The headline quote is spoken at a crucial moment in True Romance by Boris (Eric Allan Kramer), a blonde, heavyset security guy who works for producer Lee Donowitz (Saul Rubinek), a bearded smoothie who was more or less modelled (except for the cocaine-buying part) on producer Joel Silver.
The line, of course, is from Quentin Tarantino, who wrote his True Romance screenplay when he was poor and scrambling and always fearful, he’s said in interviews, that L.A. cops would pull him over for unpaid parking or traffic tickets. In ’08 Tarantino apparently told Maxim writer Marc Spitz in a piece called “True Romance: 15 Years Later” that his screenplay, made into a highly flavorful film by Tony Scott in ’93, was his “most autobiographical to date.”
No, of course I’m not going there. Obviously “I hate fuckin’ cops” is a tough-guy line for a movie, blurted out just before a shoot-out, and not any kind of basic-attitude, real-world statement on QT’s part. On top of which Quentin wasn’t Boris — he was Clarence Worley (played by Christian Slater).
But let’s be honest — tapping into emotional undercurrents and sometimes unsettling memories are part of the writing process. And Tarantino, I’m sure, remembers his own. He said last night on Real Time With Bill Maher that since the cop boycott brouhaha he’s been been feeling a bit fearful of cops again, looking in his rearview mirror the way he used to back in the ’70s and ’80s.
Do I suspect that on some deep-down level Tarantino was channelling his long-put-aside cops paranoia when he made his speech in New York a couple of weekends ago? Maybe a little teeny-weeny bit.
I know the feeling. The mid ’80s, man. Before I scored my Cannon Films press kit-writer job I was living paycheck-to-paycheck and juggling bills and a little anxious about being pulled over by the bulls myself.
In the mid ’70s I once did time in L.A. County Jail for 27 unpaid parking tickets. I was taken from courtroom to courtroom and given a “time served” dispensation by a series of bored judges. At the time I thought it was a pretty good deal. I worked off the cost of 27 parking tickets, which was at least $1500 or so, which was a sizable fortune in ’75, in just three or four days!
I’ve been a cop supporter ever since a couple of WeHo cops cut me a break in ’95 after I’d fled the scene of a fender-bender with a little vodka in my system. (I’ve told this story, right? It was O.J. Simpson-related, and was one of the reasons I gave up vodka in ’96.) I love the fact that I’m a sober, older white guy whom the cops, if they pull me over, are never going to give any shit to, ever. Because I’m white and mellow and measured in my speech, and because unlike others who’ve been pulled over I always mildly submit. And I really love that secure feeling.
