Movies - TV
An '80s Indie Film Cost Paul Newman And Gene Hackman A Role In Jackie Brown
By BJ COLANGELO
"Jackie Brown" is Quentin Tarantino's love letter to the Blaxploitation films of the 1970s that made Pam Grier a cinematic legend. Grier and Samuel L. Jackson were obviously no-brainer casting decisions, but Tarantino's journey toward casting Robert Forster as Max Cherry was a little more unconventional.
In an interview with The Playlist, Tarantino confessed that along with Forster, he also considered Paul Newman, Gene Hackman, and John Saxon. While the latter three are arguably the bigger names of the group, it was Forster's performance in a low-budget 1980s film featuring an alligator that eats an entire wedding party that gave him the edge and nabbed him the role.
Tarantino’s decision to choose Forster was made after watching the 1980 animal attack film "Alligator,” where Forster plays a detective investigating a series of deaths of sewer workers, only to find out a massive mutated alligator was the culprit. Tarantino said, "I was like, this is just not—this is the character, this is Max Cherry, 17 years earlier."