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Pam Grier and Quentin Tarantino on the set of Jackie Brown <\/em>in 1997. (Photo: Miramax\/Courtesy Everett Collection)<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\nMost performers would feel honored when a prominent filmmaker creates a leading role specifically for them. But when Quentin Tarantino told Pam Grier that he crafted his third feature, 1997’s Jackie Brown<\/em>, <\/em>with her in mind for the eponymous character, the game-changing Blaxploitation icon had a very different reaction. “I thought, ‘I’m in trouble,'” Grier reveals to Yahoo Entertainment ahead of Jackie Brown<\/em>‘s 25h anniversary on Dec. 25. “I’m gonna have to work really hard, because I don’t want to be fired!”<\/p>\nIn fact, Grier was so uncertain about taking Tarantino up on his offer that she avoided calling him back after she read the Jackie Brown <\/em>script for the first time. “He was waiting for me to call him, and I was waiting for him to call me” she remembers, laughing. “He was getting worried, and he told [producer] Lawrence Bender, ‘What if she doesn’t like it? We don’t have anyone else!’ He was concerned, and rightfully so.”<\/p>\nAfter a few weeks went by, Grier discovered the reason why she hadn’t heard from the director. “I read the note he had written on the back of the script and realized I was supposed to have called him weeks ago! I figured that he had probably recast the role, but I called him and said, ‘I love the script. What character am I?’ And he said, ‘You’re <\/em>Jackie Brown.'”<\/p>\n\n\n
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<\/noscript><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nGrier takes aim at one of her best roles in Jackie Brown<\/em>. (Photo: Miramax\/Courtesy Everett Collection)<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/figure>\nDespite Grier’s fears, there was never any serious chance that Tarantino would have given the role to anyone else. Before he became one of the most successful indie filmmakers of the ’90s, the Knoxville-born movie lover was a serious Pam Grier stan, who grew up watching her classic action flicks like coffy <\/em>and Friday Foster <\/em>in theaters and later re-watched them as a video store clerk. After the one-two punch of Reservoir Dogs <\/em>and pulp Fiction <\/em>put him on Hollywood’s A-list, he dedicated himself into transforming the Elmore Leonard’s 1992 crime yarn, Rum Punch<\/em>into a star vehicle for one of his favorite actors.<\/p>\nStory continues<\/button><\/p>\nto this day, Jackie Brown <\/em>is Tarantino’s only feature-length adapted screenplay and it wouldn’t exist \u2014 or be as beloved \u2014 without Grier. (The writer \/ director also adapted the Roald Dahl short story, “Man from the South” for his segment in the underrated 1995 anthology film, Four Rooms<\/em>.) “It’s because he knew so much about me personally,” she says of why their collaboration clicked. “He brought a lot to that script for me.”<\/p>\nJackie Brown <\/em>announces its swagger in the opening scene, a perfectly-paced four-minute title sequence scored to Bobby Womack’s “Across 110th Street” that introduces us to our eponymous heroine \u2014 a flight attendant who makes extra dough on the side as a smuggler for local LA crime kingpin, Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson). Tracking Jackie through the airport as she rushes to make her flight is a bravura bit of filmmaking and performance that consciously echoes the beginnings of Blaxploitation classics like shaft<\/em> <\/em>and Grier’s own Foxy Brown<\/em>. Go ahead \u2014 just try <\/em>not to watch the whole thing again.<\/p>\n