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Wednesday October 9th 2024

Jackie Brown | 1997

Jackie Brown film location: Yukon Avenue, Los Angeles
Jackie Brown film location: Jackie brown's apartment: Yukon Avenue, Los Angeles

Apart from the occasional directorial flourish, you’d hardly recognise this character – and plot-driven Elmore Leonard adaptation, with its laidback middle-aged leads, as the work of Quentin Tarantino – the man who had previously made the pyrotechnic Pulp Fiction.

Most of the film's locations can be found in the South Bay area of Los Angeles, around Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), where Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) is caught carrying money for gun dealer Ordell Robbie (Samuel L Jackson).

One location you can find in downtown Los Angeles is the strip joint at which Louis Gara (Robert de Niro) picks up Ordell after the money drop.

Jackie Brown film location: Sam's Hofbrau, East Olympic Boulevard, downtown Los Angeles
Jackie Brown film location: De Niro at the strip joint: Sam's Hofbrau, East Olympic Boulevard, downtown Los Angeles

It's Sam's Hofbrau, 1751 East Olympic Boulevard at McGarry Street, stranded in the warehouse wasteland just west of Alameda Street, southeast of downtown. Quentin Tarantino revisits the club in Kill Bill Vol.2, using it as the interior of the ‘My Oh My Club’, where Michael Madsen works as a bouncer.

Jackie Brown film location: Cockatoo Inn, West Imperial Highway, Hawthorne, Los Angeles
Jackie Brown film location: Jackie's local bar: Cockatoo Inn (now demolished), West Imperial Highway, Hawthorne, Los Angeles

Jackie's local bar ‘near the airport’, to which she takes Max Cherry (Robert Forster) after he collects her from county jail, was the Cockatoo Inn, 4334 West Imperial Highway at Hawthorne Boulevard, which is indeed not far from Los Angeles International. It’s since been demolished, and the site is now occupied by the brand new Cockatoo Hotel.

Jackie's apartment is 17575 Yukon Avenue in Northwest Torrance, a couple of miles southeast of the airport. This is the exterior seen, but the interior was filmed in one of the similar properties in the rear.

Jackie Brown film location:  East Carson Street, Carson, Los Angeles
Jackie Brown film location: "Cherry Bail Bonds" office: East Carson Street, Carson, Los Angeles

The ‘Cherry Bail Bonds’ office of wearily decent bondsman Max Cherry is a real bail bonds business. It's Carson Bail Bonds, 724 East Carson Street, Carson, south Los Angeles.

Jackie Brown film location:  Del Amo Fashion Center, Hawthorne, South Los Angeles
Jackie Brown film location: the bag switch: Del Amo Fashion Center, Hawthorne, South Los Angeles

The vast shopping mall, further south in the South Bay area, is the Del Amo Fashion Center, 3525 West Carson Street at Hawthorne Boulevard in Torrance. The mall is still there, though there’s been quite a bit of remodelling over the years.

A few years after Jackie Brown, one of the mall's deserted stores was transformed into 'Saguaro Square', the 'Arizona' department store in which Billy Bob Thornton worked as a very Bad Santa.