Tarantino flaunts his Tennessee roots

Samuel L. Jackson isn’t the only Chattanooga, or even Tennessee, product that makes appearances in films by Quentin Tarantino. Jackson appears in “True Romance,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Jackie Brown,” “Kill Bill: Volume 2,” “Inglourious Basterds” “Django Unchained” and “The Hateful Eight,” but something from the state gets a mention in nearly all of Tarantino’s films, the most recent being Old Chattanooga Beer in “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.”

The director was born in Knoxville and lived there for a time in the early ’70s, but apparently it was long enough to make a lasting impression. In 1994’s “Pulp Fiction,” Christopher Walken tells Bruce Willis’ character that the heirloom watch he is handing over was purchased in Knoxville.

Johnny Cash’s “Tennessee Stud” is part of the “Jackie Brown” soundtrack from 1997; the coffee can Michael Madsen’s character uses as a spittoon in “Kill Bill: Volume 2” bears the name Oak Ridge Coffee.

Half of “Death Proof” from 2007 was set in Lebanon, Tennessee. Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine in “Inglourious Basterds” is from Maynardville, Tennessee. In “Django Unchained” from 2012, Christoph Waltz’s bounty hunter character tells Jaime Foxx that the two will have to visit every plantation in Gatlinburg to find the Brittle Brothers.

And in “The Hateful Eight,” which has a couple of the more uncomfortable scenes of any movie ever to watch in mixed company, the characters played by Jackson and Kurt Russell realize they shared a steak dinner “once upon a time in Chattanooga.”

“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” is full of Tarantino Easter eggs, according to highsnobiety.com (https:// www.highsnobiety.com/p/ once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-easter-eggs/). Without giving anything away, Tarantino clearly has a fascination with Charles Manson and that whole time period.

In addition to references to the fictional Old Chattanooga Beer, there are references to Spahn Ranch, where the Manson family hung out, “I’ll Never Say Never to Always,” the song Manson wrote, and Terry Melcher, the son of Doris Day and a record producer who turned Manson down.

Manson sent members of the family to scare Melcher, but he’d moved out, and Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate were living in the house on Cielo Drive when those murders took place. Polanski was not at the house, of course.

I mention all of that for no other reason than I find it interesting, but also because it makes the movie, any movie really, better when you know stuff like that.