CINEMA: GUNNING FOR ’90S GLORY

The meeting was two years ago, on a street in Hollywood: Pam Grier, queen of ultraviolent “blaxploitation” flicks in the ’70s, ran into Quentin Tarantino, king of ultraviolent indie cinema in the ’90s. The director, it turned out, was a big fan. He even had a poster of Grier’s 1973 movie Coffy up on his office wall. THE BADDEST ONE-CHICK HIT-SQUAD THAT EVER HIT TOWN! boasts the poster, which sports an illustration of a shotgun-wielding Grier in low-riding stretch pants and a revelatory bikini top. “I got an idea,” Tarantino told Grier. “I want to write something for you.”

Tarantino was just coming off directing and promoting Pulp Fiction, one of the most successful films of the decade. Grier was just coming off a cameo in Posse, a modestly successful black western. Grier gave Tarantino a look and said, “Please.” Not “pleeeese,” meaning, yes, give it to me, thank you very much. But “puhhhhlease,” meaning there’s not a snowball’s chance this joker is actually gonna come through with a script.

Today Grier throws back her dark avalanche of curls and laughs when she tells that story. On Christmas Day Tarantino’s highly anticipated crime drama, Jackie Brown, will open–and Grier is indeed in the title role, alongside A-listers Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro.

Jackson, De Niro…Grier? If you watch Grier’s blaxploitation flicks, you can see what Tarantino may have seen in her (MGM is re-releasing both Coffy and Foxy Brown on video, rechristening them “Soul Cinema”). In her most popular films, Grier played a strong woman out for revenge. “This is the end of your rotten life, you motherf___ing dope pusher,” she cries in Coffy before blowing a dealer’s head off. Grier was a woman of action well before Thelma met Louise, or Ripley encountered aliens. In 1975 Ms. magazine put her on its cover. She was also a sex symbol at a time when black actors rarely had love scenes. Says Darius James, author of the book That’s Blaxploitation!: “Pam Grier was one of the first important female action heroes. She was able to both exploit the male libido and assert [physical] power over men.” Coffy and Foxy Brown may be shoddy films, but they serve up sex and violence in visceral ways. At the start of Foxy Brown, Grier hides a gun in her bra. It’s an image one imagines the young Tarantino appreciated.

In the ’80s, Grier found work in more conventional action films. Says Jack Hill, the white director of Coffy and Foxy Brown: “She wanted to play a more glamorous and respectable character than what she had done with me.” But in doing so, Grier became more of a nostalgic figure than an iconic celebrity.

Jackie Brown could make her a true mainstream star. She plays an airline stewardess who teams up with a white bail bondsman to steal half a million dollars from a gunrunning black thug. The film starts with a long, loving shot of Grier as she glides down a walkway through an airport. “I hope this film does for Pam what working for Quentin has done for other people,” says co-star Jackson, alluding to his own post-Tarantino success and John Travolta’s as well.

But the actress doesn’t regard Jackie Brown as a comeback. “I never was away,” says Grier, who lives in Colorado and has appeared in regional theater productions of Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.”I was honing my skills for when that Quentin Tarantino call would come.”

Jackie Brown may not win over every aficionado of Grier’s early work. In Coffy, Foxy Brown and Sheba, Baby, Grier’s characters were at war with crooked cops and white power brokers, and with the black pimps and pushers who worked for them. In Foxy Brown she has a white dealer castrated; in Sheba, Baby she impales a yacht-owning white mobster who has been intimidating black businesses. In Jackie Brown Grier’s character is motivated by necessity and money lust; she’s a bagman for a crook, and at one point a cop turns down her offer of a bribe. She’s no longer a hero, merely a protagonist.

Still, Grier may develop a new fan base. At 48, she is someone more mature audiences can root for. “Women in society in their 40s feel the absence of a lot of things,” says Grier, who is engaged to Kevin Evans, 35, a record producer. “Society says they are not attractive, have no sex appeal and are thrown away. That’s not true. I’m as energetic as I’ve ever been, and my sex drive today is so intensified that I just drive myself crazy. I feel better than I felt at 19.” The baddest one-chick hit squad that ever hit town may be badder than ever.

–With reporting by Georgia Harbison/New York and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles