Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown Austin Premiere (December 20, 1997)

Ten years ago today, on Saturday, December 20, 1997, just five days before Quentin Tarantino's Jackie Brown opened nationally on Christmas Day, the Austin Film Society hosted a benefit premiere of that film at Austin's Arbor 7 theatre. Special guests present at that event included Tarantino himself, and directors Robert Rodriguez, Rick Linklater and Mike Judge. The event sold out among members of the Film Society before having the general public had an opportunity to purchase tickets. To accommodate as many AFS members as possible, the film was shown on two screens, with one beginning at 7:00 pm, the other fifteen minutes later.

While the 7:15pm audience waited for Tarantino to arrive and introduce the film, Austin Chronicle editor Louis Black made a few brief announcements. He thanked everyone for purchasing the $25 tickets, adding that all proceeds would go to support the Texas Filmmakers Production Board, which annually awards monetary prizes to independent Texas filmmakers. Black also elaborated upon the history of Film Society. To the dismay of many audience members, he noted that AFS was unable to secure a venue for a post-event party, as the bedlam of the Christmas holidays forced their original location to cancel. They couldn't find another place in time, so they arranged for a brief, informal Q&A to be held at the Barnes & Noble next door to the theatre. Black explained that both audiences would have to cram into the store and listen to Tarantino and the other directors, who would address the group from the second store balcony. At this point, Black noticed that Tarantino, who had arrived in Austin that afternoon, was now in the back of the theatre. Black then introduced Linklater, founder of the film society and director of 1991's Slacker and 1993's Dazed and Confused. Then Tarantino, Rodriguez, Linklater and Judge walked down the aisle to the front of the theatre.

They were met with applause.

After thanking everyone for supporting the society, Linklater noted that Tarantino was only personally introducing the film in three cities: Los Angeles, New York and Austin. He also recalled an 1994 interview he conducted with Tarantino, who was then in town promoting Pulp Fiction. While browsing the soundtrack section at the now defunct Sound Exchange, a record store near the University of Texas campus, Tarantino told Linklater that he had considered casting Pam Grier in the part that ultimately went to Rosanna Arquette. The subject arose because Tarantino was looking for the soundtrack to Coffy, a 1970s blaxploitation film direct by Jack Kill and starring Grier. He then told Linklater that he didn't want to cast Grier in such a small part, as it wouldn't really have been a favor to her. Saying that he really wanted to work with Grier, Tarantino told Linklater that she would have to be the lead.

After relating that three year old conversation, Linklater introduced Rodriguez, famed former UT film school drop-out and director of El Mariachi and Desperado. Rodriguez, who also directed Tarantino in 1996's From Dusk Till Dawn and worked with him on 1995's Four Rooms, told the audience that Tarantino was happiest just watching movies at his apartment. He remembered how content Tarantino was just watching a 16mm print of 1973's White Lightning projected onto his apartment wall without a screen. (Note: Tarantino showed this film in Austin at his 1996 Filmfest, although the Wikipedia entry incorrectly notes that that festival did not begin until 1997.) Rodriguez then introduced Austinite Judge, creator of TV's "Beavis and Butthead" and "King of the Hill." Judge received a great deal of applause, more so than Linklater and Rodriguez had before, and more than Tarantino would in just a few minutes. Judge spoke briefly, starting with an impression of Hank Hill. After a few jokes, he said he hadn't yet seen the film, so he would end his remarks to avoid additional delay. (Margaret Moser of the Austin Chronicle would later observe that "while it was fun to schmooze with Quentin Tarantino, Rick Linklater, and Robert Rodriguez at the Austin Film Society's benefit Jackie Brown screening last weekend, it was Mike Judge, using his Hank Hill voice and the word 'sodomy' to introduce Tarantino, that made me almost die laughing.").

Tarantino was his usual self. Everyone laughed at things he said, not necessarily because it was funny, but because it was he that was saying it. He thanked the audience and his fellow directors for their support. He talked about how much he enjoyed staying in Austin. He briefly mentioned his other visits (1994 for a screening Pulp Fiction, early 1996 for the Austin premiere of From Dusk to Dawn, mid 1996 for the Tarantino Filmfest, and early 1997 for the world premiere of Full Tilt Boogie, the documentary about the making of From Dusk Till Dawn.). He also related that when he and Rodriguez were in production of From Dusk Till Dawn, they knew that there would be an Austin premiere, so they peppered the film with in-jokes just for that audience.

(Image courtesy of Laura's "I Met Quentin Tarantino" page from 1996.).

Thus, he had wanted to do a Texas premiere of Jackie Brown but had been too busy to make the necessary arrangements. So when Linklater called him about a benefit premiere, he happily obliged him. (In a mock Linklater voice, Tarantino said something to the effect of: "Quentin, I can't be responsible for the film in Austin if you don't have an Austin premiere!")

Tarantino then began to speak of his new film. He mentioned that fans come up to him and say they've seen all his movies, which surprises him, since he's only made two. He said that Jackie Brown definitely had a 1970s feel to it, although it was not set in the 1970s. (In fact, it is set in 1995, two years prior to the year of its release). He said it is the story of five characters whose lives were full of opportunities in the 1970s, all of which they squandered. The film, he continued, represented their chance their last chance to succeed, although there is only enough fortune for all of the characters. Tarantino's caveat: If the audience is expecting Pulp Fiction, then they'll like the film, but they'll soon realize that it not Pulp Fiction. Indeed, Tarantino had only recently told Entertainment Weekly that "[i]t's definitely not Pulp Fiction II."

