Jackie Brown: When Elmore Leonard Met Tarantino
Art by Tom Ralston
When I first read a book by the late Elmore Leonard—one of the best-known crime authors in the world—I was 12 years old and fresh off a Clive Barker binge. I needed a change of pace. When I finished reading Rum Punch, about an airline stewardess caught in a money-couriering scheme, I instantly thought, “Someone better make a movie of this book.” It was brash, smart, and so compelling I gobbled it up within two days.
Four years later, I watched Pulp Fiction (1994) for the first time and wondered if Tarantino and Leonard had long been buddies, because I saw so many similarities in the snappy dialogue and rounded portrayals of underworld baddies and the cop out to collar them.
And one year after that, my 17-year-old bookcore brain exploded with delight when I first heard that Jackie Brown (1997), Tarantino’s third film, was based on Leonard’s Rum Punch, albeit with a few character tweaks, such as making the lead actress black, changing her surname from Burke to Brown, and minimizing the bail bondsman’s backstory.
What I recognized in Tarantino’s first adaptation of a Leonard book, especially after multiple viewings, were the unspoken parallels between director and writer. It’s as if they were destined for this prefect duet of spotlighting the action and character development within dialogue, as opposed to trigger-happy action scenes and pointed exposition.
Sure, the ultra-violence in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs (1992) gave us some insight into the people behind the triggers, but it was the quick back- and-forth conversations that elevated Tarantino into the spotlight.
Leonard has always been celebrated for following the writing maxim of “show, don’t tell,” giving you the bare-bones details of what a character looked like and wore and where he was at, but letting the reader fill in the rest. He allowed conversations to show you who they are, instead of saying outright that, say, Jackie doesn’t take any BS. What she says fleshes out her values, what pisses her off, and what her main motivations will be. Perhaps that’s why dozens of Leonard books have been adapted to the screen, from 1967’s Hombre to 1986’s 52 Pick-Up to the recent TV series Justified, based on Leonard’s Riding the Rap novel.
What’s strange is that many of the adaptations fell flat, except for Steven Soderbergh’s Out of Sight (1998) and Barry Sonnenfeld’s Get Shorty (1995) (undoubtedly the funniest of all of Leonard’s books). And in slips Jackie Brown, a lengthy but under-stated film in Tarantino’s portfolio that never turned the heads of Quentin fans as much as the sizzling Kill Bill series of the action heavy Pulp Fiction.
But I'll gladly contend that Jackie Brown is Tarantino’s more mature film, thanks in part to how Leonard and the filmmaker share so many considerations for the fleshing out unsavoury characters to make them likeable. For example, right from the jump we find out Jackie is a crook but you want to get to know her over a drink and find out what brought her to this endgame.
I’m not surprised that Tarantino’s studio bought the rights to five of Leonard’s books, even though several of those acquisitions lapsed and landed those books in less-competent directorial hands.
It’s a shame, in one way, that Jackie Brown came out so soon after Pulp Fiction made Tarantino a household name. This Rum Punch adaptation moves to a different rhythm than Pulp’s rollercoaster-ride of an adventure. Jackie Brown is a spunky fun film, one where the grift is less compelling than the characters surrounding it.
Tarantino gave Pam Grier and Robert Forster a chance to come back from lagging careers by casting them as Jackie Brown and bail bondsman Max Cherry, a role which earned Forster an Oscar nomination. Their romantic interest, which Tarantino treats more gently than the sex- heavy passion Leonard evoked in the book, is secondary to what the characters say to each other in a crucial scene at Jackie’s apartment: they’re aging, their interest in their longtime careers is waning, they want to seek something more out of life than serving drinks to whiny passengers, than dragging petty thieves from their couches to court.
And isn’t it poignant how their world-weariness and what-if fantasies relate to the actors’ own careers? Pam Grier wasn’t landing any roles in the late 90s, and the same with Forster, but Tarantino revived their careers, much like this scam against gun runner Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) reenergized Jackie Brown and Max Cherry to work together to land themselves $500,000 in cash.
Jackson, playing Robbie so on point it’s as if he himself wrote Rum Punch, has said this is one of his favourite films to be a part of, and you can feel his enthusiasm and potency shine. Rocking Ordell’s trademark long braid and stylish clothes, Jackson knew exactly how to craft the show-off personality of an arms dealer whose self-interest overshadows his high-spirited attitude. Leonard’s crackling dialogue comes off Jackson’s tongue so seamlessly, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the actor play more Elmore Leonard roles if Tarantino decides to adapt other books, such as the rumoured Forty Lashes Less One that may still be in play.
When the magazine Creative Screenwriting interviewed Tarantino in 1998 about Jackie Brown, the director said, “[Elmore Leonard] showed me that characters can go off on tangents and those tangents are just as valid as anything else. Like the way real people talk.”
That’s the thing about Jackie Brown: you hang out with the characters, like you’re a fly on the peeling wall of Jackie’s low-rent apartment. Leonard realized a meandering conversation between, say, Robbie and his friend Louis (played under-statedly by Robert DeNiro) about how many guns the arms dealer has sold, the kind of rocket launchers he still has to sell, isn’t revolving around the plot per se but reveals the bravado between men, and how Robbie is hoping to convince Louis that he’s a major player.
You might think two-and-a-half hours is an awfully long time to chill out with characters, but that’s the beauty of a Leonard-Tarantino relationship, one that points to Tarantino’s ascension as a more mature director compared to his first two works: we don’t need on-screen violence and gore (looking at you, Reservoir Dogs) to engage us with every scene. Instead, we empathize with characters who might be wise guys and crooks, but whose humanity comes through with every conversation, every gesture between lines.
Sometimes I wonder where Tarantino would’ve gone if he used Jackie Brown as a springboard to direct and write more hard-boilers and crime-drenched films, instead of the tipping- the-hat train he leapt onto with his next films, paying tribute to martial arts films (Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2), Westerns (Django Unchained) and WWII throwbacks (Inglourious Basterds).
Since it debuted in 1997, Jackie Brown has aged exceptionally well, as it’s attracted a cult following of not just young Tarantino fans discovering the film for the first time but also longtime Elmore Leonard fans who recognize how this beaut is one of the rare feats of an adaptation that does justice to Leonard’s trademark style and flair.
Generations apart, these two artistic icons should have developed a longer relationship that brought more of Leonard’s excellent works to the screen, but maybe Tarantino is biding his time, waiting for the right moment to once again plant us in the underbelly of scammers and antsy cops, of fast-talking conmen and wily women out to undo their carefully laid plans.
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