By the time Jackie Brown was released in 1997, it had been over three years since Quentin Tarantino had released a film that he both wrote and directed. To be sure, his presence had been felt in all that time passed, due to various projects he had participated in, in one way or another, be it his story (Natural Born Killers), his direction (ER's "Motherhood" episode, his segment of Four Rooms), his acting (Destiny Turns on the Radio, an episode of the sitcom All-American Girl, hosting Saturday Night Live) or a variation of these (From Dusk Till Dawn, which he wrote and starred in, but didn't direct).
In addition, he had become a regular fixture on talk shows. On one, the Charlie Rose Show, he hinted that his next full-fledged project as a writer/director might just be an adaption of someone else's work. In that same interview, he also mentioned his affection for writer Elmore Leonard. Sure enough, after a certain point, it was announced that QT's official third film would be a loose adaptation of Leonard's Rum Punch, which he re-titled Jackie Brown.
Those familiar with Leonard's writing probably realized what a great fit the two were for one another- I myself was unfamiliar with the writer at the time, though I had read some stuff in the same ballpark. After seeing the movie Fletch, I had picked up the novel it was based on, by author Gregory McDonald. I loved it even more than the film, and ended up reading the whole series.
As with Leonard, Harrison's books are populated by mid-level gangsters and would-be criminals and assorted lowlifes and the people trying to stop them, be they cops or private eyes or what have you. Both are also characterized by dialogue that, rather than being heavy on exposition, actually comes off more as conversational, like the sort of thing that people might actually talk about, rather than something that was contrived to communicate a plot point. Sound familiar?
I've since acquainted myself with quite a bit of Leonard's work- so has Hollywood. Other books and stories he wrote that have been adapted to film include Mr. Majestyk (starring Charles Bronson, and name-dropped by QT in True Romance), 52 Pick-Up, Stick, Cat Chaser, Out of Sight (which featured Michael Keaton, reprising his role as Ray Nicolette from this film, as well as FDTD-vet George Clooney), Get Shorty and Be Cool, the latter two which featured John Travolta in a role not too far removed from his turn as Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction.
There's also the TV shows Karen Sisco (inspired by J-Lo's character in Out of Sight, with Carla Gugino in the role), Justified (based on a series of stories and novels revolving around the character Raylan Givens, played by Timothy Olyphant), and, most recently, another winning adaptation of Get Shorty, which is about to start its third season on Epix.
In addition, there's the 2013 movie Life of Crime, an adaptation of Leonard's The Switch, which features characters from Rum Punch (and thus, by extension, Jackie Brown) and serves as a sort of prequel to this film. In that film, which is well-worth a watch, Yasiin Bey (aka rapper Mos Def) plays a young Ordell Robbie, Samuel L. Jackson's character in Jackie, while John Hawkes (who was also in From Dusk Till Dawn) plays a young Louis Gara, Robert De Niro's character in the film. Isla Fisher also takes over Bridget Fonda's role as Melanie Ralston.
Fun fact: A young Tarantino once shoplifted a copy of The Switch as a teenager and was caught and reprimanded for it. But he was already so invested in the book and its characters that he went back and shoplifted it again, this time getting away with it! Leonard told Tarantino he should return to the store and pay for the book as a way of paying it forward for his success- no word on whether he did so.
Leonard himself served as an executive producer on Jackie Brown, and Tarantino had his blessing for the changes he made, primarily changing the main character's name from Jackie Burke to Jackie Brown, making her black instead of white and changing the location from Florida to LA. Otherwise, the film follows the book pretty closely. Indeed, Leonard said that it was one of the best screenplays he'd ever read, period, let alone one adapting one of his novels and stories.
Interestingly, QT had initially planned to adapt one of Leonard's other novels, Freaky Deaky or Killshot, and he and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary acquired the rights to that end, along with Rum Punch, which QT planned to let someone else direct. But after re-reading the novel, he realized he loved it so much he wanted to direct it himself. Killshot was eventually also made into a film, produced by Lawrence Bender, Jackie's producer and QT's frequent collaborator.
For the cast, QT chose a host of longtime favorites, some of which had been considered for his other projects, including the legendary Pam Grier, who he had considered to play Eric Stoltz' character's wife in Pulp Fiction, but ultimately opted not to, as he couldn't imagine anyone ordering Pam Grier around, as Stoltz' character does with his wife in the film. The role instead went to Rosanna Arquette, but QT promised Grier the two would work together soon.
A lot of the time, when filmmakers make such promises, they rarely follow through, but QT not only did so, he flat-out gave Grier the lead- she is indeed the titular Jackie Brown. The role would not only revitalize her career, it would garner her a lot of awards attention, though, sadly, she didn't end up winning anything major for it. Still, in the long-term, it certainly paid off, as Grier has worked steadily to this day.
Grier is, of course, the Queen of the Blaxploitation flicks Tarantino grew up loving. Indeed, QT's main reason for changing the title character's name from Burke to Brown was to pay homage to Grier's starring role in the film Foxy Brown. Other favorites of that period include The Big Doll House, Women in Cages (clips from the film crop up in the Grindhouse feature Planet Terror; Patricia Arquette's character in True Romance, Alabama, is also named after Grier's character), The Big Bird Cage, Hit Man, Black Mama White Mama, Coffy, Scream Blacula Scream, The Arena, Sheba Baby, Bucktown, Friday Foster, Drum and Greased Lightning.
In addition, Grier's frequent co-star, character actor Sid Haig, crops up as a judge who sets Jackie's bail after she is arrested. Haig was considered for the Marsellus Wallace role in Pulp Fiction, but balked when he saw what he would have to do in the film. He has since said it was one of his biggest regrets.
Haig also experienced a career resurgence after Jackie, most prominently in his work with writer/director Rob Zombie, who went on to cast him in most of his films, notably as "Captain Spaulding" in House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects and the forthcoming 3 From Hell.
Another 70's vet that benefited enormously from being in this film was Robert Forster, who received an Academy Award nod for his work. Forster was a favorite of Tarantino's from his roles in Medium Cool and Delta Force in particular, but fellow kids of the 80's like myself probably know him better from the likes of Disney's The Black Hole, Alligator, Satan's Princess, Maniac Cop III, South Beach, American Yakuza, Scanners: The Showdown, Original Gangstas (also with Grier), Uncle Sam and American Perfekt, all of which were featured on cable regularly at the time, as well as being home video/rental favorites.
Tarantino looked to the 80's for another featured role, that of cop Mark Dargas, played by Michael Bowen. Bowen should also be a familiar face to 80's kids, having been in the teen classic Valley Girl, as well as such cult favorites as Forbidden World, The Wild Life, Night of the Comet, Private Resort, Iron Eagle, Less Than Zero, Season of Fear, Mortal Passions and Love and a .45. He was also in The Godfather III, Beverly Hills Cop III, The Player and Magnolia. Bowen would later work with QT again in Kill Bill and Django Unchained.
Other notable cast members in the film include: LisaGay Hamilton (TV's The Practice, House of Cards) as Sheronda and Hattie Winston (TV's The Electric Company, Becker) as Simone, two of Ordell's other "girls," along with main squeeze, Melanie (Bridget Fonda, Singles, Single White Female); T'Keyah Crystal Keymáh (TV's In Living Color, That's So Raven) as Raynelle, the junkie that Ordell hides out with late in the film; and both Chris Tucker and Tommy "Tiny" Lister of the huge hit Friday.
My experience of seeing this film was, in many ways, the polar opposite of my experience of seeing Pulp Fiction for the second time. It was Christmas Day, the theater was packed, and everyone couldn't have been more excited to see it. Have you ever been at a movie where the excitement in the air was palpable? This was definitely one of those cases.
Just as before a horror movie, everyone is ready to be scared, or a comedy where everyone is ready to laugh, such was the case with Jackie Brown, only here everyone was ready to be entertained, to be impressed. After all, it was Tarantino's official follow-up to the smash-hit Pulp Fiction, and everyone loved that film, so the audience could not have been more in QT's pocket.
Alas, as the film went on, and it became painfully clear that this wasn't going to be the same kind of film as QT's break-out success, you could practically feel the air suck out of the room. I think it started in earnest with- spoiler alert- Chris Tucker's death. One thing modern audiences have to understand was how beloved Tucker was at the time- Friday was a ginormous hit, especially with black audiences, and when QT took out Tucker early on after he had barely been in one scene, people were legitimately shocked.