In the same EW interview, he continued, saying "I felt I'd gone about as far as I could with my signature shooting style, so this one is at a lower volume than Pulp. It's not an epic, it's not an opera. It's a character study. I knew I didn't want to go bigger than Pulp, so I went underneath it." Before sitting down, he pointed out that there was one member of the cast in the audience. He asked her to stand. He introduced her as the "AK-47 girl," a character who appears in a brief segment called "Chicks Who Love Guns," a TV show that the characters played by Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro watch early in the film.

Tarantino then took his seat, as did the other celebrities.

(Aint-It-Cool-News publisher and all-around hack Harry Knowles, in his summary of the event, reported that Sandra Bullock was also in the audience.)

The film begins with a sequence very similar to the opening of The Graduate. Grier, an airline stewardess, is transported by an passenger conveyor belt as the credits appear on the screen. Grier did a respectable job in the title role. Jackson, who plays the standard Samuel L. Jackson character, lays it on a little thick. De Niro's character, as Tarantino would point out later, had little dialogue, relying more on physical gestures and posture. Tarantino would say he wanted this character to be akin to a stack of "dirty laundry." Micheal Keaton received the least screen time of all of the major players, while Bridget Fonda's surfer-girl didn't do much more than watch television and smoke marijuana. Chris Tucker, then famous for his flamboyant role in The Fifth Element and with the Rush Hour films in his future, had a brief cameo as a crook named Beaumont Livingston. The true joy was Robert Forster, who did a splendid job as bail bondsman Max Cherry, the Grier character's love interest. The film was lengthy at almost two and a half hours, and as Tarantino himself noted, it was no Pulp Fiction. Rather, it was a relatively straightforward crime film requiring little post-hoc reconstruction. There was an obvious attempt to make it look like a 1970s, as the camera work, editing and lighting were all throwbacks to that era of heist films. Absent also were the violence and standard Tarantino dialogue staples. (At the post screening Q&A, Tarantino would say that the dialogue was 60 percent his and 40 percent from the Elmore Leonard novel upon which the film is based.) Those expecting the Madonna speech from Reservoir Dogs or Ezekiel 25:17 from Pulp Fiction would later express their disappointment on the Internet in its pre-blog days.

After the film, the audience left for Barnes and Noble, already crowded as the audience from the first screening had just arrived. After twenty minutes, Tarantino and company appeared on the balcony. He and Linklater both had microphones, and Linklater said that he would be recognizing people for questions. The questions were standard fare. When asked when the FDTD documentary would be released nationally, Tarantino replied that Full Tilt Boogie would probably be in theatres around mid-1998. (This would prove true. After appearing at some film festivals in late 1997 and 1998, the film was released nationally in the United States on July 31, 1998.). Tarantino said that soon he would be acting in a Broadway revival of "Wait Until Dark" starring Marisa Tomei (who had appeared in 1995's Four Rooms). (This revival of "Wait Until Dark" would begin with a brief pre-Broadway run at Boston's Wilbur Theatre in February of 1998 before moving to New York's Brooks Atkinson Theatre for a formal April 1998 opening. Of that stage performance, Ben Brantley of The New York Times would observe that although he "brought an exhilarating burst of oxygen to the American crime movie" as "an actor making his Broadway debut in the production . . . he creates an inverse effect, draining the adrenaline from a play that if it isn't scary, isn't anything.").

Rodriguez said that he would begin shooting a horror film in Austin in March. It was written by Kevin Williamson, scriptwriter of Scream and Scream 2. (This would be The Faculty, perhaps the most forgettable film of his oeuvre.). Rodriguez warned those gathered to watch out for him killing teenagers around town. Linklater said that AFS would host an Austin premiere of his latest film, The Newton Boys, sometime in March of 1998. This Texas gangster film stars Matthew McConaughey and Ethan Hawke. Judge, who reminded everyone that he is still working on King of the Hill, confessed that he was then developing a script (and perhaps he was referring to what would become 1999's Office Space.). He is also contemplating sequel to 1996's Beavis and Butt-head Do America, although that project never materialized.

As for Jackie Brown, Tarantino explained that in one scene Bridget Fonda's character watches the 1974 film Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, which features her father, Peter Fonda. Tarantino said that that film was not then available on video, so they had to transfer his 16mm print onto video to use it in the scene. (Tarantino showed this film at his 1996 Filmfest.).

Tarantino also said that he is perhaps the only person in the world who doesn't understand the meaning of the term "Tarantino-esque."

Rodriguez asked him why he used a score, since he was hesitant to do so in the past. Tarantino explained that Harvey Weinstein, one of the producers, suggested the idea. Tarantino balked, saying it was too late in production to bring someone in to do a score. He went on to say that scores should be done before principal photography, so that the scenes can be shot around the score, rather than the other way around. Weinstein then suggested that Tarantino take an existing score and put it in the film. Money wouldn't be a problem, Weinstein said. Tarantino decided to use some of the score from the Grier flick Coffy, which worked well, he said. Rather than having someone attempt to replicate a blaxploitation score, he now had the real thing.

