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JOHN TRAVOLTA:
“The reason it took so long to do a sequel was [writer] Elmore Leonard was quite inspired by Get Shory, and he decided that he wanted to do a sequel called Be Cool. It took him several years to (write the book). I don’t think I would want to do a sequel arbitrarily. You have to have a good reason to do one.”
F GARY GRAY:
“It all comes from Elmore Leonard, so when you start with good material you don’t have to worry much. Chili Palmer and his new world is entertaining; and so I didn’t worry about it. As far as my own visual stamp, Get Shorty was so long ago that I felt like as long as we kept Chili consistent, and we put him in really funny, awkward, dangerous situations, there was room to play.”
UMA THURMAN:
“I really like Elmore Leonard’s characters. They are incredibly defined and they make acting a little easier, usually because they are very well filled out, very distinct, very potent. He is sort of the contemporary Damon Runyan.”
THE ROCK on his character of Elliot, who is a gay bodyguard:
“I took this role because it was meaty, it was challenging. It’s a guy man who was conflicted in a world that he didn’t want to be in, and felt that he had something to offer the world through song and through dance, and he was a gay man who was proud, and by the end of the movie embraced being gay even more. I was lucky in my life, because I had a lot of positive gay influences. My mentor for many years is a strong, steadfast, truthful gay man who, by the way, I’ve seen kick a lot of people’s asses – he was a former professional wrestler named Pat Patterson.”
TRAVOLTA:
“Chili is kind of an American version of James Bond in a way – a street James Bond. But cool is an interpretive thing. I think in the case of Chile being cool, it’s that he’s fearless, and he’s smart enough to handle any given situation.”
THURMAN on dancing again with John Travolta:
“I always said about Pulp Fiction that I couldn’t possibly pass on the challenge, the thrill, the joy of doing a dance with John Travolta. I’m of the Grease age. I was some ridiculously small age when Grease came out, and I fell in love with John Travolta.”
TRAVOLTA:
“I just trusted that Uma and I would dance in character because, if you look at Pulp Fiction, we were dancing higher than a kite, and people that were hoping for death. In this movie, we’re dancing for life.”
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THE CONCEPT:
