FEATURE:
Needle Drops and Scores to Settle
Scene Two: Across 110th Street: Jackie Brown (1997)
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EVEN though the soundtrack I included…
IMAGE CREDIT: CineGraphX
at the bottom of this feature does not allow access to the monologues and dialogue, we can hear the incredible music. When it comes to Quentin Tarantino, he is perhaps the most regarded when it comes to soundtracks and choice of music. Someone who masterful pops needle drops and iconic music moments into his films, he has a real and deep love for music. A huge, passion, knowledge and broad taste. I could have features the Kill Bill soundtracks, Reservoir Dogs or, of course, the iconic Pulp Fiction. However, I wanted to turn my focus to his 1997 work of genius, Jackie Brown. Its soundtrack almost as notable as its direction, screenplay and lead performance – courtesy of the magnificent Pam Grier. Grier has talked fondly about her work on Jackie Brown and the importance of music in the film. The whole idea of this feature is to explore the important impact and relevance of music in cinema. I will bring in a range of films (in terms of genre and release year) and explore their soundtrack/score. I started out with Frances Ha (2013) and the mix of styles and sounds on that soundtrack. I am going to get to a film score soon, as these first two features have been about soundtracks. In interviews for Jackie Brown, Tarantino explained how he chose the songs for the soundtrack during the scriptwriting phase. He wanted to find the unique rhythm for the film. Underlining the fact that the music is not just background noise but an integral part of the narrative, often serving to reveal character or enhance the scene's mood and tension. What makes Jackie Brown such an incredible and memorable soundtrack is its fusion of vintage Soul and Funk tracks, which he credits with helping to establish the film's tone and provide a deeper understanding of its characters. I have modified that from an A.I. search, but it is all relevant and true. How the music used is integral to the plot and the characters. Jackie Brown concerns a flight attendant (played by Pam Grier) who gets caught smuggling money for an arms dealer and devises a plan to double-cross both him and the law to keep the money for herself. She forms an alliance with bondsman, Max Cherry, who develops feelings for her, and manipulates everyone involved to pull off a complex con.
It is one of Quentin Tarantino's best films and soundtracks. They are not discussed as much as they should. People naturally gravitate towards Pulp Fiction. That is a masterpiece, that Jackie Brown, to me, has a richer and better soundtrack. I want to quickly move to a feature from Far Out Magazine, where they discuss Jackie Brown and quote what Tarantino has said about the importance of music to him – and to his film:
“Jackie Brown, a lesser mentioned film in Tarantino’s larger picture, is the 1997 crime drama film starring the likes of Robert Forster, Robert De Niro, Samuel L. Jackson and Bridget Fonda, is also given the same treatment in the opening credits.
The adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s novel Rum Punch pays homage to 1970s blaxploitation films and features the use of Bobby Womack’s ‘Across 110th Street’ which was seemingly fused with Jackie Brown, a direction only Tarantino could take the project.
“Music is very, very important in my movies. In some ways the most important stage, whether it ends up being in the movie or not, is just when I come up with the idea itself before I have actually sat down and started writing.
“What I’m looking for is the spirit of the movie, the beat that the movie will play with.”—Quentin Tarantino”.
In 2022, twenty-five years after the release of Jackie Brown (and its soundtrack), this insightful article argued how it is the standard for the perfect marriage between film and music. The gold standard. I would agree with that. It is Quentin Tarantino’s finest soundtrack. The greatest of example how he uses music like no other director:
“The marriage between song and scene is a delicate one. Inserting the wrong tune at the wrong time can destroy an otherwise flawless sequence. Conversely, the correct audio accoutrement can emote things that actors and actions cannot. In a 2007 interview, Quentin Tarantino was asked about the importance of music in film. He said this: “If you do it right, if you use the right song, in the right scene…it’s about as cinematic a thing as you can do”. 25 years ago, Tarantino delivered this cinematic achievement in film with his underrated film Jackie Brown.
Written in 1992, Rum Punch is a stylish crime caper by literary legend Elmore Leonard. The book features a slew of plot twists along with a stable of twisted characters. In 1997, Tarantino brought Rum Punch to the big screen and renamed it Jackie Brown. The film boasts an impressive cast that includes Pam Grier in the title role, as well as Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Keaton, and Robert De Niro. It tells the story of an airline stewardess (Grier) who smuggles money for a sadistic gun dealer (Jackson).
Although the source material is from Leonard’s novel, Tarantino puts his unmistakable imprint on the material. Music is his most potent weapon in accomplishing this, renowned for his superb utilization of diegetic sound (music implemented into the scene itself). This technique lets the audience hear the music as the players would hear it. By including the viewer in the same auditory experience, this allows the viewer to occupy the same space as the character. The film’s diverse diegetic soundtrack includes artists such as The Delfonics, The Supremes, The Grass Roots, Minnie Riperton, Foxy Brown, and Pam Grier herself.
