The standout scene from the screenplay features Dennis Hopper as Clarence’s (Christian Slater) estranged father, Clifford. Clarence and his new wife, Alabama (Patricia Arquette), surprised Clarence’s father with a visit before they escaped Detroit for Los Angeles. Clarence wanted his father, a former cop, to see if he could look into the crime they committed — killing Alabama’s violent pimp and mistakenly taking a suitcase full of cocaine.
Clifford comes back with comforting information, telling Clarence that the police assume Drexl’s murder is a gang killing. Clarence and Alabama aren’t suspects.
They bid Clifford farewell and head to Hollywood.
Later on, Clifford returns home only to find some dangerous guests waiting for him.
It’s a powerful scene.
From the getgo, we know that Clifford is in trouble. The stakes of the scene are high, and only get higher when it’s revealed that Clarence and Alabama have taken cocaine from the Mob. And this visiting Mob Don, played brilliantly by Christopher Walken, is a force to be reckoned with.
Tarantino doesn’t jump to a conclusion within the scene. In any lesser screenplay, the reveal of Clifford’s guests would lead to immediate and violent interrogation.
The scene starts that way, but Tarantino lengthens the tension with two different monologues. And each of those monologues has a point. It’s not just about cool dialogue, which we’ve come to expect with every scene within a Quentin Tarantino script. It’s about setting up the delivery of the climax of the scene that we know is coming.
We know Clifford is a dead man. It’s now about how he’s going to die, at whose hand, and how Clifford is going to go out without endangering his son and daughter-in-law.
Clifford did his best to protect Clarence and Alabama’s location until The Don delivers a monologue about how he learned how to detect liars with seventeen different tell signs. Just when we feel that Clifford has done an outstanding job of lying by giving half-truths, we now know that the Don knows he’s lying.
The scene shifts in tone and atmosphere from that moment. We see that Clifford knows he’s been caught. They’re going to torture him until he reveals their whereabouts. So he decides to take action in the only way he can — using his wits.
Working from the information that the Don shared with him about having the talent of being able to detect a lie, Clifford goes into a monologue about a historical fact that he knows — one that he believes will earn him a quick death.
While the content of the story he tells is crude, with racist slurs, Tarantino delivers the dialogue within the context that it’s the characters and their flawed viewpoints that are using such offensive words.
And the story Clifford tells enrages the Don to the point that he kills Clifford in a moment of enraged passion.
The brilliant thing about this moment is that it is precisely what Clifford had planned. He didn’t want to be tortured to the point of divulging his son’s destination. With the knowledge that Don could sniff out a lie, he told a story that was based on at least what Clifford believes is true. A story involving the Don’s own race.
——–MOVIE SCRIPT ——-
EXT. TRAILER PARK – DAY
A lower, middle-class trailer park named “Astro World” which has a neon sign in front of it in the shape of a planet.
A big, white Chevy Nova pulls into the park. It parks by a trailer that’s slightly less kept up than the others. Cliff gets out of the Chevy. He’s drinking out of a fast food soda cup as he opens the door to his trailer.
INT. TRAILER – DAY
He steps inside his doorway and then, before he knows it, a gun is pressed to his temple and a big hand grabs his shoulder.
GUN CARRIER
Welcome home, alchy. We’re havin’ a party.
Cliff is roughly shoved into his living room. Waiting for him are four standing men: FRANKIE (young wise guy), LENNY (an old wise guy), TOOTH-PICK VIC (a fireplug pitbull type) and VIRGIL (the quiet one).
Sitting in Cliff’s reclining chair is VINCENZO COCCOTTI, the Frank Nitti to Detroit mob leader Blue Lou Boyle.
Cliff is knocked to his knees. He looks up and sees the sitting Coccotti. Frankie and Lenny pick him up and roughly drop him in a chair.
COCCOTTI
(to Frankie)
Tell Tooth-Pic Vic to go outside and do you-know-what.
Frankie tells Tooth-Pick Vic in Italian what Coccotti said. He nods and exits.
Cliff’s chair is moved closer to Coccotti’s. Virgil stands on one side of Cliff. Frankie and Lenny ransack the trailer. Virgil has a bottle of Chivas Regal in his hand, but he has yet to touch a drop.
COCCOTTI
Do you know who I am, Mr. Worley?
CLIFF
I give up. Who are you?
COCCOTTI
I’m the Anti-Christ. You get me in a vendetta kind of mood, you will tell the angels in Heaven that you had never seen pure evil so singularly personified as you did in the face of the man who killed you. My name is Vincenzo Coccotti. I work as council for
Mr. Blue Lou Boyle, the man who your son stole from. I hear you were once a cop so I can assume you’ve heard of us before. Am I correct?
CLIFF
I’ve heard of ‘Blue Lou Boyle.’
COCCOTTI
I’m glad. Hopefully that will clear up the how-full-of-shit-I-am question you’ve been asking yourself. Now, we’re gonna have a little Q and A, and at the risk of sounding redundant, please make your answers genuine.
(taking out a pack of Chesterfields)
Want a Chesterfield?
CLIFF
No.
COCCOTTI
(as he lights one up)
I have a son of my own. About your boy’s age. I can imagine how painful this must be for you. But Clarence and that bitch whore girl friend of his brought this all on themselves. And I implore you not to go down the road with ’em. You can always take comfort in the fact that you never had a choice.
CLIFF
Look, I’d help ya if I could, but
I haven’t seen Clarence —
Before Cliff can finish his sentence, Coccotti slams him hard in the nose with his fist.
COCCOTTI
Smarts, don’t it? Gettin’ slammed in the nose fucks you all up.
You got that pain shootin’ through your brain. Your eyes fill up with water. It ain’t any kind of fun.
