TRUE ROMANCE: Walken vs Hopper

Factual Questions
1

Hello friends,

True Romance is my favorite movie.

And this scene is classic.

But is the premise that Hopper puts forth accurate.

At first, I never questioned it.
And I loved the scene.
But when I did,I realised that it might be false.
And I loved the scene even more.

You see, if Hopper’s(Tarrentino’s) annecdote is false, then it opens the scene up to new interpetation.
Either Hopper’s character is to be commended for his quick thinking.(His other options were ratting out his son, or torture followed by ratting out his son followed by death.)
OR, Not only did Hopper make the best choice(death), but he lied to Walken’s character to achieve it.
I’ll provide a brief synopsis for those who didn’t see the flick(What are you thinking?)

Christopher Walken plays a mob boss. He is looking for Dennis Hopper’s son. The son(Christian Slater) inadvertantly stole a large amount of coke from the mob.

Dennis Hopper’s character tries to lie to Walken. But Walken slaps him around and brags up his ability to detect lies…

So Hopper goes off on an anecdote implying that sicilians were formerly more white looking(Blonde hair, blue eyes). But that the Moors had then conquered Sicily. And implied that since"They changed the whole bloodline forever".
That is 1 of the few quotes you would hear if this scene was aired on TV.
In the end Hopper asks Walken to tell him if he is lying.

So, enraged by this attack on his conception of himself, Christopher Walken’s character shoots Hopper’s character before he can question him.

So any thoughts?

Were the Sicilians darker before?
I thought so. Then I found out that the Celts conquered northern Italy.
The Celts were the ones who founded Milan(Mediolanum).
So maybe that’s why some Italians are blonde.

Or maybe there is some other reason.
Any ideas on this scenario are welcome.
Gushing over the movie is encouraged.

Just putting my 2sense in.

Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered.

-Thomas Paine (fugitive slave catcher)

2

your premise is intersting, in that Hopper knew that he was doomed and so sought to provoke a quciker, cleaner death by insinuating that Sicilians were in part Black. I give Tarantino credit for that.

That being said, his conjecture has no basis in fact. The Black race that the average Mafioso disparages as “eggplants” is from the aptly-named “slave coast” of the Gulf of Guinea. Climatically, this area could and did support the largest concentration of population. And they did migrate massively: but not accross the wastes of the Sahara into Morocco and from ther to Sicily, as Tarantino would have it, but rather down into the veltd of South Africa to becoke the Zulu (these migrations are traced LINGUSICALLY - not racially. For you white boys’ example, sometime you might comapre a Sanscrit letter “e” with the one I just typed) A few Bantu-speakers worked their way up to North Africa, but not in any considerable numbers. Actualy, Sicily was take from the Moors (essentialy Semites) by the Normans (esentially Vikings) at approximately the same time as the took England from the Saxons (who had prevouisly taken England from the Celts). If anything, there was of late an infusion of “blond” blood into the Sicillian gene pool. At least there would have been, if a certain Norman soldier hadn’t made an obscene whistle to a Sicillian girl as she went into vespers on evening. By morning the majority of Normans in Sicily had their throats cut.

Your deep sea diving suit is ready, me brave lad.

3

I had never considered your premise - that the Hopper character, clearly understanding his doom, provoked a quicker death by insult. I give Tarantino more credit that I had previously

That being said, I have to contend with his “Moors = N-word.” The “Blacks” the average Mafioso disparage as an “eggplant” come from the aptly named “Slave Coast” of the Gulf of Guinea. Climatically, this area could and did support the largest population of the continent. These Bantu-speakers did migrate from this center (and, BTW, these migrations are traced LINGUISTICALLY, not “racially” - for a white-boy trace, just look up the Sanskrit letter “e” and the one I just typed.), but the main Bantu migrations were to more favorable lands such as up the Congo river and into the veldt of South Africa, not across the wastes of the Sahara into Morocco. The Moors could only have been slightly Bantu, if from Bantus who’s crossed central Africa eastward, been brought up the Nile and then across North Africa in the Arabian Empire. The Moors themselves were more likely to be a mix of Arabic Semites and European Vandals.

At any rate, the Moors themselves were thrown out of Sicily by the Normans at approximately the same time that the Normans (essentially Vikings) took England from the Saxons (who’d taken it earlier from the Celts), so Sicily, always a genetic crossroads of the Mediterranean, would have been given a boost of “blond” blood, not “N-word” blood as Tarantino says. But any chance to blond-up the population of Sicily was doomed by two factors: blondness is a recessive gene, and also a certain Norman soldier made an obscene whistle to a Sicilian girl one evening as she went in to vespers. By morning most of the Norman throats in Sicily had been cut.

Your deep sea diving suit is ready, me brave lad.

4

WOW!!! Just seeing the OP made me smile tonight!!

I had always surmised it was a quicker way to die by Hopper, and enraging Walken at the same time.

Slithy, THAT was a fantastic trip to go through, what I had always thought of as an interesting interlude in the movie, some interesting FACTS to go along with the story. :smiley:

Judy

“Um, according to who? Nothing more than a high brow troll, though occasionally the bi polar personality swung in a constructive direction on innocuous topics.” Omniscient

5

Slithy Tove:

Thanx for the post.

It tends to reinforce what I know about the subject.
I grok linguistic history theory.

2 quick points.

  1. I thought that the languages of the Niger-Congo family up in northern Africa were among the few nonBantu languages.

  2. Don’t forget the Celts took Britain from the Picts. And the Picts must have taken it from someone.
    As I said, I would like to believe Hopper not only outsmarted Walken.
    But successfully lied to him as well.
    ______________________Salaam

Just putting my 2sense in.

Tyranny, like Hell, is not easily conquered.

-Thomas Paine (fugitive slave catcher)

6

True Romance has got to be one of my favorite movies of all time! Quentin Tarantino received more recognition for Pulp Fiction, but I think True Romance was his best work to date.

I have always interpreted the scene in question to be a case of Hopper trying to get himself iced quickly before they forced him to reveal his son’s location. He finally asks for a cigarette before beginning his speech, knowing full well it will be his last. And in a fitting touch of realism, they still find Slater’s travel plans on Hopper’s refrigerator after killing him.

Great scene. But it is not even my favorite scene in the movie. The face-off between Gary Oldman (Drexel) and Slater is highly charged and full of great quotes. Like when Slater tells Drexel that Alabama is his wife (Drexel is her pimp), Drexel laughingly replies “That makes us practically related!” After Drexel bashes Clarence (Slater) and drags him into the back, Drexel dryly muses “You musta thought it was whiteboy day.”

Yeah, I guess you could say that True Romance is one of my favs.