Two powerful examples of Tarantino’s mastery of diegetic sound in Jackie Brown occur with the same character in the same setting. On separate occasions, Jackson’s character is behind the wheel of a car. Both instances see him preparing to commit murder. In the first scene, the character inserts a tape into the deck and we hear “Strawberry Letter 23” by funk band The Brothers Johnson. The second has Jackson sitting in the dark listening to Johnny Cash sing “Tennessee Stud”. The character, the motivation, and the setting are the same, but the songs are very different, which indicates a tonal shift. Needless to say, one murder attempt is successful, and one does not go as planned. Also, since the music is a part of the scene, the audience has just shared an auditory experience with the villain. This serves to once again increase viewer commitment.
If Jackie Brown has a theme song, it is “Across 110th Street” by Bobby Womack. This musical choice is a clear nod to the Blaxploitation genre that Tarantino is so enamored with, and a genre Pam Grier prominently starred in. Quentin uses the 1972 soul ballad as a form of narrative progression, but it’s also a participant in the narrative. The film’s opening sequence shows Jackie in profile on an electronic walkway at the airport. Womack’s vocals ooze out over the scene as the credits roll and the audience is introduced to the heroine. This is an example of non-diegetic music because it exists outside of the scene. It also perfectly sets the mood for the picture.
In the final scene of the film, audiences see Jackie driving a car when once again “Across 110th Street” begins to play. The viewer assumes the song is acting as background music like the previous use, until Jackie starts to mouth the words. This is diegetic implementation. At this point, the audience is in the car with Jackie because they are hearing what she hears. By using the same song at two separate points in the film in different ways, Tarantino not only creates a sense of continuity, but he also further reinforces viewer connection.
Jackie Brown is routinely underappreciated and overlooked. A major reason why is because people constantly compare it to Pulp Fiction, the more successful and well-known Tarantino movie. However, cinema scholar Jason Bailey commented that “Jackie Brown may be the only Quentin Tarantino movie that gets noticeably better with each viewing”. With the benefit of 25 years of hindsight, Jackie Brown prevails as the superior film in several areas including pace and sentiment. But the most glaring difference is the use of music. Pulp Fiction is a film full of brilliantly executed musical sequences, but Jackie Brown is a film brilliantly orchestrated to music”.
There are blogs that have dedicated entire articles to songs used in Jackie Brown and the scenes they accompanied. This feature discusses Bobbie Womack’s Across 110th Street and a crucial scene. How it stands out as especially memorable. This in-depth and detailed examination concerns The Brother’s Johnson’s Strawberry Letter 23 and how that song was utilised. I am not going to source the entire article, though this section is particularly relevant and illuminative:
“Only after slamming down the trunk lid on the kid does Tarantino begin to meld the song with the scene. The moment it all kicks in is done with great and recognizable effect. Starting up the car, Ordell performs something so familiar with those of us who survived The Seventies. The bygone habit of dropping a cassette mixtape down into a car deck. Bringing forth a tune. Strawberry Letter 23‘s catchy keyboard introduction wafting the vehicle’s interior, all while Ordell slips his gloves on for the deed ahead.
Tarantino fills the theater and audience’s ears at this point with the dance number’s sound, in fact. As Robbie reaches for his revolver from the glove box, he knows the hard part is done. His prey secured, taking his time with the simple preparation of the final step. Languid in his motions from this point forward. Relaxed. Turning up the volume a bit more to enjoy the moment of his triumph. Glancing back toward the trunk with a smirk, proving the mastery of his play and the situation through his control of the music.
Self-congratulatory, at its utmost.
Yet, it’s in the scene’s final sequence that Tarantino really gets to enjoy himself. The capper. Shifting head-on at the car, QT tracks the camera horizontally, gently as Robbie U-turns his ’70s vintage Oldsmobile back up the street. Creating distance with the audience, the Brother’s Johnson song fades as the car withdraws to the background. Away from onlookers. Establishing that we, the audience, have only been listening through the car’s own interior speakers. The intimacy broken, the camera ventures left, mimicking Ordell’s turn down the block, then swings upward for the last”.
