True Romance: return to the “crazy” filming of the fight between Patricia Arquette and James Gandolfini – CinéSéries

true romance : a meeting of many talents

After having transposed on the screen a script of Shane Black with The Last SamaritanTony Scott collaborates for the first time with another promising screenwriter for true romance : Quentin Tarantino, who will lend him a hand a few years later by writing some dialogues forUSS Alabama.

As its title indicates so well, true romance is a pure love story. That of Clarence Worley (Christian Slater), a solitary employee of a comic book store, and Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette), a prostitute who also aspires to happier days. One evening, when he celebrates his birthday at the cinema in front of the trilogy street fighter carried by Sonny Chiba, the first has popcorn spilled on his legs by the second. It doesn’t matter if Alabama has been hired by Clarence’s employer to keep him company for one night… Love at first sight is immediate.

The next morning, the couple swear fidelity to each other and decide to start all over again. So Clarence visits Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman), the terrifying pimp from Alabama, and kills him. The newlyweds have no choice but to flee Detroit. They realize that they have unwittingly taken a large quantity of cocaine. Unaware that the mobsters are chasing them, they drive to California to sell the goods and access the happiness they have been dreaming of for a long time.

A wild ride adored by Quentin Tarantino

Dennis Hopper, Christopher Walken, Val Kilmer, Brad Pitt, Samuel L. Jackson, Tom Sizemore, Chris Penn, Michael Rapaport and James Gandolfini complete the phenomenal cast of true romance. The feature film released in 1993 connects the scenes of anthologyfrom the meeting between the two main characters to the gigantic final shootout, passing through the masterful confrontation between Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken.

Never having hidden his admiration for Tony Scott and his love for some of his films (including man on fire and Unstoppable), Quentin Tarantino is particularly proud of the adaptation work of the filmmaker, and in particular of the change of the end. Originally, Clarence was supposed to die but the director preferred a happy ending for the hero, his partner and their son Elvis.

Not supporting the critics claiming that Tony Scott made his scenario something “too pretty”, Quentin Tarantino declares on this subject during a conversation with Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko, Southland Tales) quoted by IndieWire :

That’s what makes it work so well, with the casting and the performances he got.

He also says about the late filmmaker:

He’s like Douglas Sirk, he was never respected, he was too commercial, people put him down. Today, they give lessons on him.

By imitating Tony Scott, Quentin Tarantino reports what he told him about the end of true romance :

Let’s just fall in love with them and leave it at that. I don’t do it to release some commercial shit, I do it because I love these fucking kids, they fucking deserve it. I can’t kill them.

James Gandolfini totally inhabited

But before being entitled to their last embrace on a beach in Cancún, Alabama and Clarence must overcome many trials and step over many corpses. After their arrival in Los Angeles, the two lovebirds separate and the heroine, for example, finds herself trapped in her hotel room with one of Vincenzo Coccotti’s (Christopher Walken) henchmen, played by James Gandolfini.

Between them two begins a clash of unprecedented violence. Charged with finding the cocaine, this ruthless killer named Virgil considers Alabama less than a punching bag, but the latter resists with the help of a corkscrew, a statue of Elvis, an aerosol can and a shotgun. In an interview with the Daily Beast in 2017, Patricia Arquette remembers particularly intense filming of this scene on “three or five days” with the future interpreter of Tony Soprano:

It was pretty crazy. It was James’ first movie and he was really into his character, he slept in his car wearing his character’s clothes for days and days. He was really nice, but when I had to shove a corkscrew into his foot, he wanted me to take a pen with a cap on it and shove it really hard into his foot.

So I did it and he was like, “No it’s not loud enough. Do it even harder”. I tried a little harder and he said it wasn’t enough and I was like, “Man, I’m an actress! I don’t mean to hurt you!” At the time, my stuntwoman was so pissed at James for shooting that scene that she said “Give me that fucking pen!” and rammed him in the foot.

When James Gandolfini died in 2013, Patricia Arquette returned a poignant tribute to his partner in a press release sent to Huffpostassuring that his interpretation of Tony Soprano is “flawless”, and that it is a “real loss for the creative community”.