The Big Picture

• Though Quentin Tarantino penned the script for True Romance, Tony Scott ended up directing the feature.
• While Tarantino wanted to keep the original ending of the script intact, Scott opted for a less bleak ending.
• Scott stated that he had fallen in love with the characters and wanted to give them a fairy tale ending.

Quentin Tarantino has become one of the most renowned writer-directors in Hollywood, a singular voice whose scripts feel as though they could not succeed with the touch of any filmmaker other than Tarantino himself. But one of his greatest stories was brought to the screen by another director. In the early 1990s, Tony Scott, brother of Ridley Scott and master genre-auteur behind Top Gun, Crimson Tide, and Man on Fire, read a two of Tarantino's scripts and wanted to direct both of them. Tarantino, not wanting to give up both of his features, opted instead to give Scott a choice between the two. Scott left Tarantino with Reservoir Dogs, the film that would go on to be his acclaimed feature debut, and started bringing True Romance to the screen. While Tarantino had a bad experience giving his Natural Born Killers script away to Oliver Stone, Tarantino was pleased Scott's version of True Romance. Scott did make a few changes that Tarantino had to be swayed into appreciating, but the film largely fulfilled the vision that the original script offered for this violent, romantic tale.

'True Romance' Is a Perfect Melding of Tony Scott's Filmmaking and Quentin Tarantino's Writing

True Romance follows Clarence (Christian Slater), a comic, movie, and Elvis fanatic, and Alabama (Patricia Arquette), a call girl who abandons her work after quickly taking a liking to him. The two get married on a whim, and after a violent encounter with her former pimp, played in a captivating, strange performance by Gary Oldman, go on the run with a bag full of drugs that they took by mistake. After these drugs are a variety of mobsters, rounding out the film's impressive ensemble cast with the likes of Christopher Walken and James Gandolfini in one of his first major movie roles.

Tarantino and Scott are two incredibly distinctive artists. Scott's films could work well without a single line of interesting dialogue because he has such an incredible hold over the visual language of a story and often shoots his films in a vibrant style that gives Bayhem a run for its money. Tarantino, on the other hand, built his career on telling stories that overwhelmingly rely on charming, chatty characters delivering iconic dialogue. He is a strong writer, one who is unafraid to infuse every inch of his work with overt references to influential pop culture that informs his own interests and how he constructs his characters.

Scott's unique visual style mixed with Tarantino's sharp writing and character work is a match made in heaven. The two effortlessly compliment each other so well. Scott was a filmmaker who ascended to auteur status simply by establishing such a strong tonal hold over every story he directed. He was not a writer by trade, so his films were not necessarily conceived in a manner that was informed by his vision. But when he got his hands on a script, Scott knew exactly how to fit it around the way he liked to work. That meant that a Tony Scott picture would always be visually interesting, but the script could really make or break how compelling it was. But when your script is written by the guy who made Pulp Fiction, it certainly gives you a lot to work with.

Tony Scott Gave 'True Romance' Its Fairy Tale Ending

As with many Tarantino movies, True Romance builds to a climactic shootout. This one involves three different groups: police officers, mobsters, and a shady film producer's bodyguards all converging in a nice Los Angeles home where the stolen money, a lot of drugs, and a lot of guns are present. Bullets go flying, just about everybody in the room gets shot. Clarence takes a bullet to the eye, and for an extended period of time, Alabama believes him to be dead, as does the audience. But after the dust and the feathers (from the endless amount of pillows that were caught by the gunfire) settle, Clarence is still with us. Alabama helps Clarence up, they take off with the money, and True Romance ends with the two of them on the beach in Mexico, with their son named Elvis.

This ending was the only major point of contention between Tarantino and Scott. Per the 15th anniversary oral history published by Maxim, Tarantino's original script ended with Clarence dying. Alabama would take off with the money, and essentially every other character would be left dead. The original ending is far more bleak, one that Tarantino thought was necessary for the film to keep its edge. Tarantino was concerned that Scott was making the change in order to appeal to commercial attitudes about filmmaking, to appease studioheads, as opposed to appeasing his own artistic vision. But he explained to Maxim that Scott "convinced me 100% that he wasn't doing it for commercial reasons."

Tony Scott Wanted 'True Romance' to Have a Fairytale Ending

Scott expressed to Tarantino that he viewed True Romance as a fairy tale more than anything else. It certainly is a love story, it is in the name after all. Scott simply fell in love with the characters, and he stated in Maxim that he did not want to see them die after falling in love with them. So Scott did not spare Clarence to appease anyone but himself and the characters. To Tarantino's credit, while he insists that his own version of this film would definitely keep the original ending, he does now understand why Scott wanted to make the change. Tarantino may have taken some convincing during production, but he says that as soon as he saw the film, he had to admit that the new ending worked far better for Scott's vision of the story.

True Romance is a lesson in the things you have to let go of when you turn your story over to another person. But unlike Natural Born Killers, this is one where the result is a refreshing, beautiful work that honors the heart of the work even when changes are made. Scott and Tarantino have a great deal of respect for one another, and although both have incredible résumés outside of this movie, True Romance is a collaborative effort that brought out the best in both of them.

True Romance is available to rent or buy on Prime Video in the U.S.

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