BONUS The Friday Show - On the QT: Jackie Brown
Marc:My friends would order a white Russian because the Big Lebowski comes out.
Guest:I drank them all the time.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Same thing.
Guest:I used to put it in a thermos and walk around with it.
Guest:That's psychotic.
Guest:Hey, Chris, how's your levels?
Guest:I got them right where I like them.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Well, good.
Guest:As long as your levels are like you like them.
Guest:We can get into the third film of Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown.
Guest:We're going to do this a little differently than we normally do because here's a little secret.
Guest:This has been recorded over a week ago.
Guest:I am on vacation this week.
Guest:But I figured, hey, we're right on schedule with our Quentin Tarantino series.
Guest:If you're new to the Friday show, what we decided, thanks to our listener, Ryan, sent in a request saying we look at the Quentin Tarantino films.
Guest:And I thought, hey, we can watch one of these a month, which will lead up to October 2021.
Guest:which is the 30th anniversary of Pulp Fiction.
Guest:So as there will be a lot, I'm sure, of retrospective Tarantino things going around in October, that will give us a good position to be like, hey, hey, we know it all.
Guest:We've watched all of them, rewatched them.
Guest:We're right in the thick of things.
Guest:And I think we were thinking, oh, hey, maybe by then we'll know more about his 10th movie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we do know more about his 10th movie.
Guest:What did we find out, Chris?
Marc:It's not happening.
Guest:No, he's not going to make it.
Marc:So can I first... Why is he stuck on this 10 movie business?
Guest:I think the reason he's stuck on the 10 movie business is why he's not making this one.
Guest:Now it's going to be like Goldilocks.
Guest:Everything's going to... It's got to be just right.
Guest:He wants it to be perfect.
Guest:Make my perfect 10th film.
Marc:Like...
Marc:Honestly, it feels like he made a deal with a genie and he has 10 wishes and he doesn't want this 10th one to end.
Marc:Like, you don't have to just do 10 movies, my friend.
Guest:I know.
Guest:That's the solution.
Guest:But you know what, though?
Guest:Here's the thing.
Guest:I think...
Guest:Obviously that was what our first impulse was like, oh man, he's hung up on this 10th movie thing.
Guest:But if you go through his career, he has done this so many times where he's got something, oh, I'm going to do this.
Guest:And then he abandons it and he puts it away.
Guest:And sometimes he takes it back out and he makes it again.
Marc:Or he's just about to put it on the shelf.
Marc:And then Christopher Waltz walks in and he now has his villain for his movie.
Marc:So yeah.
Guest:Well, and I think, you know, Hateful Eight was one where he had abandoned it and then they did a staged reading of it somewhere for like a charity.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he was like, oh, maybe I should do this, you know?
Guest:So I wouldn't say the movie critic, as it was tentatively called, is dead.
Guest:Although, you know, it's something interesting I heard about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Apparently Brad Pitt is in it or was in it and he was going to play Cliff Booth.
Guest:I know.
Yeah.
Guest:so what that makes me think is it was about him because if you read the once upon a time in hollywood book right one of the kind of secret things is that cliff is a cineast yes right and that he goes to all these movies on his own by himself and he has all these opinions my guess is it was going to be a movie about him hmm and
Guest:Go back through Quentin Tarantino's work.
Guest:When has it ever come to fruition that he has a sequel or continuing character that winds up being made in something else?
Guest:He talks about it all the time.
Guest:So often.
Guest:There was going to be another Kill Bill with the bride, right?
Marc:With Uma Thurman.
Marc:The Vega brothers.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So this is something that has repeated with Quentin's work.
Marc:Par for the course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And one of the reasons I think these things keep happening to him is because of what happened to him in between the years of 1994 and 1997.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:This is when Quentin Tarantino became capital F famous.
Guest:Like...
Guest:All right.
Guest:I know that a lot of people subscribe to the full Marin are probably like in our age group, maybe a little older, maybe around our age.
Guest:But if there are young people listening, maybe you're born in, you know, maybe born in the new millennium.
Guest:Right.
Guest:90s, aughts, that sort of thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If you were not around for the mid-90s, you probably don't understand how famous Quentin Tarantino was.
Guest:He was as famous as any individual movie star.
Guest:And he was not a movie star.
Guest:Right.
Guest:No one ever claimed that.
Guest:They were like, he's famous.
Guest:famous quentin tarantino that was it right and this started in i would i want to put the point on when this started at obviously it's pulp fiction that pushes it all over the top for me yeah but this starts just before pulp fiction when he gets in a fight with a guy named don murphy in a bathroom some restaurant in hollywood because this guy don murphy was one of the producers on natural born killers and
Guest:and had a terrible relationship with Tarantino, and then is quoted in this book called Killer Instinct, where he calls Quentin Tarantino a one-trick pony and a guy who is only famous for being famous, and Tarantino punches this guy out in the back room of a restaurant.
Guest:This is before Pulp Fiction comes out, but...
Guest:Then this guy sues.
Guest:So the lawsuit goes through this time period.
Guest:And it's after Pulp Fiction is out.
Guest:This is actually when the story gets some legs.
Guest:And it talked about, I remember reading about it in Premiere.
Guest:And this guy suing Quentin Tarantino fought him in the bathroom.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:That specific thing that was said to him then, he's a one trick pony and he's famous for being famous.
Guest:there's no doubt in my mind that he punched the guy out because it, it was the bullet that got it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he was like, fuck this.
Guest:I am not a one trick pony and I'm not famous for being famous.
Guest:And so he goes out there and he is doing everything.
Yeah.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Well, for one, he is famously a ghostwriter on many movies.
Guest:We just did an interview with Paula Pell.
