“You’re so cool.”
The catch phrase of the night was an easy prediction as we took our seats for a live reading of True Romance at The Theatre at Ace Hotel, where Patricia Arquette and Christian Slater reprised their original roles alongside a star-studded replacement cast. Director Jason Reitman is conducting an ongoing series of live performances of movie scripts each month, bringing in new actors to create new energy around these beloved films. He has previously staged live-reads of The Princess Bride, Ghostbusters, American Beauty, and The Apartment, among others. Yes, this kind of magic is exactly why people live in Los Angeles.
Every soul in attendance knew the story, Tarantino’s first bloody-script masterpiece, by heart: Clarence (Slater) meets and marries hooker Alabama (Arquette), steals cocaine from her pimp, and has a hell of a time trying to sell it in Hollywood. The owners of the coke try to reclaim their property, and all kinds of brutal hell breaks loose as the lovers on the run are confronted. But to bring the two core players together, 22 years after the release and escalation of the Tony Scott-directed film into a beloved cult hit, was an electrifying experience which added a new layer of icing to the sweet-spot of this pop culture fixture.
Reitman’s cast for the stage reading included Jon Favreau as the late James Gandolfini’s sadistic gangster Virgil, Mark and Jay Duplass as the late Chris Penn and Tom Sizemore’s bumbling cops Nicky Dimes and Cody Nicholson, Keegan-Michael Key as Gary Oldman’s trash-talking pimp Drexl and Jason Segel as Brad Pitt’s hilarious stoner Floyd. But Kevin Pollak, who played a number of characters, would soon emerge as the transplant VIP of the night – which I’ll get to.
“We’re going to be reading an early draft, so you’ll notice some changes,” Reitman told the crowd as he took the stage. “That’s one of the fun things about doing these. It’s a weird kind of archeology where you get to figure out how the movie you love started.”
Fans were exhilarated to see Slater and Arquette together in all their trashed-out glory; he in a leather jacket and sunglasses and her in full Alabama mode with leggings, baby blue sunglasses and the iconic leopard-print jacket. The performance was unrehearsed, doubling the rarity of the moment, leading to a great deal of comic relief – provided in no small part by replacement cast members taking on side character roles to fill in the gaps of one-scene, single-line roles. Paul Scheer’s casting director was deliciously deadpan (as was his Elliot turn, despite his bald disadvantage in the casting as “a GQ blow-dry boy”), while J.K. Simmons flipped around his Detroit Tigers baseball cap and completely departed himself to play one of Drexl’s early victims.
Jon Favreau’s delivery as Virgil was haunting in its subtle menace, an understated performance that was only brightened when Arquette mimed hitting him over the head until his character’s death in the LA motel room. Meanwhile, Keegan-Michael Key had us in stitches with his many race-swap doubletakes and one-liners as the dreadlocked Drexl, including his high-pitched shriek to punctuate Drexl’s gunshot demise. Mae Whitman portrayed Michael Rapaport’s neurotic energy to a T for the part of Dick Ritchie as well.
But the night belonged to Kevin Pollak. While his charismatic character potency shined through his take on producer Lee Donowitz, not to mention the over-the-top cool of Elvis Presley, complete with standby impersonator at his side, it was his masterful impression of Christopher Walken that brought the house down. The legendary Sicilian eggplant scene in Clarence’s father’s trailer provided Pollak with the perfect launchpad, and his take on Walken’s erratic verbal cadence has reached an astonishing potency.
As Arquette read her final voiceover and Hans Zimmer’s music from the final scene wafted through the speakers, the sense of fleeting magic, like water running through our fingers, was palpable. The standing ovation was an obvious result, exhilarated cheers roaring from the collective as the Worleys exited stage right, our own Sid and Nancy riding back into the depths of our hearts.
