Last week, we took a look at Quentin Tarantino’s early days in the South Bay. After becoming a film director, he would go on to use the area for location shooting in several of his films.
Though the first feature he directed, “Reservoir Dogs,” was filmed mostly in Los Angeles, no South Bay locations were used. Many of its key scenes take place at sites in the Highland Park area northeast of downtown L.A.
His next film, “Pulp Fiction,” became a sensation when released in 1994. Its opening and final scenes, during which Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) attempt a robbery at a diner at which Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent (John Travolta) are eating, were filmed at a Hawthorne diner.
The diner, the Hawthorne Grill at 13763 Hawthorne Blvd., was named Holly’s when it first opened in 1956. By the time it closed in 1990, it had been renamed the Hawthorne Grill. The success of “Pulp Fiction” inspired a reopening of the restaurant for a brief time, but it closed for good in 1996. It was razed in 1999, and an Auto Zone store took its place.
Tarantino’s next film, “Jackie Brown” (1997), remains his chief homage to the South Bay. The director chose to change the setting of one of his favorite novels, Rum Punch by Elmore Leonard, from South Florida to Southern California, specifically, to the South Bay area.
Leonard was a Tarantino favorite. As a teen he’d been caught shoplifting a copy of The Switch, Rum Punch’s predecessor, from the Harbor City K mart.
Tarantino also changed the title character from a white female flight attendant to a black one so he could cast Pam Grier as Jackie Brown, the lead character. We first see her making her way through LAX during the opening sequence of the film.
She starts her journey moving through the mosaic-lined tunnel leading from Terminals 5 and 6 to the baggage claim area and the exits, through which Lee Marvin famously strode during the 1967 film “Point Blank.” She ends up walking through Terminal 5 itself, where she begins working at a flight departure desk.
The remainder of the film takes place mostly in South Bay locations.
Cherry Bail Bonds, owned by Max Cherry, the bondsman portrayed by actor Robert Forster, no longer exists. Former Carson mayor and longtime city council member Vera Robles de Witt owned the business, Carson Bail Bonds, located at 724 E. Carson St., just across the street from City Hall.
Location scouts originally looked at another bail bonds office in San Pedro owned by de Witt, but found the Carson site more suitable for filming. Cherry’s office in the film was adorned by circus posters; his dad was an elephant trainer for Ringling Bros.
The Carson Bail Bonds building was torn down in 2009 and replaced by an apartment/retail complex.
Jackie Brown’s apartment was located at the Park View apartment complex at 17575 Yukon Ave. in north Torrance. Ordell (Samuel L. Jackson) visits Beaumont Livingston (Chris Tucker) at his apartment at 1030 Lakme Ave. in Wilmington, and the Raynelle character played by T’Keyah Crystal Keymáh lives on nearby Opp St.
The local bar where Jackie Brown takes Max Cherry for a drink is the cocktail loung.at the Cockatoo Inn in Hawthorne, located at 11550 Acacia Ave., near the corner of Hawthorne Blvd. and Imperial Hwy. The hotel, opened by organized crime figure Andrew Lococo in 1958, had closed in 1996 before filming began.
Tarantino asked his location scouts to get permission to film at the closed Inn. Ownership of the hotel was in limbo at the time and they were unsuccessful at first. But then Hawthorne Mayor Larry Guidi stepped in and made it happen. In return, he asked to meet his favorite actor in the cast, Robert De Niro, and the deal was complete.
The Cockatoo Inn was abandoned for several years, and most of it had been torn down by 2005. It has been replaced by a new complex made up of three smaller hotels.
Scenes from the “Hermosa Beach” apartment where Bridget Fonda’s Melanie character lives were actually filmed in Playa del Rey. Interiors were filmed at a small apartment building at 6403 Ocean Front Walk, and exteriors at a larger apartment complex across the street at 6309 Ocean Front Walk.
The filming location that most people remember from “Jackie Brown” is Torrance’s Del Amo Fashion Center mall. Several interior and exterior scenes were shot there, with mall scenes taking up more than half an hour of the film’s running time.
The key money-exchange sequence involving Jackie and Melanie inside Billingsley, the fictional department store, actually took place in Macy’s at Del Amo. Filming had to take place at night after the store closed. Crews had to switch things around before filming, and put everything back in place when they were done each night during the shoot.
Other Del Amo scenes take place at the Sam Goody record store, in the since-remodeled food court, along its crowded walkways and in the mall parking lot.
Tarantino’s latest film, “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” (2019) returns to the mosaic-lined tunnel at LAX used in “Jackie Brown” in the scene where Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Francesca (Lorenza Izzo) arrive in Los Angeles. The remainder of its location scenes are, as one would expect, in Hollywood and Los Angeles.
Sources:
Daily Breeze archives.
“How Quentin Tarantino and ‘Jackie Brown’ made the South Bay a Star,” by Jared Cowan, L.A. Taco blog, Dec. 21-, 2017.
Movie-Locations.com website.
“Quentin Tarantino,” The Internet Movie Database.
Tarantino: A Retrospective, by Tom Shone, Insight Editions, 2017.
“Where Was Jackie Brown Filmed?”, Giggster.com website.
Wikipedia.
