48 Fun Facts About Jackie Brown

What do the agents find in Jackie Brown's bag besides $50,000 in cash?

Cocaine: Jackie says it isn't hers, and Ordell guesses his partner tucked it in as a present for Melanie. Either way it hands the agents a drug charge to hold over her.

What is Jackie Brown's job in the film?

Flight attendant: Jackie works for Cabo Air, a small Mexican airline, and uses her runs between Cabo San Lucas and Los Angeles to carry Ordell's cash through customs.

In Jackie Brown, which gun does Ordell call 'the very best there is'?

AK-47: Ordell tells Louis it is the one to buy when you absolutely have to kill everyone in the room, then explains that he pays $850 for the Chinese model and doubles his money.

Before Jackie Brown, the actor who played Max Cherry auditioned to play an ageing crime boss in which earlier Tarantino movie?

Reservoir Dogs: he read for Joe Cabot, but Tarantino had his heart set on Lawrence Tierney. Tarantino never forgot the audition and wrote the bail bondsman in Jackie Brown with him in mind.

Which actor plays Louis Gara, Ordell's recently released former cellmate?

Robert De Niro plays Louis, the partner Ordell kills after he admits, too late, that he saw Max Cherry at the mall during the handover and thought nothing of it.

Bridget Fonda plays Melanie Ralston, who is what to Ordell?

One of his mistresses: Ordell keeps Melanie in a Hermosa Beach apartment and shrugs when Louis warns him she is plotting to rob him, saying he never needed to trust her because he knows her.

Michael Keaton plays Ray Nicolette, an agent of which federal agency?

ATF: Nicolette is an agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, paired with LAPD detective Mark Dargus to build a gun-running case against Ordell.

Michael Keaton played agent Ray Nicolette again, uncredited, in which 1998 Elmore Leonard adaptation?

Out of Sight gives Keaton's Ray Nicolette one brief scene: Elmore Leonard had written the agent into both novels, so two rival studios ended up filming the same character a year apart.

How does Ordell kill his bagman Beaumont Livingston in Jackie Brown?

Shoots him in a car trunk: Beaumont, caught with a gun while on probation, is facing ten years, so Ordell coaxes him into the trunk for a made-up gun deal and fires the moment he opens it.

When Ordell comes to Jackie's apartment to kill her, she pulls a gun she stole from where?

Max Cherry's glovebox: on the drive home from jail Jackie quietly lifts Max's pistol from the glove compartment, and it turns Ordell's visit into a negotiation.

How much of Ordell's money is still to be smuggled in when Jackie strikes her deal with him?

$550,000 is the whole stash: Jackie tells the agents the delivery is $50,000 and tells Ordell she will bring everything, planning to keep the other half million herself.

At the end of Jackie Brown, what has Max Cherry kept from the money he mailed to Jackie?

Only a 10 percent fee: Max treats the job like any bail bond and takes his usual cut. Jackie asks why he took so little and urges him to take more, but he tells her she will get over it.

In Jackie Brown, where does the final money swap take place?

A department store dressing room: Jackie tries on a suit at Billingsley's in the Del Amo mall, leaves one bag behind for Max to collect and hands the other to Melanie.

During the test run, Jackie swaps $10,000 with which of Ordell's girlfriends?

Sheronda is the 19-year-old Ordell says he found at a bus stop, two days out of Georgia. She meets Jackie in the food court, then loses the bag to a second courier Ordell sent without telling Jackie.

Why does Ordell reluctantly send Melanie to do the final swap?

Simone has left town with the $10,000 from the test run. Ordell only finds out on the day of the real handover, and with nobody else to send he gives the job to Melanie, with Louis along to mind her.

In Jackie Brown, Ordell tempts Beaumont with a meal at which real Los Angeles restaurant?

Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles: having just bailed Beaumont out, Ordell wants a favour that same night, and sweetens it with the Scoe's Special, smothered in gravy and onions, his treat.

Why does Louis shoot Melanie in the mall parking lot?

She mocks him for losing the car: Melanie needles Louis all the way out of the mall, he warns her to stop, then shoots her twice and drives off without her.

Where is Ordell finally shot dead in Jackie Brown?

In Max Cherry's office: Max tells Ordell that Jackie is waiting there, frightened, with his money. She shouts that he has a gun, and the agents hiding in the dark shoot him dead.

At the end of Jackie Brown, Jackie plans a trip to which city?

Madrid is her first stop in Spain. Jackie asks Max to come along, but he turns her down, admitting when she asks that he is a little bit scared of her, and watches her drive away.

Jackie Brown is adapted from which Elmore Leonard novel?

Rum Punch (1992) is set in South Florida and its heroine is a white woman named Jackie Burke. Tarantino moved the story to Los Angeles and rewrote her as a Black woman so that Pam Grier could play her.

After Pulp Fiction, Tarantino also optioned which Elmore Leonard novel, filmed over a decade later with Mickey Rourke?

Killshot passed to another director and barely reached US cinemas: it opened in just five of them, took under $20,000 there and was out on DVD four months later.

Jackie Brown pays particular homage to which two 1970s Pam Grier films?

Coffy and Foxy Brown: in both, Grier plays an avenger who settles scores with a gun. Jackie, no killer, wins by out-thinking everyone instead.

Jackie Brown's opening glide through LAX recreates the opening of which 1967 film?

The Graduate opens with Dustin Hoffman carried along an airport walkway to the sombre 'The Sound of Silence'. Tarantino restages the shot with Pam Grier and swaps the mood for soaring soul.

Which Bobby Womack song plays over Jackie Brown's opening credits?

Across 110th Street came first: Tarantino says he has to find a film's opening-credits song before anything else, then digs through his own record collection for the rest.

