1993 was a big year. Sheffield Wednesday got to the final of the FA and the Coca Cola Cups (albeit to be pipped to the post by Arsenal on both occasions), Meatloaf’s I Would Do Anything For Love got to number one, and Tarantino’s True Romance came out.
At the age of eight, however, I was too busy having a crush on Chris Waddle and perusing JD Sports’ shinpad selection down Meadowhall to even think about trying to slip into the local cinema to see this Tony Scott-directed classic; sweet and dark in almost equal measure. It was only later that, watching this bubble gum chewing, Snapple-drinking, metallic turquoise Rayban-wearing incarnation of Patricia Arquette, I was struck dumb.
Alabama Whitman’s been a call girl for “exactly 4 days” before she’s paid to bump into comic store assistant Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) as he partakes in his annual birthday Sonny Chiba triple feature – Street Fighter, Return of the Street Fighter and Sister Street Fighter – alone. They fall for one another instantly and crashingly and, in a scene that on the more hungover of days I could happily watch on repeat, Alabama professes her romantic ethic like it were a mantra: “when it comes to relationships I’m 100%… I’m 100%… monogamous. If I’m with you, then I’m with you, and I don’t want to be with anybody else.”
It wasn’t just that Alabama Whitman was able to pull off cowboy boots, cow print mini skirts, pink and blue leopard print leggings, off-the-shoulder blouses and neon bras, often simultaneously; though that no doubt helped. (Plus inspired some ill-advised attempts at mimicry – one bid to dress as Alabama at a 90s-themed house party ended with me claiming I’d intentionally gone for a Blossom/Alabama hybrid look to cover the shame).
It was also that Alabama’s badass, and, crucially, lovely too. She does what her namesake poet advices and “stands up for the stupid and crazy.” So dogged is she that, in a wincingly violent fight scene, even the man who was later to become Tony Soprano concedes, “you’ve got a lot of heart, kid”. She giggles her way through crisis and – with her poetic monologues that bookend the film in a Badlands homage – she manages somehow to rise above the bloodbath.
In her honeysuckle southern drawl, spoken to the chime of the Carl Orff/Hans Zimmer theme, she talks of her clarity of thought: “Amid the chaos of that day, when all I could hear was the thunder of gunshots, and all I could smell was the violence in the air, I look back and am amazed that my thoughts were so clear and true, that three words went through my mind endlessly… you’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool.”
Clarence might be cool, but Alabama’s no second best. As things unravel in grand Tarantino style – cocaine’s stolen, guns are cocked and blood’s spilt in rivers – Alabama is the sugar-y glue keeping things from becoming irrevocably unstuck.
