S4E46.5: True Romance

November Kelly (0:14)

INTRO MUSIC Hello and welcome to another episode of Kill James Bond. I am November Kelly, I am joined, as always, by my friends Abigail, Thorn and Devon.

Abigail Thorn (0:25)

Hello.

Devon (0:26)

Cowabunga.

November Kelly (0:27)

And we are joined by a guest. We have Carisa Hendrix, actor, magician, guest of Kill James Bond now. How's it going, Carisa?

Carisa Hendrix (0:34)

I am so excited. I've been looking forward to this for two whole weeks now. Yes.

November Kelly (0:40)

Because this is Abi's choice of heist movie, and you inveigled Carisa on, you brought a friend to talk about True Romance.

Devon (0:52)

Oh, True Romance.

Abigail Thorn (0:54)

And good timing, too, because Tony Scott directed it, and Tony Scott did Pelham 123, which we just did and liked on the last, on the last mainline episode.

Carisa Hendrix (1:03)

I think I knew that in my soul.

November Kelly (1:04)

Mm. Part of the kind of unacknowledged Kill James Bond, 100% Tony Scott filmography speedrun, yeah.

Devon (1:10)

Yeah.

November Kelly (1:11)

But I think True Romance, it is a heist film. It's also, well, like a crime film, a weirdly ensembly-casted one as well.

Devon (1:22)

Yes. Guys I love to see just kept showing up, and a guy I don't like to see also shows up.

November Kelly (1:28)

The guy we hate to see! Yeah.

Devon (1:30)

Enemy of the show.

November Kelly (1:31)

Well, we can talk about who that guy might be, because this is also interesting to me, because this is a piece of Quentin Tarantino juvenileia, basically.

Devon (1:39)

It is.

November Kelly (1:39)

He wrote this in, and then sold the script in order to make Reservoir Dogs, and...

Abigail Thorn (1:46)

A worse film.

November Kelly (1:47)

Yeah, I kind of agree.

Abigail Thorn (1:49)

Should have sold Reservoir Dogs to make this, man.

Devon (1:52)

I haven't seen it in a long enough...

Carisa Hendrix (1:53)

Well, my understanding is that Tony Scott could pick between the two movies, because he wanted both scripts, and so Tony Scott was given Reservoir Dogs and True Romance, and picked True Romance. So I think this might be a product of, like, Tony Scott was like, no, no, no, I can tell which one is better, because I'm the person here with a little bit more experience.

Devon (2:12)

He's right.

November Kelly (2:13)

We live in ending B of Tony Scott's Quentin Tarantino arc, is interesting to me.

Devon (2:19)

Alt history and the only difference is just that Tony Scott directed Reservoir Dogs.

November Kelly (2:24)

Everything is completely different, it's just that was the point of divergence, that most of the place had beat its wings.

Abigail Thorn (2:31)

Al Gore is president and Tony Scott directed Reservoir Dogs.

Carisa Hendrix (2:36)

But there's no global warming.

November Kelly (2:39)

Mm. Donald Trump, the game show host?

Abigail Thorn (2:41)

Crazy.

November Kelly (2:43)

Yeah, I was very, very excited to see that this was a Tony Scott film, because, you know, I like Tony Scott, I hope he gets to do his special camera thing, and as well as that, I like Quentin Tarantino as a writer a lot better than I do as a director, and I'm gonna have some thoughts about that, really. But so, we begin in Detroit, Michigan, where the American economic collapse, brackets the 90s one, is in full swing. Things are very, very bad. And in a bar, we have Christian Slater getting auto-androphilia for Elvis Presley.

Abigail Thorn (3:20)

He's in a bar and he's talking about Elvis to a beautiful blonde lady who seems somewhat bored. And he's like, well, Elvis is his autistic special interest.

And he's also saying, like, he says, I ain't no fag, but Elvis was good looking, if I had to fuck a guy, I'd fuck Elvis. And it's like, okay, interesting way to try and pick someone up.

November Kelly (3:38)

If I had to.

If I was held at gunpoint, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they said, have sex with a man, Elvis, apparently. And he invites her out to see a Sonny Cheeba triple feature, which she is repulsed by. Yeah. Because, you know, women maybe, we don't like the movies, is the thing. And this is a guy who likes the movies.

Devon (4:05)

I will say it is a strong opening gambit to be like, would you like to see not one, not two, but three sequential kung fu movies with me as a first date? It would work on me.

November Kelly (4:16)

Yeah, it would work on me too.

Devon (4:17)

But that's not saying it would work in general.

November Kelly (4:19)