Guest:You, Chris, have not heard yet because it's not aired when we're recording this.
Guest:But our listeners are going to have heard this by the time this is airing.
Guest:And Paula Pell talks about all the movies she was ghostwriting on.
Guest:And nobody knows these things because they're kept secret, right?
Guest:They don't credit you.
Guest:They don't say, oh, you're the...
Guest:the ghost written voice in this quentin tarantino famously rewrote scenes for crimson tide he famously rewrote scenes for the rock why do i say famously because you watch those movies and you can tell what the quentin tarantino scenes are all of a sudden denzel washington is talking about the silver surfer and and and uh and star trek
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like there's no other part in that movie that sounds like Quentin Tarantino other than that.
Guest:And people knew it and people were being directed toward it.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:That's a Quentin Tarantino scene.
Guest:Got to remember also, this is a time period now where the studios are trying to make as many movies they can that are Quentin Tarantino clones, boondock saints, things to do in Denver when you're dead.
Guest:The usual suspects would not get made if it's not for Pulp Fiction.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:These are all taking off.
Guest:Tarantino becomes a genre in and of himself, right?
Guest:And he's only made two movies.
Guest:There is a book that gets written called The Life and Films of Quentin Tarantino.
Guest:He's made two at this point when this book comes out.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So, okay, all that's happening.
Guest:But that's stuff where his name is attached to it.
Guest:He's not doing it.
Guest:Well, he goes and directs one of the chapters of that movie, Four Rooms.
Guest:They market the whole thing around him being in it, one of them being his movies.
Guest:He is in the movie Desperado that Robert Rodriguez makes.
Guest:He is in the movie From Dusk Till Dawn.
Guest:Big part in that.
Guest:And he writes part of the screenplay.
Guest:He is the lead in a movie called Destiny Turns on the Radio, a bomb movie where he plays God.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And, I mean, you could not get away from this guy.
Guest:He is dating Margaret Cho, and she puts him on her sitcom in an episode called Pulp Sitcom.
Marc:No kidding.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Like, it's all marketed around him.
Guest:He hosts SNL with the musical guest Smashing Pumpkins.
Guest:Big, huge band, right?
Guest:This is not like a throwaway episode.
Guest:This is...
Guest:A famous dude hosting with a famous band.
Guest:He directs ER in a huge sweeps week stunt.
Guest:That I remember.
Guest:33.1 million viewers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Watch this at this time.
Guest:And okay, this is the big one.
Guest:that you probably remember and i definitely remember if you were our age you were watching one thing above all else at this time most unavoidably if you were a teenager in the 90s you had mtv on right it was just on whether you had cable or not you would go somewhere and you were involved you were involved in the cultural conversation around mtv somehow yeah it was on
Guest:On or just in the culture.
Guest:Beavis and Butthead, Daria, like all the anything having to do with MTV was youth culture.
Marc:Yo, MTV reps.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Quentin Tarantino was like a poster boy of MTV.
Guest:He was always on it.
Guest:He was on all these interview shows they would do.
Guest:Anytime they had an awards ceremony, they made sure he was there giving out awards because he felt of MTV, right?
Guest:He was a cool guy, right?
Guest:It was a thing that you'd get young people watching.
Guest:Oh, there's cool Quentin Tarantino, even though he's a...
Guest:older than them, B, not that cool.
Guest:But that was what was being presented at the time.
Guest:I remember the 1996 MTV Movie Awards.
Guest:He presented the Lifetime Achievement Award to Jackie Chan.
Guest:And the whole idea was...
Guest:just to they were just trying to sell rumble in the bronx like that was why they did it right but at the time nobody knew who jackie chan was yeah and the like the joke of giving him the lifetime achievement award was like here's your lifetime achievement award and now welcome to america where people are finally going to get to know you right and i just remember tarantino selling this so he was like i wish i could be this guy like this is the coolest guy in the world and i totally got into jackie chan because of quentin tarantino
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:I did as well.
Marc:I remember Rumble in the Bronx being not great because they were mountains in the Bronx, in the background.
Guest:In the Bronx, yeah.
Marc:So I did love that.
Marc:But yeah, I watched all the other Jackie Chan movies and those were great.
Guest:This is also around this time, the worm starts to turn on him as well, right?
Guest:He's getting spoofed on things.
Guest:There's that spoof on The Simpsons.
Guest:where Itchy and Scratchy kill him because he's so annoying, right?
Guest:There's this incident at the 1997 Oscars.
Guest:Now he's dating Mira Sorvino, who wins the Best Supporting Actress Oscar at that event.
Guest:And at the red carpet, Chris Connolly, editor of Premier Magazine at the time, goes to talk to her.
Guest:Quentin Tarantino goes up and pushes her away and says, no, no, no, that's the editor of Premier.
Guest:He wrote an article and interviewed my dad.
Guest:Fuck you.
Guest:And he spits on him.
Guest:Whoa.
Guest:Problem is, Chris Connolly and Premier did not do that.
Guest:That was the book I just mentioned.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:The Life and Films of Quentin Tarantino, written by Jamie Bernard, who worked for the New York Daily News.
Guest:So there's this vibe going around, like, this guy's kind of an asshole.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, he was like the rocket that went to the sky and exploded, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember toward the middle of 97, he signs up for Wait Until Dark, which premieres on Broadway the next year.
Guest:And everyone's like, what the fuck is this guy doing on Broadway?
Guest:Like it was derided, right?
Guest:The other thing about pre-Jackie Brown is you start to see the debate prompted by Spike Lee.
Guest:that this guy's using the n-word in all his movies yeah right yeah the backlash is just there right it's there it's there right so all of this is to lead up to the fact that jackie brown comes out and i think there's been like a bit of a um the conventional wisdom that formed around jackie brown was like
Guest:eh, it was just a substandard follow.
