''Pulp Fiction'' is a 1994 American
crime film
Crime films, in the broadest sense, is a film genre inspired by and analogous to the crime fiction literary genre. Films of this genre generally involve various aspects of crime and its detection. Stylistically, the genre may overlap and combine ...
written and directed by
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, Black comedy, dark humor, Nonlinear narrative, non-lin ...
from a story he conceived with
Roger Avary
Roger Roberts Avary (born August 23, 1965) is a Canadian-American film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. He collaborated with Quentin Tarantino on ''Pulp Fiction'', for which they won Best Original Screenplay at the 67th Acad ...
.
[See, e.g., King (2002), pp. 185–7; ; ] It tells four intertwining tales of crime and violence in
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...
. The film stars
John Travolta
John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor. He came to public attention during the 1970s, appearing on the television sitcom ''Welcome Back, Kotter'' (1975–1979) and starring in the box office successes ''Carrie'' (19 ...
,
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel Leroy Jackson (born December 21, 1948) is an American actor and producer. One of the most widely recognized actors of his generation, the films in which he has appeared have collectively grossed over $27 billion worldwide, making him ...
,
Bruce Willis
Walter Bruce Willis (born March 19, 1955) is a retired American actor. He achieved fame with a leading role on the comedy-drama series ''Moonlighting'' (1985–1989) and appeared in over a hundred films, gaining recognition as an action hero a ...
,
Tim Roth
Timothy Simon Roth (born 14 May 1961) is an English actor and producer. He began acting on films and television series in the 1980s. He was among a group of prominent British actors of the era, the "Brit Pack (actors), Brit Pack".
He made hi ...
,
Ving Rhames
Irving Rameses Rhames (born May 12, 1959) is an American actor. He is best known for his supporting roles as IMF Agent Luther Stickell in the ''Mission: Impossible'' film series and gang kingpin Marsellus Wallace in ''Pulp Fiction''. He also ap ...
, and
Uma Thurman
Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970) is an American actress and former model. She has performed in a variety of films, from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action films. Following her appearances on the December 1985 an ...
. The title refers to the
pulp magazine
Pulp magazines (also referred to as "the pulps") were inexpensive fiction magazines that were published from 1896 to the late 1950s. The term "pulp" derives from the cheap wood pulp paper on which the magazines were printed. In contrast, magazine ...
s and
hardboiled
Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence o ...
crime novels popular during the mid-20th century, known for their graphic violence and punchy dialogue.
Tarantino wrote ''Pulp Fiction'' in 1992 and 1993, incorporating scenes that Avary originally wrote for ''
True Romance
''True Romance'' is a 1993 American romantic crime film directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino. It features an ensemble cast led by Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, with Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, ...
'' (1993). Its plot occurs
out of chronological order. The film is also
self-referential
Self-reference occurs in natural or formal languages when a sentence, idea or formula refers to itself. The reference may be expressed either directly—through some intermediate sentence or formula—or by means of some encoding. In philosop ...
from its opening moments, beginning with a
title card
In films, an intertitle, also known as a title card, is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of (i.e., ''inter-'') the photographed action at various points. Intertitles used to convey character dialogue are referred to as "dialo ...
that gives two dictionary definitions of "pulp." Considerable screen time is devoted to monologues and casual conversations with eclectic dialogue revealing each character's perspectives on several subjects, and the film features an
ironic
Irony (), in its broadest sense, is the juxtaposition of what on the surface appears to be the case and what is actually the case or to be expected; it is an important rhetorical device and literary technique.
Irony can be categorized into ...
combination of humor and strong violence.
TriStar Pictures
TriStar Pictures, Inc. (spelled as Tri-Star until 1991) is an American film studio and production company that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, part of the multinational conglomerate Sony. It is a corporate sibling of Sony ...
reportedly turned down the script as "too demented."
Miramax
Miramax, LLC, also known as Miramax Films, is an American film and television production and distribution company founded on December 19, 1979, by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein, and based in Los Angeles, California.
