“Marty. Y’ know what we got here? Mother fuckin’ Charlie Bronson.”
Writer Quentin Tarantino sold this script to fund Reservoir Dogs (1992). He received $50,000 which was the minimum that can be paid according to Writer’s Guild rules. His screenplay was originally part of a longer screenplay written by Tarantino and Roger Avary. The other half was later used for Natural Born Killers (1994). In both films Tom Sizemore plays a cop. The structure was different in Tarantino’s original script. The first two parts were told in trademark Tarantino nonlinear fashion but director Tony Scott changed it to a linear structure for filming. Val Kilmer had wanted to play the role of Clarence (Christian Slater). Kilmer’s Elvis character is referred to as ‘Mentor’ in the closing credits to avoid litigation from the Presley estate. Bronson Pinchot ad libbed the scene in the Porsche where he’s covered with cocaine. It was Brad Pitt’s idea for his character to be a stoner who never leaves the couch. Gary Oldman based the character of Drexl on an actor named Willi One Blood, who he later co-starred with in Luc Besson’s The Professional (1994). Tarantino had written the role of gangster Vincenzo Concotti for Robert Forster, that ended up being played by Christopher Walken. According to Dennis Hopper, the only words improvised in the scene with Walken were “eggplant” and “cantalope”. Patricia Arquette’s voice-over at the film’s opening is borrowed from Badlands (1973) and set to very similar music. There are 21 deaths, all male, all by gunshot. Director Tony Scott gave Patricia Arquette the movie’s Cadillac as a gift after filming wrapped.