Guest:You couldn't follow Pulp Fiction.
Guest:And so following it with this, it's just not as good, right?
Guest:And what my contention is, is that's, like I said, a hindsight amount of conventional wisdom that's just lining the movies up next to each other.
Guest:And I just look at everything I just talked about from those two to three years between Jackie Brown coming out and Pulp Fiction, and
Guest:it was doomed.
Guest:Like he was working against something so much more than his own reputation as a filmmaker.
Guest:He was working against this persona of Quentin Tarantino that had just been created over the last three years.
Guest:That's who he was making Jackie Brown against.
Guest:And that's why I think it gets the reception that it gets when it comes out.
Guest:People, mostly it was like,
Guest:I'm kind of sick of this guy.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They, they, they're just turned off by him.
Marc:Like they don't like the language.
Marc:They don't, they don't like him.
Marc:So yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, and it was like, remember like M night Shyamalan, like after a while, I was like, Oh, what's the twist going to be in this?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I remember at the time of Jackie Brown, it was like, oh, look, he does the same thing where the time is different in this time.
Guest:And you watch that movie and we're going to talk about the movie itself because we both just rewatched it.
Guest:That is like nothing.
Guest:Nothing.
Guest:Compared to what.
Guest:what happens with Pulp Fiction, with the looping narratives.
Guest:And this is literally one section of the film where he shows you the same thing three different times from three different perspectives.
Guest:It's more like Rashomon than anything, right?
Guest:It has nothing to do with Pulp Fiction, but it was so instantly tagged as a gimmick because people were aiming for him.
Guest:It was a target.
Marc:Yeah, the darts were out.
Marc:And it was one of those things where in movies today or film criticism, there are certain movies that you're sort of allowed to just shit on.
Marc:And this was the movie to shit on when it came out.
Guest:Yes, at the time.
Guest:It was nominated for only one Oscar, which was Robert Forster's very deserved Oscar nomination.
Guest:But watching it again, I'm like, that's really crazy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Pam Greer didn't get an Oscar nomination that, uh, Samuel Jackson didn't get one that the screenplay didn't get one.
Guest:I mean, it's just, it stands out that people that they were deliberately avoiding Quentin Tarantino at this time.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:Well, what was your actual reaction in 1997, though, Chris?
Guest:Where did you come down on this as a movie?
Guest:And do you think the way you came down on it as a movie was in any way influenced by all that stuff we were just talking about?
Marc:I mean, I was 18, I want to say.
Marc:And I was just a culture person.
Marc:I liked pop culture.
Marc:I loved Pulp Fiction, of course.
Marc:I watched Jackie Brown.
Marc:I remember walking out being like...
Marc:I didn't love it.
Marc:It felt like a letdown.
Marc:So I just kind of shrugged and went about my life.
Marc:But yeah, I didn't enjoy it.
Marc:I didn't have the takeaways that upon rewatch, I have now a little bit more insight on.
Marc:So yeah, I did not enjoy it when I first saw it.
Marc:How about you?
Marc:Although, wait, before you say, you are, like at this point...
Marc:Quentin Tarantino is your guy.
Marc:You saw Reservoir Dogs when it first came out.
Marc:You saw Pulp Fiction.
Marc:This is your guy.
Marc:So your guy, you're seeing him drag through the mud.
Marc:You're seeing him get super uber famous.
Marc:And you're watching ER.
Marc:You're watching MTV.
Marc:So now his third movie comes out.
Marc:How did you take it in?
Guest:I think, you know, instead of thinking of it as I was seeing him getting dragged through the mud, I was getting a little down on him as like, I was like, oh, pull back, buddy.
Guest:Like I, I didn't want all the front facing stuff that was happening.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was embarrassed by the fight with Chris Connelly.
Marc:Okay, so all that other stuff.
Marc:But what about the movie itself?
Guest:Well, so when the movie came out, I felt vindicated.
Guest:I was like, see, he is great.
Guest:Oh, interesting.
Guest:He can make a great movie.
Guest:And I, for a very long time,
Guest:was like a Jackie Brown is better than anyone thinks it is kind of guy.
Guest:Like I was like a Jackie Brown truther.
Guest:And what's interesting is I think the world kind of caught up to me, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then went past me because I think what I started to notice was people then I felt were over-correcting and over-praised.
Guest:I'd be like, oh, it's his second best movie or whatever.
Guest:And I was like, oh, I don't think it's that good.
Guest:But I think this reappraisal of it has been prompted over the years a lot by Tarantino.
Guest:Like he himself said it was the first time he felt like a filmmaker, right?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Samuel Jackson says it's his favorite film he's ever made.
Guest:Elmore Leonard said it's the best screenplay of all his books and the best screenplay he ever read, period.
Guest:So like you had all of these kind of influences.
Guest:endorsements of it beyond uh just the critical appraisals at the time and so i think a lot of people who probably heard everyone going yeah jackie brown it's not good you know he did that after pulp fiction and it was a bad follow-up that then they watched it either again or for the first time and were like what are people talking about this was great especially when it was divorced from all that narrative
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I, I, one of my, my first reactions to it was there was a little, it was too much.
Marc:It was like a, like a weed movie, like a, you know, too much pot going on.
Marc:Like I felt like it was just too, too much.
Marc:People were getting high on their own supply.
Marc:And like, I just didn't enjoy that when I was, when I first watched.
Guest:Well, so now that we're going to talk about it as a film, let's go to where we've been after watching Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and let us both go through our lists of Quentin Tarantino films, the rankings.
Guest:And then when we're done talking about the film, we'll decide whether Jackie Brown moves up or down or stays where it is on our list.
