How a pair of shoes helped Quentin Tarantino secure Robert De Niro for ‘Jackie Brown’
Robert De Niro is one of the most in-demand names in Hollywood, and for good reason. He’s earned countless accolades, delivered some of the most iconic performances in history – “You talkin’ to me?” – and worked with the best of the best, from Francis Ford Coppola to Sergio Leone to a lengthy collaborative relationship with Martin Scorsese.
De Niro is so in demand, in fact, that even cult director Quentin Tarantino had to do some persuading to secure his involvement in Jackie Brown. Tarantino’s name was not enough to ensure his involvement, nor were his star-studded co-stars in Pam Grier, Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton. Rather, De Niro was convinced to take the part by Tarantino’s explanation of his character’s shoe preference.
According to the cult director, shoes are an essential part of De Niro’s process of getting into character. “The minute Robert De Niro figures out the pair of shoes his character would wear, that’s about 75% of him getting a handle on who the character is,” he once explained. It seems that De Niro is, quite literally, looking to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes when he takes on a new role.
Knowing this, Tarantino was able to talk De Niro into taking his role as Louis Gara in Jackie Brown with a lengthy description of his shoewear. “I’m kind of talking him into playing the character,” Tarantino recalled, “and he goes, ‘What kind of shoes does he wear?’ I go, well, it’s funny that you asked that…”
The filmmaker went on to describe the character’s background via his shoes in excruciating detail. The character he posed for De Niro – Louis Gara – was a criminal who had just got out of prison, meaning he had an interesting background when it came to shoes.
“The character of Louis has been in jail for the last five years, and so he had just a clunky pair of old black, what a while ago would have been dress shoes,” Tarantino explained, “However, because he’s been in jail for five years, he took off his street clothes, all those street clothes were put into a paper bag. So he’s just been wearing the clothes that were in that paper bag for the last five years.”
Tarantino went on to explain the deterioration of those shoes after five years spent in a bag, noting, “And then the toe of the shoe got folded over a little bit because of all the stuff down. That one shoe has the toe of it is kind of curled over just a little bit like that.” Satisfied with the detail the director had provided, De Niro agreed to take the part.
“Needless to say, he really enjoyed the detail that I gave him, so I ended up working with Robert De Niro,” Tarantino concluded. Apparently, it’s that simple – if you’re trying to recruit De Niro for your movie, provide him with an excessively detailed description of his character’s footwear preferences.
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