Amanda Plummer famously kicked off Pulp Fiction in 1994 as Honey Bunny, holding up a diner with her "Pumpkin", Tim Roth. Had Quentin Tarantino seen the scene in Cattle Annie and Little Britches where Annie whips out a pistol and exclaims : "Open these doors or I'll blow your brains out!"?

Click here to watch scenes

 

....although Annie is more heroic than Honey Bunny.

Roger Ebert played this scene, twice, when he featured Cattle Annie on Sneak Previews, irst in October 1981 when the film played in Chicago and again a few months later, on a special episode devoted to 1981's forgotten treasures.

Her first film role after Cattle Annie was a small but unforgettable role in The World According to Garp in 1982, as the pivotal character Ellen James. Then came a supporting role as Timothy Hutton's sister in Daniel in 1983. Not long after that, critic Stephen Schiff wrote in Vanity Fair,

“…. What, I wonder, will Hollywood do with Amanda Plummer, who is scrawny and homely and one of the most talented actresses the movies have ever seen?”

Hollywood did not do nearly as much as Broadway did. Even as Cattle Annie was fading from view in 1981, Plummer was starring in a revival of A Taste of Honey, which she followed up in 1982 with Agnes of God. For these plays, she became the first performer to be nominated for Tony awards in two categories in the same year-- for Best Actress for A Taste of Honey and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes of God-- winning for the latter. Along with her co-star Geraldine Page, she would be passed over for the film version of Agnes of God, but instead she would star with Jessica Tandy in a 1983 revival of The Glass Menagerie and with Peter O'Toole in a 1987 revival of Pygmalion-- for which again she would be nominated for a Best Actress Tony. In 1985, Off-Broadway, she had created the role of Beth in Sam Shephard's A Lie of the Mind. 

In 1991, she teamed with Robin Williams again, as his girlfriend in The Fisher King. Kael, who by then had retired from regular writing, in interviews singled out the four principals of The Fisher King-- the others were Jeff Bridges and Mercedes Ruehl-- for performances she regretted not getting to write about. They were "really extraordinary" with "great teamwork" -- and Williams and Plummer "were like boy-and-girl Marx brothers." (As quoted in Conversations with Pauline Kael, edited by Will Brantley, pp. 142-3, 173.)

She also had significant roles in independent movies, such as Static (1986), Needful Things (1993), Butterfly Kiss (1995), and Freeway (1996). She appeared with the Brat Pack in 1985's The Hotel New Hampshire.  Her television resume is impressive, with a trio of Emmy awards for Best Supporting Actress in a movie or miniseries or Best Guest Actress in a series.

In 2012, she was in the huge Hollywood hit The Hunger Games, with Jennifer Lawrence. 

Distribution Postscript

In 2013, the Boston Society of Film Critics selected Cattle Annie as one of the Best Rediscoveries of 2013, after Cattle Annie had played at a Burt Lancaster retrospective in Cambridge.

In April 2020, Cattle Annie and Little Britches was released on DVD.