Of course, that was sort of the point. Just as Alfred Hitchcock took out Janet Leigh early on in Psycho, and Wes Craven did the same thing with Drew Barrymore years later with Scream, Tarantino wanted to shock audiences by killing Tucker so early on. He'd used a similar tactic, after all, in Pulp Fiction, with John Travolta's character, only to bring him back later on in the film, which cleverly won audiences back over. But there was no coming back for Tucker here, and I'm not sure Tarantino ever won the audience fully back over at the screening I attended, after that surprising scene.
In addition, I saw the film with a predominately African-American audience, and you could feel that they didn't like that Robert Forster was Pam Grier's love interest here. I've certainly experienced the other way around- I had a black friend that both dated and later married a white girl, and even in the 90's, that was still iffy in the South, which is probably why he moved to Atlanta. (They're still married to this day, which is cool.)
Indeed, I myself experienced that sort of racism first-hand, when the mother of a girl I dated took me aside one night and told me if she heard about her daughter being out and about with a black guy ever again- one of my best friends was black and a nosy neighbor had spotted us in a local convenience store together and reported it back to her mom- I would be in serious trouble. Only she didn't say "black guy," as you might have figured.
This was, however, the first time I'd experienced things from the other perspective, as several black viewers audibly vocalized their dismay in Forster's kiss with Grier late in the film. Up until then, they were sort of tolerating it- I remember one viewer calling out, when Forster spotted Grier in the film for the first time: "That white boy's got him a case of 'jungle fever'," which got a big laugh from the audience. But yeah, they mostly weren't having it for that kiss.
I myself was also kind of disappointed in the film, if I'm being honest. Although now I can see that pretty much every film Tarantino's done is about adults for adults, at the time it was hard to relate to a bunch of middle-aged folks and their problems. I was well aware of who Grier was and had seen many of her films by that point, but Jackie Brown wasn't really a Blaxploitation flick, in spite of being more or less promoted as such.
Sure, it has a lot of the same trappings- the soundtrack is mostly nicked from Blaxploitation films, the very title conjured up memories of Foxy Brown for certain viewers, and there was a prominent black cast involved, as well as a storyline that revolved around a gangster. But this wasn't really a gangster film, per se, and there wasn't much in the way of action, really, save a handful of quick killings, often shot from a distance or from a weird angle, so you didn't really see anything.
In other words, the film seemed like Tarantino was consciously moving away from the very things that made people love him in the first place. Even his patented dialogue was slightly muted, and the characters in some case seemed a bit underwritten, particularly De Niro's, Fonda's, and the cops played by Keaton and Bowen. In short, the film played as a complete reversal of the very things that made QT popular.
Don't get me wrong, critics mostly loved it, and the film made over $74 million on a $12 million budget, which ain't too shabby, though nowhere near Pulp Fiction numbers, which grossed a whopping $213 million on a roughly $8 million budget. Like I said, it was basically the polar opposite reaction to Pulp Fiction here, but instead of positive word of mouth leading to bigger profits, here, negative word of mouth from audiences led to a lower gross overall, making this a bit of a disappointment at the time.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I dislike the film- quite the opposite, in fact. Now that I myself am a bit older, I find myself relating to the themes a lot more, which deal a lot with growing older and the ramifications of not achieving all that you wanted in life, and feeling stuck by that. I get that now, whereas back then, not so much. And given that QT's primary appeal was with younger viewers at the time- though he was starting to win over older ones- I just don't think they were ready for the newly "mature" Tarantino. They wanted the wild man that made Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.
But the film has aged remarkably well, and has since been reassessed by audiences, and many mark it among their favorites of QT's work, if not their outright favorite: Samuel L. Jackson has gone on record as saying it's his, for instance. Watching it again, I was surprised at how much more I enjoyed it this time around- probably because, like I said, I can relate to it more, now that I'm closer to the ages of the characters.
Another thing that has grown on me is the wonderful soundtrack. At first, I was a little meh on it, as it was much more laid back and less quirky than the soundtracks that had accompanied QT's previous work. But, in time, much as I grew to love the film, I also grew to love the soundtrack. Part of it was my quest to seek out the music that wasn't included on the official soundtracks of each of the films QT was involved in, thus expanding them and making them a truer representation of the films from which they are taken.
Another was the fact that, in doing so, I, by extension, made the listening experiences for each film richer and more rewarding. In other words, by listening to every song QT selected for each film, including the "incidental" music, I really began to appreciate just how much work went into the process and how well the music represents the films at hand.
For instance, Jackie Brown marks the first time QT used film score music from other people's movies in his films. In this case, he uses various tracks from, appropriately enough, the Coffy soundtrack by Roy Ayers to serve as the recurring score to this film. (None of these tracks are on the released soundtrack.) This gambit was one he would later perfect on the soundtracks to the Kill Bill movies and has been a trademark ever since.
In addition, he also nabbed a few songs from other movies, such as Bobby Womack's title track for the movie "Across 110th Street," The Crusaders' "Street Life," from the movie Sharky's Machine, star Pam Grier's own "Long Time Woman" (which she had actually forgotten recording when QT presented it to her) from The Big Bird Cage, and, of all things, The Vampire Sound Incorporation's "The Lion and the Cucumber," from the cult flick Vampyros Lesbos- incidentally, one of my favorite scores ever to a movie, or technically movies, in this case. (Read more about it here.)
Beyond that, QT also includes his more typical left-of-center choices, like The Grass Roots' "Midnight Confessions," The Guess Who's "Undun," Slash's Snakepit's "Jizz Da Pitt," Johnny Cash's "Tennessee Stud," and the amusing Latino version of "Grazing in the Grass" by Orchestra Harlow (in the scene where Ordell confronts Louis in the van), perhaps better-known in its 1969 incarnation by the Friends of Distinction or the original instrumental version by trumpeter Hugh Masekela.
There's also a host of soul/R&B classics from the likes of The Delfonics (prominently featured and discussed in the film), Minnie Riperton, Bloodstone, Bill Withers, The Meters, Elvin Bishop, Jermaine Jackson, The Supremes, and a return appearance by the Brothers Johnson's "Strawberry Letter 23," which was also in Pulp Fiction, albeit barely, but is featured much more prominently and memorably here.
All in all, Jackie Brown is a movie that had to grow on people at the time, but has since gone on to become one of hardcore QT fans' personal favorites, myself included. I think Tarantino heard all the criticism about him being a possible one-trick-pony, in light of the stuff he'd been doing post-Pulp Fiction and wanted to up-end a lot of people's biggest criticism of him. In that, he certainly succeeded, but at the cost of losing some fans in the process.
But looking back, it's a remarkably mature, tightly-controlled work from a filmmaker that was clearly coming into his own- Tarantino was in his mid-30s at the time, so he was obviously maturing as both a writer and director, but also as a human being as well.
If you go back and watch the bonuses on the DVD/Blu-Ray and compare them to the ones on his previous efforts, it's readily apparent that he'd calmed down a bit and wasn't as in your face and obnoxious as he was in the early days, when some people were put off by his relentless enthusiasm and omnipresence on television as a regular guest on talk shows and the like and in various movies and TV shows. (He even relegated his appearance in this film to an answering machine message, as if to say, I hear you, everyone.)
But who can blame QT for taking advantage of opportunity when it presented itself? For a lot of people, fame is fleeting, and he couldn't have known if he'd even have a career ten years from then, much less for decades to come. So, I get it. But I think he also realized there was a downside to over saturating the market, and that backlash was probably inevitable, which is why he decided to, instead of giving the people what they expected or even thought they wanted, something they didn't expect: a well-thought-out slice-of-life depiction of older characters and their trials and tribulations, almost entirely devoid of the hipster-isms of his previous films, as a hired hand or otherwise.
As such, Jackie Brown doesn't just hold up- it's a stone cold classic, and arguably one of Pam Grier's finest hours, if not the best thing she's ever done, and one of Jackson's most memorable characters as well. Ditto Forster.
And those side characters, the ones that seemed sort of slight back then, now come off as the sort of people that drift in and out of one's life: some make an bigger impression than you realize at the time, some are gone before you know it, but all of them are worth hanging out with for around two-and-a-half hours.
Though the film doesn't reward re-watching the way his prior efforts do, it does deepen in meaning the more you watch it, which is equally cool in its own way. And, as I implied, the older you get, the more this should hit home for you, which makes it one of those films that actually increases in importance as the years go by. I think it's one of his best in retrospect, and I'm sorry I (or others) couldn't see that as fully at the time. But better late than never.
After the somewhat lukewarm response to this film, a somewhat chastened Tarantino would return to more familiar, cult-flick-fan-friendly waters with his epic tribute to the exploitation flicks he grew up loving, Kill Bill, but it would take him a while to get there: six long years, in fact. Join me next week when we tackle that epic, two-film-in-one undertaking that put Tarantino back on top at the box office!
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