There’s a scene in Get Shorty when the mob-connected loan shark Chili Palmer, played by John Travolta, watches a screening of Orson Welles’ classic noir Touch of Evil. Coming out of it, he tells the actor Karen Flores (Rene Russo): “You know, Welles didn’t even want to do this movie, he had a contract he couldn’t get out of. But sometimes you do your best work when you have a gun to your head.”
The essential joke of Get Shorty is that Hollywood often operates like organised crime. Based on a novel by Elmore Leonard – the US author whose works also inspired everyone from Quentin Tarantino to Steven Soderbergh – Get Shorty follows Chili from Miami to Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Trying to persuade the B-movie schlock producer Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman) to pay a gambling debt, Chili ends up pitching him an idea for a movie.
