Trailer Park: True Romance

Movie
True Romance, released September 10 1993

Trailer Synopsis
Con man Clarence (Christian Slater) just got married to hooker Alabama (Patricia Arquette). They are on the road to Los Angeles and in possession of a suitcase that has both cops and gangsters (the latter of which led by Christopher Walken) on their trail. Shootouts ensue. Along the way they’ll visit Michael Rapaport, ride a roller coaster and make out a lot.

Does It Honestly Represent the Movie?
It does! True Romance was one of the scripts that Quentin Tarantino sold in the wake of the breakout success of Reservoir Dogs. He initially intended on directing it but ended up selling it off after the opportunity to make Pulp Fiction came up. In stepped Top Gun director Tony Scott, who re-ordered the script so that it could be told linearly and gave it a happy ending (in Tarantino’s draft, Clarance and Alabama died at the end). The result was a beautifully adrenalized combination of Tarantino’s sparkling gangster dialogue and Scott’s slick thrill ride visual style. It tells the story of Clarence, who falls madly in love with prostitute Alabama and marries her almost immediately. In an effort to free her from her old life, Clarence kills Alabama’s pimp Drexl Spivey (a loopy Gary Oldman) and swipes a suitcase full of cocaine from him. The decamp from Detroit to Los Angeles in an attempt to unload the blow and score some life-changing cash. They are hunted by gangster Vincenzo Coccotti (Christopher Walken), who is looking to reclaim the drugs that rightfully belonged to his boss. The action gets fleshed out via memorable supporting turns from Brad Pitt (as a perpetually stoned couch urchin), James Gandolfini (playing a gangster, natch) and Val Kilmer (who shows up as the King-obsessed Clarence’s guardian Elvis).

What’s Weird About It?
The primary soundtrack for the trailer is an Aerosmith tune called “The Other Side” that first appeared on 1989’s Pump and was a fairly sizable hit for the band (topped the Album Rock Tracks chart, got to 22 on the Hot 100, won the Moonman for Best Rock Video at the 1991 VMAs. Aerosmith were still in the midst of their massive renaissance as a chart-dominant behemoth—in fact, their massive smash Get a Grip was sitting just outside the top 10 when True Romance opened in theaters. It made perfect sense to grab a tune from the biggest band in the land at the time, but retroactively it feels weird. The Clarence character loves Elvis, and the broader vibe of the film is much more in line with outlaw country or punk rock. I feel like a few years later True Romance would have been advertised as specifically counter-cultural in the way that Pulp Fiction was.

Also the narrator touts the movie as “from the director of Top Gun and Beverly Hills Cop II” which for whatever reason feels weird to me. Is it because both of those movies felt sort of old in the cultural memory by ‘93? Are they papering over the fact that Tony Scott—absolutely one of my favorite dudes there has ever been—was on a bit of a losing streak at the time? (His three previous films Revenge, Days of Thunder and The Last Boy Scout all saw moderate box office success but nobody really loved them in the way they did Top Gun). I also found it a little weird they didn’t play up the Tarantino angle a little more, but then I remembered Pulp Fiction didn’t come out for another year and he was not yet a commercial force despite the significant buzz around Reservoir Dogs the year before.

And speaking of the narrator: who is that guy? It’s not one of the instantly recognizable voices in rotation for these kinds of gigs.

Does It Spoil The Movie?
Sorta? It does end up including a lot of plot points but it would be hard to parse those out considering the chaotic mayhem that dominates the trailer. Plus, the basic plot of True Romance is pretty straightforward (guy steals from the wrong people, gets chased) and ultimately that plot doesn’t particularly matter. (I’ve seen this thing a bunch of times and have no memory of how it ends, which is somehow a compliment.)

Final Analysis
This kind of approach to presenting this kind of movie—a lowlife, some gangsters, a hot lady, a bag of money, some whimsy—would eventually become overdone and cliche, but I kind of adore the earnestness on display here. It’s as though the trailer itself can’t quite comprehend the movie, but rather than come across as muddled it feeds into the energy of the movie itself. True Romance is kind of a hard sell because it’s not necessarily an action movie or a thriller or a crime picture or a comedy. It’s on the fringes of all those things. This trailer very much leaves you thinking “What did I just see?” and I think that’s the point. Mission accomplished! Still should have picked a different song, though. 8/10