True Romance (1993)

True Romance (1993)

In director Tony Scott's action 'lovers-on-the-run' crime film (with a script by Quentin Tarantino - his first):

• the opening voice-over monologue (under the credits) was delivered by call-girl newly-wed wife Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette), as she was driving in an open convertible toward the US/Mexican border, with her wounded comic-shop clerk, Elvis-worshipping husband Clarence Worley (Christian Slater):
  • "I had to come all the way from the highways and byways of Tallahassee, Florida to Motor City, Detroit to find my true love. If you gave me a million years to ponder, I would never have guessed that true romance and Detroit would ever go together. And to this day, the events that followed all seem like a distant dream. But the dream was real and was to change our lives forever. I kept asking Clarence why our world seemed to be collapsing and everything seemed so s--tty. And he'd say, 'That's the way it goes, but don't forget, it goes the other way too.' That's the way romance is. Usually, that's the way it goes. But every once in awhile, it goes the other way too."
• the couple's first movie date and conversation was about turn-ons, turn-offs, and Elvis when Clarence admitted:
  • "I always said, if I had to f--k a guy, I mean had to, if my life depended on it, I'd f--k Elvis"
• Alabama admitted on a rooftop that she was a call girl hired by Clarence's boss as a birthday present, although she wasn't white-trash and she vowed that she truly loved him
• after a quickie marriage, the two fled to Los Angeles from Detroit, after killing Alabama's pimp and former boyfriend Drexl Spivey (Gary Oldman), to sell the cocaine that they had stolen from him
• Alabama often expressed her sexiness to Clarence:
  • "I'm gonna go jump in the tub and get all wet and slippery and soapy and then hop in that waterbed and watch X-rated movies 'till you get your ass back in my lovn' arms"
• the film's main confrontational face-off (a 'Sicilian scene' of verbal sparring) was between:
  • Clifford Worley (Dennis Hopper), Clarence's estranged father, an alcoholic ex-security cop
  • Don Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken), a debonair mobster
• after being punched and having his hand slashed open, Clifford deliberately provoked and insulted the gangster regarding his Sicilian heritage:
  • "Sicilians were spawned by n---ers...your ancestors are n---ers...you're part eggplant"
• Vincenzo retorted ("You're a cantaloupe") and other non-PC epithets - causing laughter and the unloading of Coccotti's gun into Worley's head
• in another harrowing scene, Virgil (James Gandolfini), one of Coccotti's henchmen, beat up Alabama at the Safari Inn; she retaliated by killing him with a shotgun
• in the film's final slow-motion, Mexican stand-off shoot-out scene in the Beverly Ambassador Hotel, Clarence was wounded amidst flying pillow feathers, white powder and bodies