For Jackie Brown, Tarantino reused Roy Ayers's funk score from which earlier film?

Coffy: Roy Ayers scored Grier's 1973 hit, and several of his cues return here, among them the chase music, which plays as Jackie hurries through the mall on the day of the handover.

Which vocal group's 'Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)' links Jackie and Max in Jackie Brown?

The Delfonics are playing when Max first visits Jackie's apartment. He buys their music the same day, and Ordell later hears it in Max's car and remarks that he never knew Max liked them.

Jackie Brown's mostly soul soundtrack makes room for 'Tennessee Stud', sung by which country star?

Johnny Cash's version plays as Max drops Jackie home on the night he bails her out. By the next day her record collection has turned him on to seventies soul instead.

In Jackie Brown, Bridget Fonda's Melanie watches a 1974 car-chase film starring which relative of hers?

Her father, Peter Fonda, stars in Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry, which plays on Melanie's television. In an earlier scene Ordell squints at another of her films and asks if the star is Rutger Hauer.

Before Jackie Brown, Pam Grier read for which Pulp Fiction role, only for Tarantino to cast someone else?

Jody was the part, opposite Eric Stoltz's dealer. Tarantino felt audiences would not believe Stoltz shouting at her; Grier's own joke is that she was too tall and he could never have told her what to do.

When Pam Grier arrived to read for Jackie Brown, what did she find in Tarantino's office?

Posters of her own films were already on Tarantino's walls; he told Grier he had meant to take them down so it would not look like he was trying to impress her.

Which action star later said he turned down the role of Louis Gara in Jackie Brown?

Sylvester Stallone said in 2012 that he had turned down two Tarantino films: this part, and later the Kurt Russell role in Grindhouse, which he felt a father of daughters could not play.

What is Quentin Tarantino's only role in Jackie Brown, heard but never seen?

The voice on an answering machine: Tarantino is the recording that tells Jackie she has one message. It turns out to be Max, leaving his number and hoping everything is well.

Jackie Brown opened in US cinemas on which date in 1997?

December 25, Christmas Day, was also the opening day of Kevin Costner's $80 million epic The Postman. Jackie Brown, made for $12 million, comfortably outsold it over that first weekend.

Which film, six years after Jackie Brown, was Tarantino's next as director?

Kill Bill: Volume 1 arrived in 2003. It would have come sooner, but Uma Thurman became pregnant as shooting was about to begin, and Tarantino chose to wait for her rather than recast.

Which Jackie Brown cast member received the film's only Academy Award nomination?

Robert Forster was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. By his own account his career had sunk so low that he had no agent when Tarantino handed him the script.

Samuel L. Jackson won a Best Actor prize for Jackie Brown at which European film festival in 1998?

Berlin gave Jackson its Silver Bear for Best Actor in February 1998. He also used the festival to defend the film's language against its critics, calling it a wonderful homage.

Which filmmaker publicly criticised Jackie Brown's repeated use of a racial slur and complained to its producers?

Spike Lee said Tarantino was 'infatuated with that word' and took the complaint to the film's producers. Samuel L. Jackson, a veteran of Lee's own films, publicly sided with Tarantino.

In Jackie Brown, Louis Gara is four days out of prison after serving nearly four years for what crime?

Bank robbery: Louis tells Melanie so over a bong, and she says she is impressed. Ordell, his old cellmate, takes him on to replace the courier he has just lost.

In the 2013 prequel Life of Crime, a younger Ordell and Louis kidnap a housewife played by which star?

Jennifer Aniston plays Mickey Dawson, whose husband won't pay because he has just filed for divorce. The film adapts The Switch, the 1978 novel in which Elmore Leonard first introduced the pair.

Which company released Jackie Brown in cinemas?

Miramax Films was owned by Disney at the time, which is why this profane crime story first reached video stores through Disney's own Buena Vista Home Entertainment.

What rating did Roger Ebert give Jackie Brown in the Chicago Sun-Times?

Four stars out of four: Ebert wrote that he wanted these characters to live, talk, deceive and scheme for hours, and that anyone who found the film too long had an attention disorder.

On its opening weekend, Jackie Brown finished fifth at the US box office behind which chart-topping film?

Titanic was in its second weekend at number one. Jackie Brown's $9.3 million start, though only fifth, was almost exactly what Pulp Fiction had taken on its own opening weekend.

Which comedian plays Beaumont Livingston, the courier Ordell bails out, in Jackie Brown?

Chris Tucker has a single sequence as Beaumont: freed on Ordell's money that afternoon, he is talked into doing Ordell one more favour the same night.

Which film, also shot in mid-1997, did Jackie Brown's studio rush into cinemas the same month?

Scream 2 went from a nine-week summer shoot to cinemas in under four months. Its plot leaked online along the way, and pages were sometimes rewritten on the day they were filmed.

What is the title of the sales video Ordell plays for Louis in Jackie Brown?

Chicks Who Love Guns is his catalogue on tape. Ordell explains that customers want whatever gun they have just seen in a film: after The Killer, he says, everybody had to have a .45.

In Jackie Brown, who plays Ray Nicolette's LAPD partner, detective Mark Dargus?

Michael Bowen plays Dargus, the detective who actually makes the arrest and then stands up at Jackie's arraignment to recommend her bail.

Which funk instrumental by The Meters is heard in Jackie Brown but was left off its soundtrack album?

Cissy Strut, the Meters' 1969 hit, plays in the film but missed the album, which still found room for clips of dialogue.

Grier and Jackson's Golden Globe nominations for Jackie Brown came in which category?

Musical or Comedy: the Globes filed a crime story with four killings beside Liar Liar and In & Out. Grier and Jackson both lost to the stars of As Good as It Gets.