Guest:So what do you have as we go into this movie?
Marc:I have nine Death Proof, eight Hateful Eight, seven Reservoir Dogs, six Django Unchained, five Kill Bill, four Inglourious Bastards, three Jackie Brown, two Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and one Pulp Fiction.
Marc:How about you?
Guest:All right.
Guest:So I'm Death Proof, Kill Bill, Inglourious Bastards, and Hateful Eight.
Guest:That's from the bottom going up.
Guest:Then number five is Jackie Brown, which I had dropped down from number four when we started this out because I jumped Reservoir Dogs up.
Guest:Django Unchained I have at four, but I jumped Reservoir Dogs up from five to three because I enjoyed it so much watching it again.
Guest:And then the top two I have currently Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and Pulp Fiction at number one.
Guest:But so I come into this with my sense of this is Quentin Tarantino's median film.
Guest:This is the one right in the middle.
Guest:And you have it at number, in top three.
Yeah.
Guest:Okay, so that's where we start with watching it.
Guest:And when did you watch this?
Marc:I watched it two nights ago.
Guest:Yeah, the same here.
Guest:Okay, so I want to first say that I don't think it's a surprise at all
Guest:That Tarantino, Sam Jackson, Elmore Leonard, or any of the other people reappraising this movie and saying how good it is, I don't think it's surprising they feel this way at all.
Guest:This is a more assured film than the other movies.
Guest:It is calmer.
Guest:It feels more present.
Guest:If you didn't know who Quentin Tarantino was...
Guest:and you just turn this on, this is the first thing you've ever seen him done, you would have no way to predict that those other movies are like they are.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Right?
Guest:This is a totally different thing.
Guest:And if maybe people who are listening to this do not like Quentin Tarantino and you're just hanging around because it's the Friday show...
Guest:If that's you, if this has never been your bag, if you're not into this guy and even the stuff we've been talking about, you don't really want to get into it, I would recommend that you just turn on Jackie Brown and you don't even have to keep it on.
Guest:Just watch the credit sequence of this movie.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It is immaculate.
Marc:Well, the opening shot of this movie is for me, it's setting the tone for the whole movie.
Marc:Like it's not as zippy as Pulp Fiction.
Marc:It's like, you know what I equated to?
Marc:I equated to a basketball player inbounding the ball and walking up to half court.
Marc:Like he's setting the pace for how this is going to happen.
Marc:Like Quentin is going to direct this movie as he sees fit.
Marc:And yeah, it is immaculate.
Marc:A stark contrast to the, I'm going to say the whirlwind that is happening off screen in his life and in the other movies.
Marc:Like you said, there's so much stuff going on when you're watching this movie.
Marc:It is just, it's setting a tone and a pace that is completely different than all that other stuff.
Guest:And this shot is just Pam Greer, who it's very clear right away, she is Jackie Brown.
Guest:And this is going to be her movie.
Guest:She has not led a movie since the 70s.
Guest:And you couldn't ask for a more movie star presentation of your lead actor at the beginning of a film than this.
Guest:The other thing is, you say it's setting the tone.
Guest:I would say that if you ended the movie...
Guest:at the end of this credit sequence, that itself is an excellent short film.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That tells a story, this credit sequence of her rushing to her job at this podunk airline.
Guest:And as Bobby Womack's Across 110th Street plays, it's an amazing character snapshot that serves its own purpose as well as servicing the full story that he's about to tell.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like, I also think, Chris, it's very impressive that he was able to dial it down amidst all that stuff you were talking about.
Guest:You were saying it's like the whirlwind.
Guest:Like, that doesn't get enough credit watching it again, that now you can give it that credit.
Guest:But back then, I think people were just like, where's the royale with cheese and all the pyrotechnics?
Guest:And it's like, it's more impressive that within the first 15 minutes of this movie...
Guest:He has the first sequence of true violence in the film, and it's done by making you have to stay very far back from him.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:This crane shot of putting Chris Tucker in the trunk and then Samuel Jackson driving away with him and...
Guest:tarantino will not allow you to go with them right he's going to be at a distance he's going to shoot this thing on a crane and you're as far away as it as any bystander could be right because that's the whole point he drives him into an abandoned field right so that no one will see him kill this guy and you have to be that you have to be the person who can't get to see the killing
Guest:amazingly restrained, considering what all the hype around this guy was.
Guest:And again, going all the way back to that insult about being a one-trick pony.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nothing makes it clearer than this is the way he wants to start the film, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Started with this...
Guest:just very laconically paced sequence with Pam Greer started with Samuel Jackson being himself, but not being Jules, right?
Guest:He's being everything you love about Sam Jackson, but not like Jules.
Guest:And then this scene of violence that occurs at a distance, I think is super duper important.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I agree.
Marc:Also, this movie and movies around this time, I can only think of two, but they really love their cocktails.
Marc:I think this was like my first introduction to cocktails.
Marc:It was The Screwdriver.
Guest:Oh, The Screwdriver.
Guest:I drank them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Frequently after seeing this.
Marc:I made one the other day because I have some fresh oranges.
Marc:I'm like, you know what?
Marc:I'm going to juice these.
Marc:I'm going to put some orange vodka in there.
Marc:It was delightful, I guess.
Guest:That was such an easy thing, too.
Guest:You know, your college age when we saw this.
Guest:And I remember going to bars in colleges and being like.
Guest:Screwdriver.
Guest:Screwdriver.
Guest:But I was like, at that point, you could, you know, your taste buds and everything, you're not used to really drinking a lot of alcohol.
Guest:So if somebody makes you take a shot or something, it's like poison, right?
Guest:But like, man, if you could put some sweet orange juice in a cup with vodka, holy shit, that was going to last you the night.
Marc:Well, the same thing when my friends would order a white Russian because the Big Lebowski comes out.
Guest:I drank them all the time.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Same thing.
Guest:Yeah, so
Guest:I used to put it in our thermos and walk around with it.
Marc:That's psychotic.
Marc:Like, like one of those, like, like lunch pail thermoses.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Insulated.
Guest:So I should not melt.
Marc:Amazing.
Guest:So another thing that jumps out right away watching this, and then it's very clear through the whole movie.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:And I mentioned I thought this is a great screenplay.
Guest:It's as good as any of the other ones he's written.
Guest:But the lines of dialogue are more memorable for being good lines than they are for being like quips.
Guest:or idioms or memes that work their way through the culture.
Guest:That is not supposed to be a ding against the movie.
Guest:I mean that praiseworthy.
Guest:There are lines that are good for the movie, that are important for the story and the characters, but they're just well-written lines.
Guest:Half a million dollars will never be missed.
Guest:My ass may be dumb, but I ain't no dumbass.
Guest:And the best one
Guest:what the fuck happened to you, man?
Guest:You used to be beautiful.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Like it's not like a, it's not a line that you're like, you know, again, Ezekiel 25, 17.
Guest:It's not the like one you're going to put on a t-shirt, but,
Guest:but it is meaningful and well-written.
Guest:And just, it's one of those things you hear, it feels like poetry, but it's being said in dialogue as part of a story, as part of a movie.
Guest:It's not raucous.
Guest:It's not jokes, jokes, jokes.
Guest:It's just good.
Guest:And good is okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that line in particular, like on this rewatch,
Marc:I watched this movie with fresh eyes.
Marc:And my take on this movie is that this is a movie about getting old.
Marc:The passage of time.
Marc:There's a whole scene in this movie about getting old.
Marc:And there are multiple shots throughout the movie where you see...
Marc:characters looking at pictures of characters in their youth on the wall and this is now the life that they lead now you know like when the cop is reciting what jackie has has you know amounted to while she was in custody and you know he can just sum up her life in just a couple of sentences like that like that that's that's like
Marc:a scary reality, you know?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:That time marches on, you know, while, you know, you move forward at a glacial pace, right?
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, I mean, so these scenes that I, as a kid...
Marc:I paid really no mind to.
Marc:I was kind of like, can we skip to the action?
Marc:Can we get to the heist, right?
Marc:Well, on rewatch, I'm watching Jackie and Max Cherry talk about gaining weight, losing his hair.
Marc:And these are themes as a kid I didn't give a shit about.
Marc:But on this rewatch, I see it and I can appreciate it.
Marc:Like Max appreciates the Delphonics, right?
Marc:You know, like De Niro and Bridget Fonda also talk about the past and like, you know, how old she was in these images and and like, you know, oh, she only has this one picture of her in Japan.
Marc:And like that, this is just a memento from a life she once had.
Marc:And now she's here making a fucking shake.
Marc:you know, in, you know, in, you know, on the beach, you know, like, like it's in these conversations that when this movie first came out, I, again, didn't appreciate, but now my ass is older and I see those bags under my eyes.
Marc:I see my hair thinning and those fucking scenes hit like a ton of bricks.
Guest:Yeah, well, and it's like no one in the movie is really able to get themselves out from under the weight of aging except Jackie.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because she takes the initiative.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because it's like, it's a Shawshank Redemption style.
Guest:You get busy living or you get busy dying.
Guest:And all these other people in the movie...
Guest:You know, even down to Max Cherry, they either don't want to upset the apple cart or they want the easy way, right?
Guest:And they don't want to actually ask themselves to do the hard things, to take the real risks.
Guest:It's all just like quick money, fast money, grab that bag, move around.
Guest:Or if in the case of Max Cherry, like not letting go of his life he kind of feels stuck in.
Guest:Right.
Guest:He wishes he wasn't being a bail bondsman anymore.
Guest:But by the end of the movie, he's still there and he doesn't leave.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So Jackie is the only one who is able to rise above the pressures that are put on you by that relentless passage of time.
Guest:And I will point out, I didn't really think about this until you mentioned that earlier scene where the cop.
Guest:is telling Jackie what her life has essentially amounted to and why it would be terrible for her to go to jail on this charge, drug charge, because basically there's no future for her anymore.
Yeah.
Guest:And then meanwhile, she's talking to Max Cherry, who is basically like, I can't imagine you're much different than you were at 29.
Guest:Like, you're amazing.
Guest:Like, you have an age today.
Guest:And everything, like, he gives her the opposite view of like, you got your whole life ahead of you.
Guest:And she's the only one who takes it, right?
Guest:And she has to take it by being...
Guest:Right?
Guest:Everything she does and plans around this caper has to be perfect.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's why one of the reasons I think Tarantino has said this before, he calls it a hangout movie.
Guest:And he says it's a movie that gets better the more times you see it.
Guest:And I think it's the same thing with what you're saying.
Guest:It's not just that you're seeing it more, they're becoming more familiar to you, but you...
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so you're able to apply your life experience to it.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And now I do want to use this, though, as a segue into why I think there's a large part of this movie that doesn't work.
Marc:What's that?
Guest:And I think it's what's always been, you know, in my craw about it, even as I love the movie, seeing it.
Guest:But especially as time goes on and people reevaluate the film and also acknowledge that it's great, I start to see it getting overrated because I don't think it is as pure a Tarantino film as he can make.
Guest:And the ghost on the hand of the clutch of this movie is Elmore Leonard.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Tarantino has a very hard time steering this movie away from the plot gears of Elmore Leonard, which if you think about the Elmore Leonard things that are really great that get taken from page to the screen...
