The “True Romance” star found it difficult to connect to Alabama’s reactions, but she struggled even more to adjust to the very particular sense of humor in the script, which was penned by Quentin Tarantino. From the moment Arquette first read the screenplay, she was repelled by some of the off-color lines that were written for her character.
“My agent told me about this script for a Tony Scott movie,” the actress recounted to Maxim. “There was a lot I liked about it, but I didn’t like when Alabama was sort of racist. By now we’ve all gotten used to Quentin’s tone, but at the time I was somewhat shocked by it. I was asking myself, ‘What is this? Whoa!'”
She was particularly offended by a line early on in the film when Alabama and Clarence grab pie at a diner, just after their first meeting. Alabama says she’s turned off by Persians, but Arquette says that the original line may have been slightly different.
“I don’t know if the line about being turned off by Persians was in the script,” she admitted. “Actually, every time we shot that scene, I would say a different ethnic group — I wanted to be equally offensive to all people.”