Nearly three decades after the release of Quentin Tarantino’s third movie, Jackie Brown, lead star Pam Grier has opened up about her experience working with the acclaimed filmmaker. The cooler than cool film is now streaming on Netflix.
Bookending Tarantino’s flawless debut trilogy of un-connected films, Jackie Brown is a masterpiece of characterisation, telling the story of a flight attendant with a criminal past who gets arrested for smuggling and becomes a reluctant informant in the process. Grier plays the titular heroine, leading the film with a tenacious performance alongside the likes of Robert De Niro, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton and Chris Tucker.
Discussing the fast pace shooting schedule of the movie and the two-week rehearsal process, Grier told Entertainment Weekly: “She has to speak fast with Sam Jackson’s Ordell…I said, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to speak that fast with Sam Jackson, walking down the steps, not looking at the steps. I’m going to kill myself!’ I said, ‘Quentin, I’m going to fall. Can we just finish with me lying down there on the steps saying I can’t keep up with this man?’ He talks so fast!’”.
Though she found her time on the movie mentally straining, Grier lovingly recalled working with Tarantino, stating: “I was ready to work with Quentin and give him what he needed. He only uses one or two takes. When he works you and you feel it, and you’re in the groove, man, it just flies”.
Though Grier enjoyed a healthy start to her career, starring in the 1973 crime thriller Coffey, as well as 1974s action film Foxy Brown, no film helped her progress through the industry more than Jackie Brown. Shortly before her collaboration with Tarantino in 1997, Grier worked with John Carpenter on the cult sequel Escape From L.A. and Tim Burton on the satirical sci-fi flick Mars Attacks!
Take a look at the trailer for the classic Tarantino movie Jackie Brown below.
