Alabama Whitman

Character in True Romance, played by Patricia Arquette.

Quentin Tarantino's first realized examination into the female psyche with a character who narrates her story of love. Alabama Whitman was a fledgling call girl hired by Clarence Worley's (Christian Slater) boss, Lance, to treat him to a birthday date. She hooks up with him at the Streetfighter marathon at the movies, and their little date turns into a full blown love affair, leading to Clarence marrying Alabama. Clarence kills off her pimp, Drexl Spivey, but instead of picking up her clothes, picks up a suitcase full of cocaine. They hightail it to California planning to sell it and make a new life.

Alabama however is the first to discover that they've been tailed by the mob, and they want their drugs back. But she fights off the mob's deadly hitman, Virgil, alone in a gruesome toe-to-toe deathmatch in the hotel room. Clarence returns to a bloody, yet victorious, Alabama with the cocaine intact. She stands by her man as he sells the stuff smoothly, even writing little love letters to tell him how much she thinks he's cool. The couple are caught in the crossfire of a Mexican standoff between the cops, the mob, and Lee Donowitz's personal bodyguards, and Clarence is wounded. By the end of the movie, the couple take the money and run to Mexico, fast forwarding years later with a child named Elvis.

Fun Quotes

• Alabama: "We don't have any Coke but theres a Pepsi machine down the hall."

Trivia

• A character named Alabama is also mentioned in the conversation between Mr. White and Joe Cabot in Reservoir Dogs.

• In Tarantino's original script, Clarence isn't just wounded but killed in the crossfire of the Mexican standoff, and Alabama later kills herself.

• In a 2008 interview, QT stated that his first choice to play Alabama (if he had directed the film) would've been Joan Cusack.