Guest:the justified series, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Get shorty.
Guest:They enjoy the mechanics of the plot.
Guest:The plot becomes almost comical of how overlapping it is and how, uh, you know, one side playing against the other.
Guest:I'm thinking about that scene in get shorty where you have all the various, uh, people of, you know, interested parties in the crime passing each other through the airport.
Guest:And, uh,
Guest:that's a perfect Elmore Leonard scene because one of the joys of reading Elmore Leonard novels is not knowing from one page to the next, like, Oh, what's the, who's going to be involved in it now?
Guest:Oh my God, this guy, this mechanic or whatever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's like, it's the, it's, it's all magic tricks and, and puffery.
Guest:And that's why cons and heists and schemes work so great on this.
Guest:Watching it again the other night and I realized like of all the Quentin Tarantino movies, this one has the most in terms of plot mechanics and gears grinding and he just doesn't care about it.
Guest:he he's both getting lost in it in like a reverent way like he wants everybody to deliver to hit their marks on like please pay respects to mr leonard and so you know give him the the the story that this thing deserves but meanwhile you can tell what he really cares about is just being there with max cherry and jackie and ordell and
Guest:He just wants to hang with these people.
Guest:He doesn't want all this nonsense getting in the way.
Guest:And in fact, what's the big flashy heist when you boil it down?
Guest:It's a three bag money swap.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:It's not complicated at all.
Guest:The entire movie makes you think it's this super complicated thing.
Guest:No, it's three people showing up at three different times with three different bags.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:So I do feel like it holds the movie back, especially because the things that I always loved about it and that you're identifying that you love so much now is the people, are the characters, are what they're able to get to about themselves and about just human beings in general.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that includes somebody like Ordell, who's like a great character, even though he's like a killer.
Guest:He's like kind of a dumbass, but like he's smart enough to know.
Guest:Like there's that scene where Bridget Fonda talks about him.
Guest:She's like, he's not smart, but I guess he's got like street smart.
Guest:So that's not nothing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like he can get through the day.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, it's there's just so much of it that you can tell.
Guest:would later be done, and I don't want to give away where, but there is at least one, and maybe when we're watching the rest of his movies, there'll be more than one.
Guest:There is at least one movie of his that I'm thinking of that does everything we're talking about here, but does it all beautifully.
Guest:Ties everything together in terms of plot mechanics, but also that hangout aspect, that kind of loving embrace of these characters, no matter who they are.
Guest:And, you know, frankly, Pulp Fiction does it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's just that the plot is so high wire.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's just this crazy, you know, how's he going to pull this off?
Guest:How's he going to pull everything together?
Guest:And, you know, if you told that story chronologically, you wouldn't feel that same feeling.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that's the leg up that that movie has.
Guest:And, you know, I think it isn't until he makes something much later where he he.
Guest:is at the peak of his tools that he's showing here in Jackie Brown, where he can slow everything down.
Guest:You can have nice quiet moments.
Guest:You know, the kind of thing you want to do when you go to somebody's house and just hang out with them on their couch, he can get that.
Guest:But at the same time, connect the story all the way through.
Guest:So it's really deeply felt when you get to the end of,
Guest:you know what was this all about with with this i feel like you get to the end and you're like the thing that's deeply felt is jackie and max cherry and you don't need all the other stuff right it's just them right it's almost like uh the before sunrise movie it's like their relationship right jack conversations yep exactly
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:This movie, it isn't able to get out of the orbit of Elmore Leonard.
Marc:So yeah, so that is a ding against it.
Marc:And yeah, I can definitely see what you're saying.
Guest:Now, I will say there are other things in it that don't work.
Guest:one of them you better not say michael keaton no michael keaton's great okay michael keaton's great michael keaton's great in this and he's great playing the same exact guy in out of sight how did that happen also i didn't realize that these two were like is the same character i'm gonna watch out of sight like tonight probably yeah out of sight is another one where it's like this is better treatment of the elmore leonard-ness right like yeah that's another great one
Guest:But no, Michael Keaton works great.
Guest:Robert De Niro does not.
Guest:Just doesn't, right?
Guest:No.
Guest:And I didn't know this until looking it up.
Guest:Apparently, he wanted in on the film and it was he wanted to play Max Cherry.
Guest:But, you know, Tarantino had already given the part to Robert Forster and he wasn't going to take it away.
Guest:So it was like, oh, well, here you can play Lewis.
Guest:He should not have done that.
Marc:No, it's a distraction.
Marc:It is total distraction.
Marc:It's a, it's a distraction in a way that it takes me out of the movie every single time, no matter like, like even on rewatch where like I can, you know, separate it, but yeah,
Marc:it is just, I can't shake it.
Marc:And I felt the same way with like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, where like, oh man, all these famous people are playing these parts.
Marc:I can't get the, you know, I can't separate that actor or actress from the character.
Marc:So it just doesn't work for me.
Marc:But in here, Robert De Niro playing this
Marc:He's kind of just out of sync with the rest of the world.
Marc:And so his character is out of sync with the world of Quentin Tarantino in a way that it just doesn't ever work.
Marc:It's like a bicycle that's not catching the gear.
Marc:It just never, never catches.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And it's like the sad part of it is any number of people who are in the regular Quentin Tarantino, you know, band of misfits could have played this part and killed it.
Marc:Michael Madsen for sure.
Guest:Would be so great.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Uh, so that definitely does not work.
Marc:The stunt casting is, uh, is not, not, not fun in this movie.
Guest:Uh, but, uh, and it was, it is, it is a five second thing.
Guest:So it's not like it ruins anything other than me in that very moment, but boy, is it ever as in, there's nothing else in the movie as indicative of what Quentin Tarantino was like publicly and
Guest:At that time, then the moment when Jackie goes into her house and turns on the answering machine and it's fucking Tarantino talking like a robot like that, that like that scene should be like shown at like if you're going to ever do like a roast of that guy, like that would be the one to be like the.
Guest:This dude was so up his own ass that in the midst of what he considered his greatest film that he had made, he put himself in it talking like a robot answering machine voice where you instantly know it's him.
Guest:Like...
Guest:It is one of the great missteps in movies.
Guest:Thankfully, like I said, it's only like five seconds long.
Marc:Yes, thankfully.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I feel like we need, we haven't talked about Michael Keaton, but when Michael Keaton arrives in this movie, like it kicks into a new gear, you know, it kicks into third, you know.
Guest:And he does the opposite of what you're saying with De Niro is like he fits perfectly into the environment, even though he's never shown up again.
Guest:We've never had Michael Keaton in another Tarantino movie.
Guest:He, for some reason, is like, oh, yeah, that's exactly the tone.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He gets it.
Marc:He got the memo like this is, and it is, it is a pithy.
Marc:It is, it is a fun, you know, good cop, bad cop scenario.
Marc:So I, I loved Michael Keaton in this movie.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, the ones we really haven't talked about and we probably should devote the rest of our time to are the three leads of this film, which if you pushed me on it,
Guest:I would say that the reason the movie is good and probably the main reason it's good is not Tarantino, but it's these three performances.
Guest:Now, granted, they could give these performances because he gave them the material.
Guest:They, he trusted them with it.
Guest:He trusted two people like Pam Grier and Robert Forster, who had not been top lining anything for decades.
Guest:Um,
Guest:And he gave Sam Jackson a part that was, you know, suitable for Sam Jackson, but definitely a skew from the popular characters that he had been playing.
Guest:So I feel like the work that those three do in this is what actually elevates the film.
Guest:And when you're talking about this as a great film, it's those three people who are great and everything else is like very good and comes up to them.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And part of that is just how excellent this Pam Greer-Robert Forrester relationship is.
Guest:Because if you think about it on the page, again, going back to what we talked about with Pulp Fiction, it's very innocent, this courtship.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Almost childlike.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:a 13 year old might be like, well, if I'm a grownup and I was trying to woo a single woman at a grownup age, what would I do?
Guest:And, you know, tell her how, you know, great she looks with an Afro in his mind, you know, or like when she gets, you know, concerned about her butt being too big, he's like, well, there's nothing wrong with that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And, and it's, you know, he, he goes out of work.
Guest:He leaves work to go to the movies, right?
Marc:Or he goes to Sam Goody to get the, the cassette of the album that he was listening to in her, in her apartment.
Marc:Like it's all stuff that we all did as kids when, when we were, we were smitten with someone.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But for some reason, it works with these two people in their 40s and 50s.
Guest:And I would say it's because of them.
Guest:Robert Forster especially sells that he is fully in love with this woman.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I believed it to his soul.
Guest:I was like, oh, Robert Forster, the actor, is in love with Pam Grier.
Guest:But yet it all works.
Guest:It's all moderated very well.
Guest:And at the same time with Sam Jackson, I believed 100% that this guy was going to fuck this up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he never was onto it, right?
Guest:Like, that's the great thing is like, you're aware that it's going to get screwed up, but that he is...
Guest:Sam Jackson.
Guest:And you'll, yeah, you'll watch him no matter what.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He, he is so self-assured and, and is thinks that he is, you know, his character is two steps ahead of everyone else.
Marc:When it's, it's found out that he just time and time again, isn't like the first money drop, the woman splits with the money.
Marc:So, you know, like it's, it's funny how much he fails.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And but also he is the guy he is the beneficiary of the few times.
Guest:And I think it's just because Tarantino loved the guy so much and he knew like basically anything he put in his mouth, he could make it funny.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Is he's the guy who has the lines where I'm like.
Guest:Those are funny lines, right?
Guest:Not just the good lines.
Guest:He's got the ones that I actually, sitting on my couch watching this, laughed out loud.
Guest:When Robert Forrester knocks on the door and he's like, what are you doing here knocking so loud?
Guest:And Robert Forrester says, I thought you might be asleep.
Guest:He goes, you're the one who's going to be asleep forever.
Marc:Or how about him explaining to Robert De Niro, who's been in jail for four years, how to unlock the car with the alarm.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:You don't do anything.
Marc:You just point at the thing.
Marc:It goes, ooh, ooh.
Guest:So I remember very clearly that seeing this movie in the theater when it came out, December 1997.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that line happened.
Guest:People laughed.
Guest:But it was afterwards, twice.
Guest:When a character goes to the car and clicks the button and the thing makes the noise, the theater roared with laughter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like that's a beautiful trick that through this line of dialogue, which I'm going to guess was like improvised by Sam Jackson, or at the very least it's on the page as like makes car alarm sound.
Guest:And he did it that he did it so well that now anytime in the movie, which is like shortly after.
Guest:And then like an hour later, when you hear a car alarm, it's the funniest thing in the movie.
Yeah.
Marc:And that's all Sam Jackson.
Marc:I mean, God damn it.
Marc:That is a talented, talented motherfucker.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Let's also address something here.
Guest:And I don't feel I have any authority, nor do you, on speaking on the appropriateness of the use of the N-word in this film.
Guest:And anyone who is upset with it has absolutely well within their right to be upset with it.
Guest:What I did notice watching this is...
Guest:Is that, again, I think a lot of that was residual stuff from Quentin Tarantino, the persona, bleeding into this.
Guest:Because the only people who say that word in this film are Sam Jackson and Pam Greer.
Guest:Well, and Chris Tucker.
Guest:And Chris Tucker, right, who's dead very quickly.
Guest:But in terms of the whole movie overall, it's the black characters.
Marc:Yeah, there are no white people saying that.
Guest:And so whatever argument you want to have that a white writer and director put that in their mouths, that's fine.
Guest:You can have that argument.
Guest:And I think that's been a lot of the kind of academic argument around this was it's not a great thing to want to valorize black-sploitation content.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Right?
Guest:That just in general, especially as a white guy doing cultural tourism in it, it's not the greatest thing.
Guest:I remember reading essays about that.
Guest:But I do want to say, I think the reaction, particularly Spike Lee's reaction...
Guest:It's like, at the time, Pulp Fiction is now running on television.
Guest:You know, it's on HBO or whatever, and it's on VHS and whatever.
Guest:And there's Tarantino himself saying it in that movie.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I think that that was the larger issue, was like...
Guest:you know, this guy had put this as kind of part of his persona where he's like, I'm the guy who's going to say things and I'm going to make things, put things in your face.
Guest:I think that was his big reaction when, when he was asked about that word being in Pulp Fiction was like, anytime a word, people say a word has too much power.
Guest:I want to get rid of the power.
Guest:I want to just, I want everybody to say, and that's, you know, that's a naive viewpoint ultimately.
Guest:And it discounts other people's perceptions.
Yeah.
Guest:But I really think that the reaction to that as it pertained to this movie, to Jackie Brown, was residual.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I don't want to take it away from anybody who doesn't like it, period.
Guest:That's totally valid.
Guest:Or justified.
Guest:Yeah, I get you.
Guest:But yeah, if you had asked me before re-watching this, is there a lot of use of the N-word in Jackie Brown?
Guest:I'd be like, oh, absolutely.
Guest:And if you were like, who says it?
Guest:I'd be like, everybody.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:There's just probably everybody's saying it all the time.
Guest:That's why.
Guest:And it's like, I was, I was surprised that it's just those three characters.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're right.
Marc:You know, I wonder if there wouldn't have been such a backlash, um, to Quentin, uh, if he just didn't cast himself in Pulp Fiction and just had like Chris, Chris Tucker do that, that role, you know?
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:You know?
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, we we've basically gone through the whole movie.
Guest:We've gone through the whole culture of Tarantino prior to this.
Guest:And I guess where we wind up with this is our ranking.
Guest:So now after having rewatched it and after, you know, all our conversation about it here, Chris, do you move this anywhere on your list?
Marc:Jackie Brown is going to stay right where it is.
Marc:It's number three for me.
Marc:I found it to be, you know, as time has passed, to be wise beyond its years.
Marc:Like, Quentin, like, I don't know how, but he wrote these scenes with a sense of history to him.
Marc:And maybe it's what you were saying, where he's kind of reacting to someone saying he's a one-trick pony.
Marc:But, you know...
Marc:there's a chunk of this movie that's seen and written not for his fans.
Marc:Those scenes are for old heads who don't think that he can make a classic movie.
Marc:He's showing them that, hey, I can make a movie that multiple generations can enjoy on different levels.
Marc:So I think it stays right where it is, number three for me.
Marc:How about you?
Guest:Well, I do remember at the time him doing interviews on MTV and saying, this movie is a love story.
Guest:Go see this.
Guest:It's a date movie.
Guest:Go with your date to see this.
Guest:And my takeaway when it was over, I didn't... Obviously...
Guest:I'm was the same age as you at the time.
Guest:So I didn't have the age or the wisdom of years to apply to the characters talking about getting older and that, but I did see the movie.
Guest:I think it was one of the reasons why I defended it as, as, as I did at the time as a solid romance, right?
Guest:Like I was taken with the, uh, with the max Jackie story above all else, which I still think rings true.
Um,
Guest:But I also think, for me, I made the correct assessment for myself that I had, like, properly rated it at the time, and that now it's slightly overrated, especially in regard to his other films.
Guest:Because after watching Reservoir Dogs two months ago when we did...
Guest:I walked away from that, putting that movie in higher esteem than I had before.
Guest:And this one, I leave it right where it is.
Guest:I'm in the same boat as you.
Guest:I'm not moving it up or down, but I'm already at baseline five.
Guest:Right.
Guest:This is the midpoint.
Guest:Now, the one I have above it, right above it, is Django Unchained, which in my memory is one of those more assured, older, you know, more recent films of his, more mature and assured films that does the thing I was talking about looping everything together, the character, the plot mechanics, and the overall feel of
Guest:In my memory, Django does that better than this movie.
Guest:And so I see it being above Jackie right now.
Guest:But maybe when I watch Django, I'll reassess.
Guest:And so I don't think this is going up above anything else, though, because like I said, I elevated Reservoir Dogs after watching it.
Guest:And I don't see anything in Jackie Brown that pushes it back above Reservoir Dogs.
Guest:I'm still going with Reservoir Dogs above this.
Guest:So I think the Jackie Brown ceiling on my list is four, whereas on yours, it's three.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:But still, in the upper echelon of film.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, that's our take on it.
Guest:If you are a Jackie Brown fan or a Jackie Brown hater, please let us know in the comments.
Guest:If you never saw it and you watched it because of this, I would love to hear that.
Guest:I would love to hear from people who never saw it before.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So the comment link is there in the episode description.
Guest:Go click on that.
Guest:And next time we will be back with a show that is not recorded a week in advance.
Guest:So we will be all up in your stuff with WTF recent episodes and anything else that's been going on in the world of Marc Maron, which is quite a world to be in.
Guest:And until then, I'm Brendan and that's Chris.
Guest:Peace.