He said De Niro became interested in the project on an airplane. On a flight, they were sitting together talking about upcoming projects. Tarantino told De Niro that he was adapting an Elmore Leonard novel for a film that would star Grier. De Niro rose to call his agent about the project that very moment. Tarantino praised De Niro, saying that he is perhaps the greatest actor alive, so much so that people are beginning to take him for granted. He should have been nominated for 1995's Casino, Tarantino related, but he was not, simply because people aren't surprised when he gives a good performance.

Someone asked if Tarantino, as a former film buff, was intimidated working with all of his former idols. Tarantino said he was not. The only actors that make him nervous are "bad actors," because you can coach them through a scene, but they won't learn from their mistakes. He said the most nerve-wracking part about the film was sending the screenplay to Leonard. Of course, Tarantino wasn't shy about relating Leonard's praise. Leonard told him it was the best adaptation of any of his novels.

Louis Black wrote of the film and its Austin screening in the following week's Austin Chronicle:

Jackie Brown also looks at belief and redemption. A surprisingly contemplative film, it displays the characterization for which Tarantino has been famous without the spectacular cinematic set pieces of which there are so many in Pulp Fiction. The story is astonishing -- imagine a mature and sophisticated look at the characters from a generic blaxploitation film 20 years later. This is a film about who people think they are now in their lives, in the context of who they once thought they were going to be (who they are now in light of who they once thought they would be when they reached this point in their lives). It is about acceptance but not resignation, about dreams, but with ambitions dramatically lowered.

The criticism of the film will focus on its length and on it not being Pulp Fiction 2. The length is a problem; it is long, it drags in places, but this is leisurely storytelling that depends on varying speeds and tones for its success. The "too muchness" is part of the charm of Jackie Brown -- I would have it longer rather than shorter.

It isn't Pulp Fiction 2. Tarantino warned us of that before the film but I didn't realize completely what he meant until the stunning final shot of Pam Grier's face (and this is a movie told in faces). The whole film leads to that one face, Grier's face, and to the world that face has seen.

Shorn of Pulp Fiction's extravagances, what is surprising is how similar the films are, not in narrative or tone, but in moral vision.

...

Tarantino has made another great movie, exploring the same themes as Pulp Fiction but in an entirely different way with an entirely different tone. This isn't really a review; I'm friendly with Tarantino and have given up film reviewing. But, damn, his work is exciting -- intellectually and cinematically. In Jackie Brown, the performances are amazing, the dialogue brilliant (nobody writes dialogue like Tarantino), Pam Grier's lead drives the film in a way women are rarely allowed to. I can't wait to see Jackie Brown again. In the meantime, I've watched Pulp Fiction twice.

Ken Lieck, also of the Austin Chronicle, wrote of the post screening merriment:

It's been a notable two weeks for cartoonist/directors taking their turns on the stage. Of course you noticed Beavis and Butt-head Do America director Mike Judge at Antone's reprising his on-again, off-again role as bass player for Doyle Bramhall. And last week we covered Robert Rodriguez playing with Tito & Tarantula at Stubb's performing "Angry Cockroaches" from his film From Dusk Till Dawn. The return of Quentin Tarantino this weekend, of course, served to increase the list of celeb sightings tenfold. The Tito show at the Continental on Sunday proved to be the (hardly secret) hangout spot following Saturday's screening of Jackie Brown, where Tarantino, Rodriguez, Judge, and Rick Linklater had been on hand. The above -- minus Judge -- were spotted at Sunday's show, along with Ray Benson and Cindy Cashdollar of Asleep at the Wheel, Mojo Nixon, Sarah Brown, Rodriguez's wife, producer Elizabeth Avellán, band manager Mark Proct, Wammo (sans pig), and "The AK-47 Girl." Too bad Tito didn't know a lounge version of "Stuck in the Middle With You" -- QT coulda joined in wearing his Elvis outfit from The Golden Girls!

Everything comes back to Tarantino's appearance on "The Golden Girls," doesn't it?

Quentin Tarantino on All-American Girl (February 22, 1995)

Above: Title card from the 1994-1995 television sitcom, "All-American Girl."

After achieving massive commercial and critical success with 1994's Pulp Fiction, a 31 year old Quentin Tarantino appeared on a 1995 February Sweeps episode of ABC's "All-American Girl," the short lived sitcom starring his friend, Korean-American comedienne Margaret Cho.

Above: "Pulp Sitcom" mock title card.

The episode in question was called "Pulp Sitcom," which originally aired on Wednesday, February 22, 1995. The episode was the season's second to last, and ultimately, the penultimate episode of the series (which would be canceled later that year after a period of limbo). More an extended comedy sketch than a true situational comedy episode, "Pulp Sitcom" recreates a number of the more famous scenes in Tarantino's magnum opus, all in the context of Cho's Valley Girl-like protagonist's relationship with Tarantino's pop culture obsessed character.

Above: Desmond (Tarantino) and Benny (Kusatsu) look in the briefcase.

The episode's plot is as follows: Desmond Winocki (Tarantino) is the video supplier to the retail book establishment of Benny Kim (Clyde Kusatsu), the father of the sitcom's protagonist, Margaret Kim (Cho). Winocki walks in to Kim's store to deliver a briefcase containing some videos he had requested. Desmond places the briefcase on the table, and he and Benny open it. Light shines from the interior of the brief case just as it did Pulp Fiction. From it, Desmond hands Kim a copy of Dorf Goes Auto Racing and a reading light, revealed to be the source of the mysterious glow. Thereupon, Margaret enters the room and is introduced by her father to Desmond. The two briefly discuss movies, leading Desmond to say, with proper irony, that the film Speed (released the previous year), was "a little violent for my tastes."

Above: Margaret Kim (Cho) attempts to draw a square.

Desmond then asks her on a date, to which she reluctantly agrees. She explains her initial hesitance to her father, noting that Desmond is, as they say, a square. To illustrate her point, she mimics Uma Thurman in Pulp by drawing a square in the air. She inadvertently creates a trapezoid instead. But the date is set, and the initial plan is to go to dinner and then return to Desmond's apartment to watch his new "favorite" film, Tim Burton's Ed Wood.

Above: Desmond (Tarantino) and Margaret (Cho) dance at the Fantasy Diner.

The two venture to Fantasy Diner, a send-up of both TV's "Fantasy Island" and Pulp's Jack Rabbit Slim's, complete with a Ricardo Montalban maître d', a crew of mimes, and an Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini waiter. They discuss actress Debralee Scott (who played Hotzi Totzi on "Welcome Back, Kotter" and Cathy Shumway on "Mary Hartman, Marty Hartman"), leading Margaret to remark that she "wouldn't have taken you for such a culturally aware guy." She orders the Warren Burger burger and the Pam Grier coffee, while Desmond orders a Hudson Brothers burrito. As a disco song comes over the restaurant's sound system, the two take to the dance floor and perform a number of silly dances, from the electric slide to the robot.

Above: Desmond (Tarantino) gives Grandma (Hill) a Watchman.

Smitten, she takes him to meet her extended family for a dinner at home. He is not unprepared. To her doctor brother, Stuart (B.D. Wong), he brings gourmet coffee, to her adolescent brother, Eric (J.B. Quon), he brings a football, and to her grandmother, Yung-hee Kim (Amy Hill), he brings a Watchman television. Doing his best Christopher Walken impression, he relates to her the great lengths to which he went to obtain the Watchman from a relative trapped in Grenada. When Margaret's mother, Katherine Kim (Jodi Long) needs assistance determining the temperature of the turkey, he raises a meat thermometer over his head and stabs the turkey just as John Travolta did with the syringe into Thurman's heart.

Above: Desmond (Tarantino) explains the perils of a life of crime.

But there's a catch: Upon a second trip to Fantasy Diner, Margaret discovers that Desmond is actually a criminal: he sells bootlegged videotapes, which risks both himself and her father. Cho and her two friends, Ruthie Latham (Maddie Corman of The Adventures of Ford Fairlane) and Gloria Schechter (Judy Gold) worry about the implications of his sinister endeavours. He convinces Margaret to accompany him on his sales route before terminating the relationship, and on so doing, she notes that she feels like she is in "Real Stories of the Highway Patrol." Along the way, Desmond stops at the home of an elderly man (the late Patrick Cranshaw, who played the part of Blue in 2003's Old School) to deliver some tapes. But he knows there are consequences to his life of crime: "You get caught moving a hot Yentl, you go to jail."

Above: The Kim family reacts to Desmond's despondency.

Margaret decides the relationship must end. She tells her father of the ordeal, who asks merely, "What do you mean, I'm selling hot Cool Runnings?" But Desmond appears at the Kim home and offers to give up his life of video piracy to be with Margaret. While there, he spills tomato juice on his shirt, leading to Mr. Kim, inexplicably wearing a tuxedo, to assume a Mr. Wolf like roll to remove the bright red substance.

There is only one problem: Average Tony (Robert Clohessy), Desmond's mobster employer who cannot be convinced to allow an employee to leave, has suddenly appeared at the doorstep with two of his 1970s style goons (dressed like Jules Winfield and Vincent Vega).

Above: Average Tony (Robert Clohessy) and his goons at the Kim house.

Frightened, Grandma Kim ventures down into the basement to find a weapon, choosing first a baseball bat and other options before settling on a samurai sword. Meanwhile, Margaret attempts to reason with Average Tony, who has implied that violence will be wrought unless Desmond returns to his employ. But there's only a few minutes left in the episode, so it turns out that it is just a giant misunderstanding and that Average Tony would never hurt someone over something as insignificant as video tapes.

But it is too late; the police have been called, and Desmond must flee. He makes his escape, pausing to kiss Margaret goodbye before vowing to someday return. Their relationship must have been true. After all, throughout the episode, Desmond refers to Margaret by a variety of nicknames, all deriving from popular breakfast treats: Post Toastie, Crunchberry, Pop Tart, Apple Jack, and Sugar Bear. By episode's end, Margaret calls Desmond her Boo Berry.

Above: Grandma (Hill) confronts the gangsters in her living room.

After the narrative ends, and as the closing credits roll, Tarantino and Cho chat with each other out of character. Tarantino exclaims that he will do "no more episodic television." But then Cho mentions the possibility of his becoming a "recurring character." "Like Ted Bessell on 'That Girl,'" he asks? No Cho replies, "like Bookman on 'Good Times.'" The episode ends.

Above: Desmond (Tarantino) makes his appearance early in the episode.

On the DVD, Cho offers a commentary track for the episode, although she remembers very little of its specifics. Instead, she generally shares a few general anecdotes of her friendship with Tarantino and her embarrassment of her 1995 hairstyle. ("I look so strange to myself," she says at one point during her commentary.). Other details were difficult for her to recall; she could not remember the name of the young actor who played her teenage brother on the program. (The commentary was recorded sometime in mid-to-late 2005; Cho references both her 2005 film, Bam Bam and Celeste, and Tarantino's stint as guest director on "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation," which aired in May of that year.).

Above: Desmond (Tarantino) bids farewell to Margaret (Cho).

Describing "Pulp Sitcom" as an "unusual departure" for the program, she notes that the episode did not address issues of ethnicity and immigrant life, staples for the series. She describes Tarantino as "very good friend of mine" and notes that he was "such a good sport for doing all of this" and that it was "such a coup to get him." Cho praises him for "start[ing] a whole new way of looking at violence" and making cinematic violence "cartoonish" and "fun." (That was also a popular criticism of Tarantino then, as now.). She lamented that he "would never tell us what was in briefcase" but speculates that he himself did not know what was contained therein. (By February of 1995, there were certainly enough theories floating around on the Internet.). She relates a story of worry that took place at the initial table reading of this episode's script. Tarantino was tardy, and those affiliated with the show thought that he, as some sort of "weird bad body of cinema," would stand them up and be difficult. From Cho's commentary, we learn that Desmond's car is Tarantino's own; the 1964 Chevelle Malibu convertible was also featured as Vincent Vega's vehicle in Pulp Fiction. Cho waxes nostalgic about drives through Beverly Hills and "being very young Hollywood" with Tarantino in those days.

Because this was February sweeps, and because Tarantino was cinema's hottest property at the time, the episode received a fair amount of coverage immediately before it aired. Critical reaction was mixed. Mark de la Vina of the Philadelphia Daily News, apparently desperate to make a throwaway reference to the New German Cinema, offered:

Obscure cinematic references aside, the episode is more Ralph Malph than Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

Throughout the show, which at times runs like an excuse for Cho and Tarantino to swap '70s pop culture trivia, ''All-American Girl'' cast members ape various scenes from Pulp Fiction. However, the best poke at the movie is by Tarantino himself, especially his parody of Christopher Walken's now-legendary scene where his character explains how he hid a pocket watch when he was in a Vietnamese prison camp.1

Manuel Mendoza on the Dallas Morning News opined:

Too often . . . stunt-casting is a merely an exercise in self-indulgence, or worse, self-parody.

One of the clearest examples is Oscar-nominated director Quentin Tarantino's favor to his friend Margaret Cho - they have a pact that requires them to mention each other during their talk-show appearances. Wednesday, he's on her ABC show, "All-American Girl."

...

The nonstop references to Pulp Fiction and Mr. Tarantino's video-store background are for the most part forced, though the mocking of the movie's Christopher Walken watch scene and Uma Thurman wakeup scene are smile-worthy.

"That's it, no more episodic television," Mr. Tarantino says while credits roll. He must have seen his performance.²

Matt Roush of USA Today wrote:

What was funny in its brashness in Pulp Fiction is rendered feeble by this obnoxious, self-aware parody of the cult movie. It's almost as bad as a Saturday Night Live sketch. Quentin Tarantino, Pulp's trendy writer/ director, misguidedly guest-stars as Margaret Cho's new boyfriend, a spazzy video supplier who consorts with gangsters (one named "Average Tony"). The show spoofs Pulp totems - a glowing briefcase, a weapon in a basement, a dance in a retro diner, an incongruous tuxedo, a meat thermometer wielded like a hypodermic needle - without making them the least bit clever.³

Though the most caustic, the review by Eric Mink of the New York Daily News is perhaps the most accurate (and best stands the test of time). Mink wrote:

One thing is certain: If you haven't seen Pulp Fiction, you won't have a sliver of an idea what's going on in tonight's episode or why the studio audience is laughing. Given the use of laugh-and-applause signs, the studio audience itself may not have known why it was laughing.

I've paid to see Pulp Fiction three times, and I could be persuaded to see it again. I've seen tonight's "All-American Girl" episode once for free come to think of it, I was paid to watch it and I'm not likely to watch it again unless somebody manacles me to one of those A Clockwork Orange rigs where you're lashed to a chair with your head immobilized and your eyes held open with little stainless steel medical pry bars.

...

Yet even these scenes play with the same feeble sense of forced humor that marks the show on weeks when Tarantino is not present. None of the show's able cast is well served by this venture, Cho worst of all. She seems to have been sliced and diced through the Vegematic of network sit-commery and bears little resemblance to the bold, stereotype-busting standup she developed on the road in comedy clubs, college campuses and cable specials.⁴

So too were the denizens of Usenet worried. On February 20, 1995, just two days before the episode would air, Greg Sorensen, writing on bit.listserv.cinema-l, advised simply: "Be afraid, be very afraid . . ." Replying to Sorensen the following day was Melissa Agar, who attempted to explain:

Actually, Tarantino is friends with Cho and asked if he could be on the show. He is a tv junkie, according to an article I read, and would love to do more guest spots like this.

Apparently the whole thing will be filled with Pulp Fiction references.

FYI -- the character of Lance in PF is loosely based on a bit from Cho's stand-up routine.

(See also here for a March 1, 1995 post on the same subject by Marni L. Hager.). Reached by email over the past holiday weekend, Agar confirms that almost thirteen years after its airing, the episode has failed to remain fully in her memory. She writes:

I really don't remember his appearance all that much. I read the comment I made and don't even remember the things I make reference to. I do remember him being on the show (I was a fan of Cho's work even back then and watched that show religiously) and I was (and I suppose still am) a fan of Tarantino and do remember being really excited that he was going to be on.

It is likely forgetabble because "Pulp Sitcom," along with the series of which it was a part, are mostly forgettable relics of an era of mostly bad sitcom television. "Seinfeld" was at its zenith, but "Arrested Development," BBC's "The Office," and "30 Rock" were all years in the future. The true reinvention of the sitcom was not yet well underway.

Above: Tarantino, out of character, talking to Cho during the credits sequence.

Shortly after recording some commentary tracks for the "All-American Girl" DVD release, Cho offered some memories of the show on her official site's blog:

The problem with the show was that in the hysteria of this being the first Asian American family on screen, the writing was stuck in an identity crisis. If we are Asians, then are we funny? Are we racy funny or homey funny? Can we do this? Can we do that? Also, there seems to be a cast of thousands. I think it was because the idea of Asians on television was so outlandish that the executives thought to soften the blow by adding kids, parents, older siblings, twentysomething friends, cute white boys, and NO GAYS!!! Can you imagine???!!!

There were lots of people every week. I think I don’t remember a lot of it because I was not really there for any of it. Although it is ostensibly my show, my voice isn’t on it at all, which is a shame. I didn’t really have a voice then though, so my identity and race served as a makeshift ‘opinion.’ I think that is why there hasn’t been another attempt at an Asian sitcom, because the confusing conundrum of race as voice, of ethnicity as identity, prevails. I don’t watch shows because the characters are white or black. I watch for reasons that don’t factor in race. I know that sometimes people like to think that racism is over, but it isn’t. It is just far subtler and harder to identify.

Still, watching All-American Girl is pretty amazing, thinking of all the pressure we were under, and having no real vision of what it should be. It is like a pupu platter of jokes. One of everything, to please the uninitiated palate, an abrupt tutorial in Asian American life as seen by a bunch of innocent bystanders.

Cho echoes these sentiments on the "Pulp Sitcom" commentary, in which she observes that the show's producers simply "didn't understand the things I asked them to do." She also remarks that she "never understood the [sitcom] medium" with its various laugh tracks and that she didn't think she could do such a show in the present day.

Cho also addressed the life and death of her sitcom in I'm the One That I Want, a concert film.

There is no question that the sitcom was struggling both with the internal issues to which Cho refers in her blog entry but also external pressures from critics. Although it was second in its time slot at the time, it was 55th in the total ratings. Thus, the appearance by Tarantino late in the season during February sweeps may have been a last ditch effort to save the show. Tarantino did his part to promote his appearance. During an "Entertainment Tonight" interview, he quipped, "I'm thinking of giving up this feature film thing. Maybe this could be spin-off material."⁵ That, after all is what friends do for one another, and Tarantino and Cho were friends, if not more, during this period in the mid-1990s.

In fact, their friendship predated the episode and is what prompted his cameo. They met years before at the Snake Pit in the Melrose section of Los Angeles. ''We had the best time,'' Cho told the Philadelphia Daily News. ''We are just so connected in the ways we think about society and culture."⁶ On the commentary track, Cho recounts the times that she would watch movies in the Hollywood hills with Tarantino, who had just purchased the entire inventory from the video store at which he formerly worked in his pre-fame days.

De La Vina, writing for the Philadelphia Daily News, quoted Cho as follows:

''It's always hard to explain what our relationship is based on. I admire him so much. And he's such a good friend to me. And a real treasure. He's such a talent and he's just so intelligent and perfect - just everything that I want.''

Including a boyfriend?

Raising her eyebrows, Cho tossed off a knowing glance, yet remained mum.⁷

Despite her reluctance to confirm a relationship, Tarantino would take Cho as his date (or vice versa?) to the SAG awards that year. Cho certainly romanticized his appearance on her sitcom, calling it their"version of (the Jean-Luc Godard film) 'Breathless,' . . . [w]ith the two lovers on the run, you know, what it might be like, is 'Badlands.'''⁸ But in the end, even Tarantino could not save the show from cancellation, which it was after a hiatus in mid-1995.

Cho would later complain to Lydia Martin of Knight Ridder about the show's constraints, its future, and the revamp that was to occur before its demise was confirmed:

"I have been criticized very unfairly because of my ethnicity, because I am a woman, because of everything," Cho says. "They want the show to be the be-all-end-all. And that's really unfair."

While Disney producers wait to see if ABC will pick up the show for a second season, they have gone back to the drawing board, stripping Cho of her uptight family and moving her into a place of her own, which she shares with three guys.

If the revamped show airs, it will be kind of like a Four's Company, except Cho gets no Jack Tripper-style ogling from her roommates.

"I think the show will work better that way, because it's a lot closer to who I am," says Cho, who lived with two male roommates for years.

"When you are friends with guys for a long time, the whole gender thing gets lost. You become entities, like they don't consider you a woman at all."⁹

The members of the cast would go their separate ways. Wong would later appear on HBO's "Oz" with Clohessy. Cho would later appear in a failed pilot with Kusatsu in which she played his wife, as opposed to his daughter. Now a tattoo enthusiast, she has said that Margaret, Marisa Tomei's character from Four Rooms, was based upon her.¹⁰

"Pulp Sitcom" is available on the fourth and final disc of All-American Girl: The Complete Series (which was released on DVD in January of 2006 and available here via Netflix). That disc also features the immediately preceding episode of the series, "A Night at the Oprah," featuring guest star Oprah Winfrey and a young, pre-fame Jack Black.

1. Mark de la Vina, "Couple of Hot Prop-erties; 'Pulp Fiction' visits 'Girl,'" Philadelphia Daily News, February 22, 1995.
2. Manuel Mendoza, "Watch star go flying by: Sweeps guest shots aim at ratings boost," Dallas Morning News, February 21, 1995.
3. Matt Roush, "Critic's Corner," USA Today, February 22, 1995.
4. Eric Mink, "'Pulp' Parody's a Cho-Show No-Go," New York Daily News, February 22, 1995.
5. Leah Garchik, "Mirror Mirror, On the Wall, Who is Humblest of Them All?," San Francisco Chronicle, February 21, 1995.
6. Mark de la Vina, supra.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Lydia Martin, "Margaret Cho Hits the Road While ABC Decides Her Series' Fate," Philadelphia Inquirer, April 6, 1995.
10. Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith "Shore's Latest Flick is Reshot to Include O.J. Simpson Murder Trial References," Denver Rocky Mountain News, March 29, 1995.

Quentin Tarantino on The Golden Girls (November 19, 1988)

Before writing and directing 1992's Reservoir Dogs and 1994's Pulp Fiction, a 25 year old Quentin Tarantino appeared as an Elvis impersonator on a 1988 episode of "The Golden Girls."

The episode in question was "Sophia's Wedding (Part 1)," which originally aired on November 19, 1988. Directed by Terry Hughes, with a script by Barry Fanaro and Mort Nathan, the episode was the sixth of the fourth season. The plot was typical sitcom fare. Aging matriarch Sophia (Estelle Getty) returns to New York for the funeral of a longtime friend. Accompanied by her daughter, Dorothy (Bea Arthur), she meets Max Weinstock (Jack Gilford, known to modern viewers as Bernie from the Cocoon films). Sophia had dreaded seeing him again, for she blamed him for the long-ago demise of her then-husband's eatery. The two reconcile, return to Florida, become lovers, and decide to marry. Meanwhile, Rose (Betty White) and Blanche (Rue McClanahan) have formed a chapter of an unofficial Elvis Presley fan club. The confused Rose accidentally sends the wedding invitations to the Elvis impersonators she had planned to invite to a fan club meeting. Thus, they are the only guests. After the wedding, the assembled Elvii serenade the new bride and groom with "Hawaii Wedding Song," whereupon the episode ends. Tarantino did not appear in the episode's second half one week later.

Tarantino earned the walk-on role due to the efforts of his new manager, Cathryn James. She had taken him as a client after being introduced to him by an existing client, Craig Hamann, a long-time Tarantino friend. Hamann had worked with Tarantino on his first film, the never released My Best Friend's Birthday, in 1987. In the 2005 book Rebels on the Backlot, author Sharon Waxman recounts the tale of how the young actor got the role:

Cathryn Jaymes had taken Hamann on as an actor client after he worked in her office as a secretarial assistant, among his other jobs. One day in the mid-1980s he brought his friend Tarantino around to her office.

At the time, Tarantino didn't have much to recommend him: he was an aspiring actor but not exactly a kid at age twenty-five. He had no credits, no acting reel.

But he he definitely had something. He walked into Jaymes's live-in office in a ripped T-shirt and jeans with his hangdog shuffle, and he did the quintessential Quentin performance, spouting stream-of consciousness movie ideas, holding forth passionately about his favorite movies, about his plans to act and makes movies himself. He was funny, gregarious, charming - and engagingly manic. Jaymes, then thirty-four years old, loved him immediately and at the end of the meeting said simply: "I have no doubt you will become a major force in the industry." She signed him.

...

Tarantino was determined to act, so at first Jaymes got him jobs doing just that. She called up a friend, a casting agent over at the television show The Golden Girls. They needed an Elvis impersonator for one episode, and Jaymes touted her new client as "Elvis meets Charlie Manson." He got the walk-on, his first real job in show business.¹

Above: The scene in question.

Interviewed in 1994 by Margy Rochlin for Playboy, Tarantino recalled the experience:

Well, it was kind of a high point because it was one of the few times that I actually got hired for a job. I was one of 12 Elvis impersonators, really just a glorified extra. For some reason they had us sing Don Ho's Hawaiian Love Chant. All the other Elvis impersonators wore Vegas-style jumpsuits. But I wore my own clothes, because I was, like, the Sun Records Elvis. I was the hillbilly cat Elvis. I was the real Elvis; everyone else was Elvis after he sold out.²

(Rochlin's full 1994 Playboy interview can be found here.). Tarantino would also quip that "Bea Arthur is fine after she's had her morning coffee."³ In 2003, he would tell the tale of his audition during his now infamous drunk appearance on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

His compensation for the episode, and ensuing residuals, sustained him as he pursued truer interests. In 1992, David Kronke of the Daily News of Los Angeles broached that subject:

The important lesson he learned from the work was how much money one can make doing one little job. "I made $3,000 over the course of a year for a couple of days' work. Every time I was running out of money, I'd get a check for $100 or $200 or $300. It was so great - now I understand why people do this."⁴

Actor Harvey J. Goldenberg played the minister officiating the wedding of Sophia and Max. He also agrees that Tarantino looked different than the other Elvii. In a recent email to this site, Goldenberg (whose official site is here) remembers the production of the episode in question:

The show rehearsed Mon-Wed as I recall. We gathered around a large table the first day and read through the script. Bea Arthur's big problem was that the bagels and cream cheese they brought in for her didn't taste like New York bagels. While she was never moody, the staff tiptoed around her. On Thursday with did a dry run through in the morning and then another after lunch. We shot the show twice on Friday. First a dress rehearsal with an audience about 2 p.m. and then the final show in front of another audience at night.

...

As for the Wedding sequence, the thing I remember is that I screwed up my last line. I had been letter perfect all during rehearsals. Then the last day, Estelle took umbrage at the expression "Man and wife." She felt it should be "Husband and wife." The writers graciously agreed to change the line to that. Of course I got flustered and said the original line which I think they went with.

"The wedding sequence didn't rehearse any longer than any of the others since the Elvises were not there until Thursday," he says. Of the Elvii assembled on the set , he remembers:

The thing I remembered about the singing Elvises is how few really looked like Elvis. Also how many of the Elvises took themselves seriously. Aside from his being the most strange looking Elvis I can recall seeing, I remember nothing about Quentin Tarantino being on that shoot.

Of the principal members of the cast, and its guest star, Gilford, Goldenberg recalls:

Estelle had the most lines this show and she was nervous about forgetting them. I went over them with her.

Jack Gilford and his wife were both very nice, easy people to be around. They had written a book in 1978 called 170 Years of Show Business.

...

Betty White was very quiet. Sat by herself and knitted.

Rue McClanahan [was] every bit as outgoing and charming in person as her Blanche Devereaux.

(Internal links added). One wonders if Tarantino, the pop culture addict, could resist the temptation to speak with Gilford (of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Save the Tiger, for which he was nominated for an Oscar), Arthur (of TV's "Maude" and "The Sid Caesar Show"), McClanahan, White, and Goldenberg (TV's "That Girl" and "M*A*S*H").

Goldenberg made news earlier this year for witnessing of an airport security incident.

In early days of the Internet, before TV episodes were easily found in DVD box sets and the Youtubes, rumors abounded on the Usenet newsgroups that the famed director had once appeared in an episode of such a tame sitcom. On September 23, 1993, Ola Torstensson, well ahead of the pop culture and Internet curve, noted on rec.arts.movies that he "just felt like pointing out that while Tarantino was writing Reservoir Dogs (and perhaps True Romance) he lived on the money that kept flowing in after he'd once been in a 'Golden Girls' episode playing an . . . . . . Elvis impersonator!"(See also here). There was little way to confirm the truth of the rumor unless one happened upon a cable rerun. On July 13, 1996, one "MondoFaust" posted an inquiry in the Usenet newsgroup at.video-tape-trading, of all places, asking simply: "Does anyone have a tape of the episode of 'The Golden Girls' on which Quentin Tarantino appeared (pre-Reservoir Dogs) as an Elvis impersonator?" The fourth season of "The Golden Girls" would not be released on DVD until February of 2006 (at which time IGN featured some screen captures highlighting Tarantino).

The Elvis impersonator footage would be re-used in a later episode of the series. Two years later, on May 12, 1990, the second part of a two-part Golden Girls clip show, "The President's Coming! (Part 2)," rebroadcast Tarantino's fateful scene. In that two-part episode, the principal cast remembers certain events of the preceding years as they prepare for a visit by President George H.W. Bush to their home. Prompting the memories is a Secret Service Agent investigating them prior to the President's official visit. The agent specifically asks Sophia why she is also known as Sophia Weinstock, leading to a few clips from the original episode in which Tarantino appeared, if ever so briefly. At the end of the episode, the four Golden Girls meet President Bush, played by an actor who is seen offscreen, save for his hands, which shake those of the main cast. (Harry Shearer played the voice of President Bush.). This episode was written by Marc Cherry, fourteen years before he would achieve massive success as the creator of ABC's "Desperate Housewives." On June 2, 1990, Gilford, also featured in the clip show, died of stomach cancer in Manhattan less than a month after it aired.

UPDATE (11/26/07): See here for a review and analysis of Tarantino's February 22, 1995 appearance on "All-American Girl," the sitcom starring Margaret Cho.

1. Sharon Waxman, Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System, p. 22-23 (HarperCollins, 2005) (ISBN 0060540176).
2. Margy Rochlin, "Quentin Tarantino. (filmmaker) (Interview)," Playboy, (November 1994).
3. Eleanor Ringel, "Quentin Tarantino Nonfiction," Atlanta Journal Constitution, October 9, 1994.
4. David Kronke, "Violent is the word for Tarantino; Director's zeal is his unbridled passion for film," The Daily News (Los Angeles, CA), October 23, 1992.