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A gun-totin' Pam Grier is blasting up the hood in Foxy Brown, Sheba Baby and Coffy.
Quentin Tarantino was living out his fantasies through such '70s icons as Travolta and Grier.
When the actor-turned-screenwriter-turned-director finally got his chance to direct Pulp Fiction, an $11-million version of his hype-up gangster story, he went looking for Travolta.
The rest is history. Travolta is back in a big way, earning as much as $20 million US a picture.
Now it's Grier's turn.
Tarantino turned Elmore Leonard's novel Rum Punch into the movie Jackie Brown for his favorite '70s female action star. The character in Rum Punch was a white stewardess who pits a pair of FBI agents against a small-time hood.
"I didn't see color when I started adapting Rum Punch. I saw Pam Grier. She is Jackie Brown," says Tarantino. "Every guy growing up in the '70s had a thing for Pam. She was the foxiest lady on the screen."
For her part, Grier recalls that "the '70s was a time of sexual revolution. We redefined sexuality for America. Suddenly it was acceptable to desire a black lady."
Though she has been called the black exploitation queen, Grier insists she, and women in general, were doing the exploiting.
"I exemplified women's independence. I come from a long line of skillet-throwing women. I based my screen characters on my mother, aunts and grandmothers. They were the kind of women who would fight to their last breath before they'd give up their purse to some punk robber.
"When I got up there on the screen and did the same thing big-time, I was telling women they didn't have to sit back and take anything from anybody."
At 48, Grier is still foxy, with a mane of cascading curls, a curvaceous figure and velvet skin.
"These days I'm into Chinese herbs to help me balance my body and my mind, and it helps that I'm in love."
Grier's new boyfriend is Kevin Evans, a music industry executive. She has been wary of relationships after her two most high-profile ones left her devastated.
Basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar dropped her and married another woman within days when Grier would not convert to his Islamic faith. She then began dating Richard Pryor, but dropped him when he refused to seek help for his drug problems.
Jackie Brown doesn't open until Christmas Day, but already Grier has been inundated with film offers.
"I'm really enjoying how much other people are excited for me. I've been working pretty steadily these past 20 years, so it's not like I was destitute or anything. Still, I can't even begin to describe how grateful I am to Quentin for creating this role for me."