Agree this ranks at the top of Tarantino's best character exchanges. There are a couple reasons I feel this scene works so well. First, it's the suspense of the scene. We know what is going to happen. We know Mr. Worley is going to die. He knows it too. Hitchcock once said, "Suspense can only be achieved by telling the audience as much as you can." Coccotti tells him at the start of their conversation, " You tell the angels in Heaven you never seen evil so singularily personified as you did in the face of the man who killed you." This is all the information we need to know to put us in an immediate state of sympathy for Mr. Worley. The next thing that happens that makes this even better is we have to wait. 10 minutes, we have to wait! This is a master class in dulling out the ineveitable while keeping us tremendously entertained. Not only is it two amazing actors playing off eachother, it's engaging dialogue. Coccotti wants the truth. Mr. Worley wants to protect his son. So what does he do? He spends the next few minutes insulting the man who is about to kill him instead of giving him what he wants. Forcing Coccotti to kill him quickly as opposed to beating the information out of him. The other bit that really makes this scene work is the pacing. Conversation > Punch in the nose> Conversation> cuts his hand > Story about truth, final threat > Gives him a cigarette >Mr. Worley's resignation> everyone laughs> Coccotti shoots Mr. Worley. Then the real punchline of it all... the answer to Coccotti's question was pinned to the fridge.

This is my absolute No. 1 favorite movie scene of all time and it was from the second I saw it. True Romance is also one of my top 10 favorite movies of all time and it's CRIMINALLY underrated in terms of movies in general and Quentin Tarantino related projects. It sucks the subject is racism, and I'm sure many people find this highly offensive, but my god, this is absolutely brilliant. Denis Hopper destroyed this scene -- absolutely destroyed it (in a good way, of course) -- as did Tony Scott in the directing department. But again, this film is GREAT. When you consider Tarantino wrote this, Scott directed it, it has one of the greatest scenes of all time, one of the greatest characters of all time (Drexl Spivey) and one of the greatest ensemble casts of all time (Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson, James Gandolfini, Patricia Arquette, etc.) how can this therefore NOT be viewed as one of the greatest films of all time?!?

If you ever have a chance, listen to the DVD voice over track that Tarantino does on this film. It's amazing and highly informative. He talks about his whole initiation from having nothing to selling True Romance after five years of trying, and then making Reservoir Dogs first. He says this scene is a four man effort between Tarantino, director Tony Scott, Walken, and Hopper. He too thinks it should be archived as one of the greatest scenes in movie history.

Great analysis, Jonathan, I concur with every point you make. Interesting how QT uses your second note -- drawing out the tension by making us wait -- several times in his movies. Really makes us squirm as he builds the tension slowly... slowly... slowly. Then the payoff.

Kalen, thanks for that reminder about the cast. I had forgotten some of those notable actors had roles in True Romance. Definitely worth revisiting!

Jon, if I'm not mistaken, isn't this the script he sold for $50K and ended up using that to buy a classic car?

I'm no historian. But I can tell you what Tarantino and Bender recall in the DVD extras on True Romance and Reservoir Dogs; which BTW, I listen to repeatedly on my daily commute. Tarantino says he did buy his first car with some of the cash. Prior to that he didn't even have a car. Dogs producer Bender recalls that they were shopping Dogs around town and because they had that 50K in the bank to make Dogs, they were willing to turn down offers that had requirements of making certain changes. Tarantino had planned to use that cash to make Dogs on 16mm. He wasn't about to compromise the script. He gave Bender a deadline to find financing. Bender ending up finding $1.3M (probably from private equity). Tarantino says he wrote 30 or so scripts starting in junior high. He never got past around page 30. But at some point he found a burning story to tell, instead of just wanting to sell a script. That was True Romance, which no one wanted for five years. He would have sold that script for dirt cheap. He finally got a director and prodco interested. But that didn't pan out. Meanwhile, he got Tony Scott to read Dogs and Natural Born Killers. Then Tony read TR and loved it. He went to the prodco and signed on to direct it. Meanwhile Tarantino made Dogs. The prodco and Tony then offered TR to Tarantino to direct. But Tarantino was no longer interested. He loved Tony Scott's work and saw that Tony had the passion for it, he no longer had. One thing I found very interesting is that Scott change the structure (nothing else). Qt originally had the whole shootout with the drugs in act two as a flashback. In act one we would never know what was going on, until the Sicilian scene where we would get introduced to the concept that drugs and murder are involved, which would have seemed counter to the introduction of these two cute lovers going on a honeymoon.