True Romance

“I feel like my heart is gonna go pee.”

That’s Patricia Arquette proclaiming her love to Christian Slater from the lip of a giant billboard towering over the Hollywood Hills. How did I ever miss this early 90’s classic? G got his hands on a director's cut of Tony Scott’s True Romance. Tarantino wrote the screenplay and it has his fingerprints all over it: the hilariously over-the-top violence, the droll cadence of the noir dialect, the palette of 1950’s Americana from Arquette’s turquoise stiletto heels and matching over-sized sunglasses to Slater’s silhouetted alter-ego in the guise of a young Elvis (played by Val Kilmer, by the way). And of course let’s not forget the Pepto-Bismol pink Cadillac.

Not to mention the cameos, the eye candy, the soundtrack -- from Big Bopper’s Chantilly Lace to Nymphomaniac’s I Want Your Body to Billy Idol’s White Wedding as a backdrop to the tattoo parlor scene when Arquette and Slater bond over matching tattoos.

A few other cinematic highlights:

Christopher Walken’s bone chilling portrayal of mob boss Vincenzo Coccotti and his interrogation scene with Dennis Hopper, the tension wound so tight you can hardly look at the screen. As Walken explains to Hopper with exquisite Walkenian impassivity, at once glacial and maniacal, “I’m the Anti-Christ. You got me in a vendetta kind of mood. You tell the angels in heaven you never seen an evil so singularly personified as you did in the face of the man who killed you.”

Gary Oldman as the dreadlocked ersatz homeboy Drexl Spivey, with his black leather beret, glass eye, and metal-capped grin, his face a scarred map of knife fights, he looks like Jack Sparrow’s evil twin. As he states so very eloquently, “Now I know I’m pretty, but I ain’t as pretty as a couple of titties.”

Bradd Pitt’s Spicoliesque characterization of Floyd, the couch potato/stoner dude ripping righteous bowlfuls from a makeshift honey-bear bong (classic!). It’s a somewhat early role for Pitt (post-Thelma and Louise but pre-Fight Club) and it’s a deliciously goofy spoof, with Pitt donning a red-yellow-and-green Rastafarian beanie and the blank stare and dopey grin of a true pothead. Watching him chuckle stupidly confirms he's lit up a few real ones in the name of theatrical research. As the mob men burst through the screen door, shotguns cocked, Floyd mumbles from his horizontal position on the couch, “You guys wanna smoke a bowl?"

And Patricia Arquette’s Alabama Whitman, platinum blonde, her voluptuously whimsical wardrobe lighting up the screen: neon polka-dotted camisole, skin-tight leopard skin knickers, heart-shaped drop earrings. She’s the Goodwill’s poster girl, her New Wave sensibility bringing on waves of nostalgia and vivid memories of mothball smells and scratchy synthetic fabrics. As she says to Christian Slater after their first accidental date, “I’m not a whore. I’m a call-girl. There’s a difference, you know?”

The film is exceptionally violent, but I suppose that’s redundant considering who wrote the screenplay. I usually don’t gravitate towards films with gratuitous brutality, but I couldn’t help give a few sideline cheers as Arquette bashes James Gandolfini’s head in with a porcelain toilet tank lid after he beats her senseless in an attempt to find out where the suitcase of cocaine is hiding. He breaks the cardinal boy-rule that you aren’t supposed to hit girls, and he does it repeatedly and without shame. Difficult to watch, yet when the tables are turned and she jabs him with a corkscrew and then gets him straight in the eyes with a heavy mist of hairspray, lighting his face on fire, you find yourself egging her on with shouts of approval, the revenge is just that sweet.

Right before the ending credits roll across the screen, Alabama’s thick southern drawl in a voice-over narration:

“Amid the chaos of that day, when all I could hear was the thunder of gunshots, and all I could smell was the violence in the air, I look back and am amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true, that three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool.”