3: It's so good, all right, big fan of the N word,
which we're going to talk about if we get to
Django and Chained here in a few weeks.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: Okay, here's an interesting tidbit for you. I've been waiting
to drop this on you.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: Tarantino took a couple of lines from other movies dropped
them into True Romance as kind of a tribute to
those movies. The line beer is all I Ever eat,
which I think Christian Slater says in this movie.
Speaker 2: Okay, that comes from the Last Picture Show. So yeah,
that's Jeff Fridges and Sybil Shepherd. Yes, Peter Brugdanovitch, thank you.
Speaker 3: The line You're just like your mother, Dennis Hopper says
in Rumblefish, which we covered a couple of seasons ago.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Okay. Yeah, I was happy to drop that one on you.
So that's really interesting.
Speaker 2: So, you know, I listened to him talking about you know,
there are these things that come up online these days
of actors that you wrote a part for, or that
you have in mind for a particular part, right right,
And so you know, obviously he's talking about the John
Travolta in pulp fiction. Yes, because he didn't write that
part for John Travolta, right, he wrote it for Michael Madson.
Michael Madson gets hooked up with Wyatt Erp instead, and
so they can't have him. And so they're like, hey,
you're on fire.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: You say all the names of anybody that you think
could possibly play in this part and all of these parts,
and as long as they're good with it, we're good
with it, and we'll get them. And so he makes
this big fantasy list, but he includes in there John Travolta,
and they're like, Okay, we're willing to go with you
on all of these names except for two. I don't
remember who one of them was, but the other one
was John Travolta. And he basically said, well, that's the
way that I want it, and if you don't want
to make the movie that I want it, I'm going
to go do it with somebody else. So they're all right, okay,
John Travolta. And he said he'd actually had him in
mind for Eric Stultz's part. Oh really, yeah, he said
he wouldn't have dressed him in the same clothes or whatever,
but he was going to be the drug dealer. Once
he hung out with him and talked with him for
a while, he remembered this article that he had read
where the lady was basically saying, you know, Travolta's out,
but if there's anybody that needs to be back, it's
him because he was so well regarded when he was
on the top. But I mean, he went from Saturday
Night Fever and all of these incredible movies that just
DNC ding dingcdnk down to look who's talking right? He
was straight to video at that point. But anyway, I
say all that to say, if he put those lines in,
that means that he was already writing the lines for
Dennis Hopper, like he had Dennis Hopper in mind when
he wrote those lines. Because he wasn't there. They offered
him again, they said, hey, do you want to come
hang out and be on set while we're filming the movie?
And he's like, why, Well, I guess because you know,
I'm either going to be there to make the movie
or I'm not going to be there to make the movie.
And I just want him to just make it how
he wants to make it, So let him make it
how he wants to make it.
Speaker 3: I'm sure Tony's got to appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that means that he wrote those lines with
Dennis Hopper in mind, and Dennis Hopper said yes and
took the part. That's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Here's another interesting thing. So the Sicilian scene between Hopper
and Walkin. Yeah, Walkin was originally scheduled to film his
side of the conversation first, right, So they filmed both
sides of it, and Walking was like, you please film
his side first because he was still kind of putting
it together in his head. What kind of guy he
was gonna be? Right? And these are just two master actors,
you know, absolutely the only thing that I can't. I mean,
Christopher Walking doesn't super look Sicilian to me, but he's
still great, and so it's it's easily overlooked, right, Gary
Oldman as Drexel Spivey.
Speaker 2: You have to see boy you got from Joe Damns.
Speaker 3: I know, no, thanks, no things, wun.
Speaker 2: I think you're too scared to.
Speaker 3: Be so freaking brilliant.
Speaker 2: I mean, the guy has just come off of Dracula, right, Dracula,
he's the blood, He's lad the Impaler, right, right, and
and then before that he's in like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern
Are Dead, which is a comedy Tom stopperd movie with
Tim Roth. He's a goofball in that one, but we're
just seeing the beginnings of what Gary Oldman can be.