(MORE)
COCCOTTI (CONT’D)
But what I have to offer you, that’s as good as it’s ever gonna get, and it won’t ever get that good again. We talked to your neighbors, they saw a Mustang, a red Mustang, parked in front of your trailer yesterday. Mr. Worley, have you seen your son?
Cliff’s defeated.
CLIFF
I’ve seen him.
COCCOTTI
Now I can’t be sure of how much of what he told you. So in the chance you’re in the dark about some of this, let me shed some light. That whore your boy hangs around with, her pimp is an associate of mine, and I don’t just mean pimpin’, in other affairs he works for me in a courier capacity. Well, apparently, that dirty little whore found out when we were gonna do some business, ’cause your son, the cowboy and his flame, came in the room blastin’ and didn’t stop ’til they were pretty sure everybody was dead.
CLIFF
What are you talkin’ about?
COCCOTTI
I’m talkin’ about a massacre. They snatched my narcotics and high-tailed it outta there. Wouldda gotten away with it, but your son, fuckhead that he is, left his driver’s license in a dead guy’s hand. A whore hiding in the commode filled in all the blanks.
CLIFF
I don’t believe you.
COCCOTTI
That’s of minor importance. But what’s of major fucking importance is that I believe you. Where did they go?
CLIFF
On their honeymoon.
COCCOTTI
I’m gettin’ angry askin’ the same question a second time. Where did they go?
CLIFF
They didn’t tell me.
Coccotti looks at him.,
CLIFF
Now, wait a minute and listen. I haven’t seen Clarence in three years, yesterday he shows up here with a girl, sayin’ he got married.
He told me he needed some quick cash for a honeymoon, so he asked if he could borrow five hundred dollars. I wanted to help him out so I wrote out a check. We went to breakfast and that’s the last I saw of him. So help me God. They never thought to tell me where they were goin’. And I never thought to ask.
Coccotti looks at him for a long moment. He then gives
Virgil a look. Virgil, quick as greased lightning, grabs
Cliff’s hands and turns it palm up. He then whips out a butterfly knife and slices Cliff’s palm open and pours Chivas Regal on the wound. Cliff screams.
Coccotti puffs on a Chesterfield.
Tooth-pick Vic returns to the trailer, and reports in Italian that there’s nothing in the car.
Virgil walks into the kitchen and gets a dishtowel. Cliff holds his bleeding palm in agony. Virgil hands him the dishtowel. Cliff uses it to wrap up his hand.
COCCOTTI
Sicilians are great liars. The best in the world. I’m a
Sicilian. And my old man was the world heavyweight champion of Sicilian liars. And from growin’ up with him I learned the pantomime. Now there are seventeen different things a guy can do when he lies to give him away. A guy has seventeen pantomimes. A woman’s got twenty, but a guy’s got seventeen. And if ya know ’em like ya know your own face, they beat lie detectors all to hell. What we got here is a little game of show and tell.
(MORE)
COCCOTTI (CONT’D)
You don’t wanna show me nothin’.
But you’re tellin’ me everything.
Now I know you know where they are. So tell me, before I do some damage you won’t walk away from.
The awful pain in Cliff’s hand is being replaced by the awful pain in his heart. He looks deep into Coccotti’s eyes.
CLIFF
Could I have one of those Chesterfields now?
COCCOTTI
Sure.
Coccotti leans over and hands him a smoke.
CLIFF
Gotta match?
Cliff reaches into his pocket and pulls out a lighter.
CLIFF
Oh, don’t bother. I got one.
(he lights the cigarette)
So you’re a Sicilian, huh?
COCCOTTI
(intensely) Uh-huh.
CLIFF
You know I read a lot. Especially things that have to do with history. I find that shit fascinating. In fact, I don’t know if you know this or not, Sicilian’s were spawned by niggers.
All the men stop what they are doing and look at Cliff, except for Tooth-pick Vic who doesn’t speak English and so, isn’t insulted. Coccotti can’t believe what he’s hearing.
COCCOTTI
Come again?
CLIFF
It’s a fact. Sicilians have nigger blood pumping through their hearts.
(MORE)
CLIFF (CONT’D)
If you don’t believe me look it up. You see, hundreds and hundreds of years ago the Moors conquered Sicily. And Moors are niggers. Way back then, Sicilians were like the Wops in northern Italy. Blond hair, blue eyes.
But, once the Moors moved in there, they changed the whole country. They did so much fuckin’ with the Sicilian women, they changed the bloodline forever, from blond hair and blue eyes to black hair and dark skin. I find it absolutely amazing to think that to this day hundreds of years later, Sicilians still carry that nigger gene. I’m just quotin’ history. It’s a fact. It’s written. Your ancestors were niggers. Your great, great, great, great grandmother was fucked by a nigger, and had a half nigger kid. That is a fact. Now tell me, am I lyin’?
Coccotti looks at him for a moment then jumps up, whips out an AUTOMATIC, grabs hold of Cliff’s hair, puts the barrel to his temple, and PUMPS three bullets through Cliff’s head.
He pushes the body violently aside.
Coccotti pauses. Unable to express his feelings and frustrated by the blood on his hands, he simply drops his weapon and turns to his men.
COCCOTTI
I haven’t killed anybody since 1974. Goddamn his soul to burn for eternity in fucking hell for making me spill blood on my hands!
Go to this comedian’s son’s apartment and come back with something that tells me where that asshole went so I can wipe this egg off of my face and fix this fucked up family for good.
Tooth-pick Vic taps Frankie’s shoulder and, in Italian, asks him “what was that all about?”
Lenny, who has been going through Cliff’s refrigerator has found a beer.
When he closes the refrigerator door he finds a note being held on be a ceramic banana fruit magnet that says: “Clarence in LA: Dick Ritchie (Number and address).