I am going to end with this feature from Medium. Quentin Tarantino’s soundtracks are filled with Easter eggs. The glorious soundtrack for Jackie Brown nods to the past and has genuine appreciation for and knowledge of the ‘70s-era blaxploitation flicks. Rather than mimicking or mocking them, Tarantino pays tribute and homage. His selection of music, and how it uses that in key scenes, is a masterclass:
“The soundtrack is filled with songs from various blaxploitation films of the time. The movie starts off with Grier’s flight attendant going off to work, to the sound of the late, great Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th Street,” the theme from the cop flick of the same name. The song certainly makes a great theme for Brown, as Womack sings of the trials and tribulations a person in dire straits goes through to get out of the hellhole they’re stuck in, something our heroine will be doing during the film:
“Been down so long, getting up didn’t cross my mind
I knew there was a better way of life that I was just trying to find
You don’t know what you’ll do until you’re put under pressure
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Across 110th Street is a hell of a tester”
For incidental music, Tarantino uses several tracks from Roy Ayers’s funky score for Grier’s Coffy, a movie which, as any QT-head will tell you, is one of his all-time favorite flicks. For the movie’s tension-packed set piece at the Del Amo Mall (described as “the largest indoor mall in the world” in the movie), Tarantino specifically uses Ayers’s anxious, percussion-heavy “Escape” track, a bit of music that was also recently used in the superhero flick Ant-Man.
Tarantino definitely wanted Brown to be a big salute to his leading lady, not only using music from Coffy, but getting “Long Time Woman,” which Grier performed for her 1971 women-in-prison flick The Big Doll House, for a scene where Jackie gets hauled off to prison. There’s also a cheeky moment where Tarantino uses the gangstalicious track “(Holy Matrimony) Letter to the Firm” as background music for when Cherry goes to a record store. Who is the rapper who performs that track? Why, it’s Foxy Brown, who of course named herself after another of Grier’s blaxploitation classics.
While Brown is set in contemporary times, the music is richly steeped in old-school, R & B music. At the aforementioned record store, Cherry picks up a cassette (‘memba those?) by the Delfonics after he goes over to Jackie’s apartment and she plays a Delfonics album on her turntable. (Bloodstone’s “Natural High” also begins playing when Cherry first lays eyes on Jackie.) Jackie’s favorite bar, the Cockatoo Inn, is a hangout that plays tunes by Minnie Riperton and the Meters. Ordell is so impressed by the place, he goes back there and has a drink with Louis, and the song that’s playing during their scene is Bill Withers’ “Who Is He (and What Is He to You?).” It’s a particularly on-the-nose selection, as Louis also asks Ordell what is his relationship to Melanie, whom Louis just had a quickie with in her kitchenette. And the Del Amo Mall sequence starts off with Randy Crawford’s version of The Crusaders’s “Street Life,” which was memorably used in the 1981 Burt Reynolds cop movie Sharky’s Machine.
Not as surf music-heavy as Pulp (although the movie does end with the Tiki Gods’ “Monte Carlo Nights,” which I think Tarantino used because it’s from the 1995 Tarantino-capitalizing compilation Pulp Surfin’), Brown, just like Tarantino’s two previous films, reminds viewers how much Tarantino loves filming driving around, listening to music. As Ordell memorably establishes in the movie, when he lets Louis know not to mess with his levels before going in his car and listening to his stereo, music is there for you when you’re on the road, virtually serving as the soundtrack for your life.
Before Robbie gets down to eliminating folk who may drop dime on him, we have him in his car bumping the Brothers Johnson’s version of Shuggie Otis’s “Strawberry Letter 23” and Johnny Cash’s version of Jimmy Driftwood’s “Tennessee Stud” — both are cold-blooded numbers. We see Melanie rocking out (and annoying an already-frustrated Louis) to the Grass Roots’s “Midnight Confessions.” And we also catch Cherry, getting to know the music of the Delfonics (and briefly impressing Robbie when he’s in the car near the end) with “Didn’t I Blow Your Mind This Time?” Finally, the movie ends with Jackie driving off into the sunset, singing along with the lyrics of “Across 110th Street,” probably remembering what she had to do when she was put under pressure”.
I am not sure which score or soundtrack I will choose for the third instalment of this series. It is inevitable to come to a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack and, for me, it had to be Jackie Brown. If someone do not consider it to be his best film, you cannot argue against the brilliance and genius of the soundtrack. To repeat what I said in the first feature, I am partly inspired by Mark Kermode’s must-read and excellent book, Mark Kermode's Surround Sound: The Stories of Movie Music. He co-wrote it with radio producer, Jenny Nelson. There are insightful discussions like this one, where Kermode and Nelson explore everything related to film soundtracks, and highlight and dissect why soundtracks are an essential piece of cinema. No clearer example of music being essential to cinema than Jackie Brown and Quentin Tarantino’s stunning soundtrack. The soundtrack stands as a brilliant work on its own but, when you see the songs used in the film, it is evident that they…
ELEVATE every scene.