And then he gets the opportunity to play Drexel this
dreadlocked ubonics speaking scar faced him yeah, and he kills it.
Speaker 3: In fact, he said that he went to lunch with
Tony Scott and Tony's Scut's like, well, I're still kind
of working on it, but he basically he's a white
guy who thinks he's black and he's a killer pimp.
And Gary Oldman is like, I'll take it.
Speaker 2: Sounds good, yeah, yeah, And I seen you a clip
it was Gary Oldman still in the makeup. By the way,
he called up the guys from Dracula and it's like,
I want a scar across my face and the eye
out and all of that stuff. Dracula makeup guys came
and did Drexels.
Speaker 3: Met the Wig too?
Speaker 2: Wig two? Yes, yep, But he's it's just an interview
with him and he's in his regular you know, British.
Speaker 3: Voice, it's which is great the dreadlocked guy British voice.
Speaker 2: But he's talking about Tarantino because nobody knows who this
is at this point. Right, he's done Reservoir Dogs and
true Romances coming out and that's it, right, right.
Speaker 3: Right, But he nails it.
Speaker 2: He's like, he's this guy who's taken all of these
old characters that we all know and he's made them
new in a new way. He's twisted these characters and
brought them to life in a way that no one
else has done it before. And he could see that
on movie number two. Yes, brilliant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, let's talk about Brad Pitt as Floyd.
Speaker 4: You guys want to smoke a bowl, go down Beechwood
and drive a wild and then he's gonna turn right, okay,
and then you go and you keep driving and you'll
keep driving.
Speaker 2: So I remember, you know, Statute of limitations has passed
on this, so I can make some admissions here. I
remember going over to friend of mine's house when I
lived in Tulsa and she was like, we made a
honeybear bong. And I was like, you did what?
Speaker 3: She's like, we made the honeybeer bong and.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what the crap are you talking about. She's like,
we took the bear that has the honey in it,
and we took the honey out and we made a.
Speaker 3: Bong out of it. And I was like, why.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: She's like, have you not seen True Romance? And I
said no. She's like, we're watching it now and I.
Speaker 2: Said, oh, okay, yes, because Brad Pitt smoked pot out
of a honeybear.
Speaker 3: So he asked for this part. Here's the thing with
Brad Pitt, we know he's leading man material, and he
goes on to be one of the most famous actors
in the entire world. Right, So he had done Dublin
Luise and that kind of broke him out, right, and
then he's like, I mean, I'm just kind of a
guy who likes to hang around his underwear on a
couch all day. That's kind of who I am and
my soul. But he's so good looking that, you know.
The next year after this, he's into Interview with the
Vampire with Christian Slater, and then he's off and running
with seven and Fight Club and all that other stuff, right.
Speaker 2: And eventually it comes full circle too and Glorious Pastor,
where he's work that's guarantined. Yeah, here's an interesting tidbit
for you before we get to the tidbits. What happens
to Floyd? Right? The mafia guys show up at the
door and they're asking question and she's not lying to him.
Speaker 3: You go down for a while and the turn right,
he's even.
Speaker 2: Kind of laughing a little bit, and then it just
cuts away like did the bad guys.
Speaker 3: Do anything to Floyd? What happened to him?
Speaker 4: Up?
Speaker 2: So that question inspired the movie Pineapple Express.
Speaker 3: I love it. I thought that was a great nugget.
Speaker 2: This is what happens to a pothead who gets involved
in this mass.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, okay, but let's keep going because we've got
more stars to talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, keep going.
Speaker 3: Sorry, Yeah, that's okay. Bronson Pinchot as Elliott Blitzer, perfect strangers.
But he's playing like the collar up polo kind of guy.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: He's the assistant to Saul Rubink's character that's based on
Joel Silver, of course, right, of course, Yeah, Tony's got
hated Joel Silver.
Speaker 2: I can understand that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, his character so funny in this. He gets missed
up in the in the drug shootout the end.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I wish somebody would just come and save me.
Speaker 3: Somebody could just come in and just save me. Okay,
after Bronson pinchhow, you've got Samuel L. Jackson who's playing
Big Don. He's in it for about four seconds, yeah,
before he gets blown away. Yeah, he was coming to
America longer than he was in this movie. That's true.
And this is right before fiction, which sure that he
got a little boost from this movie to get pulp fiction. Right. Absolutely, Yeah,
he's making interesting characters before he gets blasted for basically
no reason.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Drexel blows him away.
Speaker 3: You've got Michael Rappaport as Dick Richie right.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, he's great and I want him in this.
I wish he was always this character. I've seen him
in so many things where he's like this tough guy,
jerk guy. I don't like him as that. He needs
to be the goofy, fun loving moose guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know he was on kuelud'she they're right in
the roller coasters.
Speaker 2: I did not.
Speaker 3: Apparently he and Bronson Pinchot did not like the roller
coaster and they did it for two days. I'm out
by the way, I would have had vomitol over my
sweater at two Days. That was filmed at six Flags
Magic Mountain, which is the same amusement park that National
Lampoon's Vacation. While Okay, saw Rubinac as Lee Donowitz Brilliant,
who is actually Jill Silver. When he auditioned for this part,
he was with Tony Scott and when he read the line,
Tony Scott's like, Okay, you nailed it. That's exactly what
the way Joel is. And he's like, Joel, Joel, I
mean what because I thought I was reading for Lee.
He's like, well, you're actually playing Joel Silver, right right?
You have James Gandolfini before the Sopranos, a great role
and it was this role that got him that part.
He got this part because Tom Sizemore like gave it
to him. Oh, Tom Sizemore was supposed to be that guy.
He didn't feel super comfortable beating up Alabama, Like he
didn't want to be seen as a wife beater.
Speaker 2: And so Tom Sizemore gives Gandalfini this part and takes
the part of the cop with Chris Pinn.
Speaker 3: That's right, Okay, these two cops are actually pretty cool.
Speaker 2: They're terrible.
Speaker 3: Chris Pin and Tom Sizemore as like a pair though.
Speaker 2: It could be in a buddy cop movie together by cop,
they are a mini buddy cop movie happening in this movie.
They absolutely are.
Speaker 3: I saw Tom Seizeman talk about when you know, at
the end, when the shootout scene happens, he got killed early. Yeah,
so and they shot it. He got it like in
the first take. Cidy had to spend four days on
the floor with feathers in his mouth. So interesting. He
threw for through thread.
Speaker 2: By the way, on these two movies, in addition to Tarantino.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a natural born killers. We'll talk about him
in just a second. Yeah, I got one more nugget
for you. Jack Black was in True Romance as a
usher in the Kung Fu Marathon scene. Really oh okay,
so you remember what I mean.
Speaker 2: We quote it at the beginning. It ain't White Boy Day,
is it right? No, man, it ain't White Boy Day. Yeah,
the big bodyguard. No man, it ain't White Boy Day.
Yeah that's Marty. You recognize him.
Speaker 3: No wipers? Is it really same guy? Oh? That's funny. Okay.
Speaker 2: Cool.
Speaker 3: By the way, James s Gandelfini in an effort to
capture the sleaziness of his character. H stayed in like cheap,
crappy hotels okay, and didn't change his underwear like the
whole shoots, and like didn't shower for days, like he
was wanting to be kind of sweaty and gross.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: I always go back to when Laurence Olivier talked to
Dustin Hoff and he's like, come on, boy, it's called
acting exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay. So that does it for the cast of True Romance, guys,
be sure and come back next week. We're gonna jump
in with the cast of Natural Born Killers. We're going
to talk about the copycat crimes that followed Natural Born Killers.
We'll talk about the soundtracks of these two movies. We're
going to give you interesting tidbits, and of course we're
going to give you final judgment on which of these
two Tarantino first script movies.
Speaker 3: We will see you back here next week.
Speaker 6: Herit