It was initially a leadi ...
co-chairman
Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein (; born March 19, 1952) is an American former film producer and convicted sex offender. He and his brother, Bob Weinstein, co-founded the entertainment company Miramax, which produced several successful independent films inclu ...
was enthralled, however, and the film became the first that Miramax fully financed.
''Pulp Fiction'' won the
Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...
at the
1994 Cannes Film Festival
The 47th Cannes Film Festival was held from 12 to 23 May 1994. The Palme d'Or went to the American film ''Pulp Fiction'' directed by Quentin Tarantino.
The festival opened with ''The Hudsucker Proxy'', directed by Joel Coen and closed with ''Seri ...
and was a major critical and commercial success. It was nominated for seven awards at the
67th Academy Awards
The 67th Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) took place on March 27, 1995, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p.m. PST / 9:00 p.m. EST. During the cer ...
, including
Best Picture
This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards.
Best Actor/Best Actress
*See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
, and won
Best Original Screenplay
The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. It was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Beginning with the ...
; it earned Travolta, Jackson, and Thurman Academy Award nominations and boosted their careers. Its development, marketing, distribution, and profitability had a sweeping effect on
independent cinema.
''Pulp Fiction'' is widely regarded as Tarantino's ''
magnum opus
A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...
'', with particular praise for its screenwriting. The self-reflexivity, unconventional structure, and extensive
homage
Homage (Old English) or Hommage (French) may refer to:
History
*Homage (feudal) /ˈhɒmɪdʒ/, the medieval oath of allegiance
*Commendation ceremony, medieval homage ceremony Arts
*Homage (arts) /oʊˈmɑʒ/, an allusion or imitation by one arti ...
and
pastiche
A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, music, or architecture that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche pays homage to the work it imitates, rather than mocking it ...
have led critics to describe it as a touchstone of
postmodern film
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...
. It is often considered a cultural watershed, influencing films and other media that adopted elements of its style. The cast was also widely praised, with Travolta, Thurman, and Jackson earning particular acclaim. In 2008, ''
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
'' named it the best film since 1983
and it has appeared on many critics' lists of the
greatest films ever made
This is a list of films considered the best in national and international surveys of critics and the public.
Some surveys focus on all films, while others focus on a particular genre or country. Voting systems differ, and some surveys suffe ...
. In 2013, ''Pulp Fiction'' was selected for preservation in the United States
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception i ...
by the
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...
as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Plot
Narrative structure
''Pulp Fiction''s narrative is told out of chronological order and follows three main interrelated stories that each have a different protagonist: Vincent Vega, a hitman; Butch Coolidge, a prizefighter; and Jules Winnfield, Vincent's business partner.
["Pulp Fiction: The Facts" (1993 location interview), ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).]
The film begins with a diner hold-up staged by a couple, then begins to shift from one storyline to another before returning to the diner for the conclusion. There are seven narrative sequences; the three primary storylines are preceded by intertitles:
# "Prologue – The Diner" (i)
# Prelude to "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife"
# "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife"
# Prelude to "The Gold Watch" (a – flashback, b – present)
# "The Gold Watch"
# "The Bonnie Situation"
# "Epilogue – The Diner" (ii)
If the seven sequences were ordered chronologically, they would run: 4a, 2, 6, 1, 7, 3, 4b, 5. Sequences 1 and 7 partially overlap and are presented from different points of view, as do sequences 2 and 6. According to Philip Parker, the structural form is "an episodic narrative with circular events adding a beginning and end and allowing references to elements of each separate episode to be made throughout the narrative". Other analysts describe the structure as a "circular narrative".
Summary
Hitmen Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega arrive at an apartment to retrieve a briefcase for their boss, gangster Marsellus Wallace, from a business partner, Brett. After Vincent checks the contents of the briefcase, Jules shoots one of Brett's associates. He declaims a passage from the Bible, and he and Vincent kill Brett for trying to double-cross Marsellus.
Another man bursts out of the bathroom and fires at them, but every shot misses; after briefly checking themselves for wounds, Jules and Vincent shoot him dead. While driving away with Brett's associate Marvin, Jules professes that their survival was a miracle, which Vincent disputes. Vincent accidentally fatally shoots Marvin in the face, and covering Vincent, Jules, and the car interior in blood in broad daylight. They hide the car at the home of Jules's friend Jimmie, who demands they deal with the problem before his wife, Bonnie, comes home. Marsellus sends a
cleaner
A cleaner or a cleaning operative is a type of industrial or domestic worker who cleans homes or commercial premises for payment. Cleaning operatives may specialise in cleaning particular things or places, such as window cleaners. Cleaning oper ...
, Winston Wolfe, who directs Jules and Vincent to clean the car, hide the body in the trunk, dispose of their bloody clothes, and take the car to a junkyard.
At a diner, Jules tells Vincent that he plans to retire from his life of crime, convinced that their "miraculous" survival at the apartment was a sign of divine intervention. While Vincent is in the bathroom, a couple, "Pumpkin" and "Honey Bunny", hold up the restaurant and demand Marsellus's briefcase. Jules distracts Pumpkin with its contents, and then overpowers him and holds him at gunpoint; Honey Bunny becomes hysterical and points her gun at Jules. Vincent returns with his gun aimed at her, but Jules defuses the situation. He recites the biblical passage, expresses ambivalence about his life of crime, and allows the robbers to take his cash and leave. Jules and Vincent leave the diner with the briefcase in hand. They take the briefcase to Marsellus and wait while he bribes boxer Butch Coolidge to
take a dive in his upcoming match.
The next day, Vincent purchases heroin from his drug dealer, Lance. He shoots up and drives to meet Marsellus's
trophy wife
A trophy wife is a wife who is regarded as a status symbol for the husband. The term is often used in a derogatory or disparaging way, implying that the wife in question has little personal merit besides her physical attractiveness, requires sub ...
, Mia, having agreed to escort her while Marsellus is out of town. They eat at Jack Rabbit Slim's, a 1950s-themed restaurant, and participate in a twist contest, then return home. While Vincent is in the bathroom, Mia finds his heroin and snorts it, mistaking it for cocaine. She suffers an overdose; Vincent rushes her to Lance's house, where they revive her with an injection of adrenaline into her heart. Vincent drops Mia off at her home, and the two agree never to tell Marsellus about the incident.
Butch bets the bribe money on himself and double-crosses Marsellus, winning the bout but accidentally killing his opponent as well. Knowing that Marsellus will send hitmen after him, he prepares to flee with his girlfriend, Fabienne, but discovers she has forgotten to pack a gold watch passed down to him through his family. Returning to his apartment to retrieve it, he notices a gun on the kitchen counter and hears the toilet flush. When Vincent exits the bathroom, Butch shoots him dead and departs.
When Marsellus spots Butch stopped at a traffic light, Butch rams his car into him, then gets hit by an oncoming vehicle, leaving both of them injured and dazed. Once Marsellus regains consciousness, he shoots at Butch, chasing him into a pawnshop. Butch gains the upper hand and is about to shoot Marsellus, but the shop owner, Maynard, captures them at gunpoint and binds and gags them in the basement. Maynard and his accomplice Zed take Marsellus into another room and begin to rape him, leaving the "gimp" – a silent figure in a
bondage suit
Bondage may refer to:
Restraints
*Physical restraints
**Bondage (BDSM), use of restraint for erotic stimulation
***Self-bondage, use of restraints on oneself for erotic pleasure
Social and economic practices
*Serfdom, feudal enslavement of peasan ...
– to watch over Butch. Butch breaks loose and knocks the gimp unconscious. Instead of fleeing, he decides to save Marsellus, and arms himself with a katana from the pawnshop. He kills Maynard and frees Marsellus, who shoots Zed in the crotch with Maynard's shotgun. Marsellus informs Butch that they are even, and to tell no one about the rape and to depart Los Angeles forever. Butch picks up Fabienne on Zed's motorcycle, and they ride away.
Cast
*
John Travolta
John Joseph Travolta (born February 18, 1954) is an American actor. He came to public attention during the 1970s, appearing on the television sitcom ''Welcome Back, Kotter'' (1975–1979) and starring in the box office successes ''Carrie'' (19 ...
as Vincent Vega:
:Jules' partner-in-crime, working for Marsellus Wallace. Tarantino cast Travolta in ''Pulp Fiction'' because
Michael Madsen
Michael Søren Madsen (born September 25, 1957) is an American actor. He has starred in many films and television series, frequently collaborating with director Quentin Tarantino, most famously in the latter's debut film ''Reservoir Dogs'' (19 ...
, who had played Vic Vega in ''
Reservoir Dogs
''Reservoir Dogs'' is a 1992 American crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino in his feature-length debut. It stars Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Michael Madsen, Tarantino, and Edward Bunke ...
'', chose to appear in
Kevin Costner
Kevin Michael Costner (born January 18, 1955) is an American actor, producer, film director and musician. He has received various accolades, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actor ...
's ''
Wyatt Earp
Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp (March 19, 1848 – January 13, 1929) was an American lawman and gambler in the American West, including Dodge City, Deadwood, and Tombstone. Earp took part in the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, during which law ...
'' instead. Madsen has since expressed regret over his decision.
Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein (; born March 19, 1952) is an American former film producer and convicted sex offender. He and his brother, Bob Weinstein, co-founded the entertainment company Miramax, which produced several successful independent films inclu ...
pushed for
Daniel Day-Lewis
Sir Daniel Michael Blake Day-Lewis (born 29 April 1957) is an English retired actor. Often described as one of the preeminent actors of his generation, he received numerous accolades throughout his career which spanned over four decades, incl ...
in the part. Travolta accepted a reduced rate; sources say either US$100,000 or US$140,000. The film's success and his
Academy Award
The Academy Awards, better known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international film industry. The awards are regarded by many as the most prestigious, significant awards in the entertainment ind ...
nomination for Best Actor revitalized his career. Vincent is the brother of Vic Vega, also known as Mr. Blonde in ''
Reservoir Dogs
''Reservoir Dogs'' is a 1992 American crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino in his feature-length debut. It stars Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Michael Madsen, Tarantino, and Edward Bunke ...
'' (1992), and in 2004, Tarantino discussed an idea for a movie starring Travolta and Madsen as the "Vega Brothers"; the concept remains unrealized.
*
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel Leroy Jackson (born December 21, 1948) is an American actor and producer. One of the most widely recognized actors of his generation, the films in which he has appeared have collectively grossed over $27 billion worldwide, making him ...
as Jules Winnfield:
:Vincent's partner in crime, working for Marsellus Wallace. Jackson's first audition was overshadowed by
Paul Calderón
Paul Calderón is a Puerto Rican actor, writer, director and producer. He is a founding member of the Touchstone Theatre, the American Folk Theatre and the LAByrinth Theater Company. He is also a member of the Actors Studio, auditioning and ...
; Jackson had assumed the audition was merely a reading. Weinstein convinced him to audition a second time and his performance of the final diner scene won over Tarantino. Jules was originally scripted with a giant afro,
[Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 3, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).] but Tarantino's PA mistakenly bought a
Jheri curl
The Jheri curl (often spelled Jerry curl or Jeri Curl) is a permanent wave hairstyle that was popular among African Americans during the 1980s and early 1990s. Invented by the hairdresser Jheri Redding, the Jheri curl gives the wearer a glossy, ...
ed wig. Tarantino was enraged but Jackson persuaded him to keep it since the hairstyle had gained popularity through the rap group
N.W.A
N.W.A (an abbreviation for Niggaz Wit Attitudes) was an American hip hop group whose members were among the earliest and most significant popularizers and controversial figures of the gangsta rap subgenre, and the group is widely considered ...
. Film critic
Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for ''Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...
took it as a "tacit comic statement about the ghettoization of
lack people
Lack may refer to:
Places
* Lack, County Fermanagh, a townland in Northern Ireland
* Lack, Poland
* Łąck, Poland
* Lack Township, Juniata County, Pennsylvania, US
Other uses
* Lack (surname)
* Lack (manque), a term in Lacan's psychoanalyti ...
in movies".
Jackson received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Calderón appears in the film as Paul, a bartender at Marsellus's social club, as well as Marsellus's assistant. Tarantino wrote the role for
Laurence Fishburne
Laurence John Fishburne III (born July 30, 1961) is an American actor. He is a three time Emmy Award and Tony Award winning actor known for his roles on stage and screen. He has been hailed for his forceful, militant, and authoritative charact ...
, who turned it down. According to Tarantino, Fishburne refused it because his team did not see it as a starring role; Fishburne later said he turned it down because he felt the film glamorized heroin.
*
Uma Thurman
Uma Karuna Thurman (born April 29, 1970) is an American actress and former model. She has performed in a variety of films, from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action films. Following her appearances on the December 1985 an ...
as
Mia Wallace
Mia Wallace is a fictional character portrayed by Uma Thurman in the 1994 Quentin Tarantino film ''Pulp Fiction''. It was Thurman's breakthrough role and earned her a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. The character ...
:
:Wallace's wife and an aspiring actress. Miramax favored
Holly Hunter
Holly Patricia Hunter (born March 20, 1958) is an American actress. For her performance as Ada McGrath in the 1993 drama film ''The Piano'', Hunter won the Academy Award for Best Actress. She earned three additional Academy Award nominations for ...
or
Meg Ryan
Meg Ryan (born Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra; November 19, 1961) is an American actress. She began her acting career in 1981 when she made her acting debut in the drama film ''Rich and Famous''. She later joined the cast of the CBS soap opera ...
for the role of Mia.
Alfre Woodard
Alfre Woodard (; born November 8, 1952) is an American actress. She has received various accolades, including four Primetime Emmy Awards (tying the record for the most acting Emmys won by an African-American performer, along with Regina King), ...
and
Meg Tilly
Meg Tilly (born Margaret Elizabeth Chan on February 14, 1960) is an American-Canadian actress and writer.
For her role in the 1985 film '' Agnes of God'', she won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting ...
were also considered but Tarantino wanted Thurman after their first meeting. She dominated the film's promotional material, appearing on a bed with cigarette in hand. She was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Despite being launched into the celebrity
A-list
An A-list actor is a major movie star, or one of the most bankable actors in a film industry.
The A-list is part of a larger guide called ''The Hot List'', which ranks the bankability of 1,400 movie actors worldwide, and has become an industry ...
, Thurman chose not to do any big-budget films until ''
Batman & Robin'' (1997) three years later.
*
Harvey Keitel
Harvey Keitel ( ; born May 13, 1939) is an American actor. He is known for his portrayal of morally ambiguous and "tough guy" characters. He first rose to prominence during the New Hollywood movement, and has held a long-running association with ...
as Winston Wolfe:
:A "
cleaner
A cleaner or a cleaning operative is a type of industrial or domestic worker who cleans homes or commercial premises for payment. Cleaning operatives may specialise in cleaning particular things or places, such as window cleaners. Cleaning oper ...
" who aids Jules and Vincent. Tarantino wrote the part of Wolfe for Keitel, who had starred in ''Reservoir Dogs'' and was instrumental in its production. In Tarantino's words, "Harvey had been my favorite actor since I was 16 years old."
[Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 23, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).] Keitel had played a similarly employed character in ''
Point of No Return
The point of no return (PNR or PONR) is the point beyond which one must continue on one's current course of action because turning back is dangerous, physically impossible or difficult, or prohibitively expensive. The point of no return can be a ...
'' (1993).
*
Tim Roth
Timothy Simon Roth (born 14 May 1961) is an English actor and producer. He began acting on films and television series in the 1980s. He was among a group of prominent British actors of the era, the "Brit Pack (actors), Brit Pack".
He made hi ...
as Ringo/"Pumpkin":
:A burglar and Yolanda's boyfriend. Roth had starred in ''Reservoir Dogs'' alongside Keitel. He had used an American accent in ''Reservoir Dogs'' but used his natural, London accent in ''Pulp Fiction''. Though Tarantino had written the part with Roth in mind, TriStar head
Mike Medavoy
Morris Mike Medavoy (born January 21, 1941) is an American film producer and business executive. He is the co-founder of Orion Pictures (1978), former chairman of TriStar Pictures, former head of production for United Artists (1974–1978), and ...
preferred
Johnny Depp
John Christopher Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor and musician. He is the recipient of multiple accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Award ...
or
Christian Slater
Christian Michael Leonard Slater (born August 18, 1969) is an American actor and producer. He made his film debut with a leading role in ''The Legend of Billie Jean'' (1985) and gained wider recognition for his breakthrough role as Jason "J.D." D ...
. Early in development, Tarantino had contemplated casting Roth as Vincent and
Gary Oldman
Gary Leonard Oldman (born 21 March 1958) is an English actor and filmmaker. Known for his versatility and intense acting style, he has received various accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and three British Academy Fi ...
as Jules, rewriting the characters as "two English guys".
*
Amanda Plummer
Amanda Michael Plummer (born March 23, 1957) is an American actress. She is known for her work on stage and for her roles in such films as '' Joe Versus the Volcano'' (1990), ''The Fisher King'' (1991), ''Pulp Fiction'' (1994), and '' The Hunge ...
as Yolanda/"Honey Bunny":
:Ringo's girlfriend and partner in crime. Tarantino wrote the role of Yolanda for Plummer to partner her with Roth. Roth had introduced Tarantino to her, saying: "I want to work with Amanda in one of your films but she has to have a really big gun."
*
Maria de Medeiros
Maria Esteves de Medeiros Victorino de Almeida, DamSE (born 19 August 1965), known professionally as Maria de Medeiros (), is a Portuguese actress, director, and singer who has been involved in both European and American film productions.
Ear ...
as Fabienne:
:Butch's girlfriend. Tarantino met de Medeiros, a Portuguese actress, while traveling with ''Reservoir Dogs'' around the European film festival circuit.
*
Ving Rhames
Irving Rameses Rhames (born May 12, 1959) is an American actor. He is best known for his supporting roles as IMF Agent Luther Stickell in the ''Mission: Impossible'' film series and gang kingpin Marsellus Wallace in ''Pulp Fiction''. He also ap ...
as Marsellus Wallace:
:A crime boss and employer of Jules and Vincent. Before Rhames was cast, the part of Wallace was initially offered to
Max Julien
Maxwell Julien Banks (July 12, 1933 – January 1, 2022), better known by his stage name Max Julien, was an American actor, sculptor, and clothes designer best known for his role as Goldie in the 1973 blaxploitation film ''The Mack''. Julien als ...
and
Sid Haig
Sidney Eddie Mosesian (July 14, 1939 – September 21, 2019), known professionally as Sid Haig, was an American actor, film producer, and musician. He was known for his roles in several of Jack Hill's blaxploitation films from the 1970s, as well ...
, but both turned down the role. According to Bender, Rhames gave "one of the best auditions I've ever seen". His acclaimed performance led to him being cast in big-budget features such as ''
Mission Impossible
''Mission: Impossible'' is a multimedia franchise based on a fictional secret espionage agency known as the Impossible Missions Force (IMF). The 1966 TV series ran for seven seasons and was revived in 1988 for two seasons. It inspired a serie ...
'' (1996), ''
Con Air
''Con Air'' is a 1997 American action thriller film directed by Simon West and starring Nicolas Cage, John Cusack and John Malkovich. Written by Scott Rosenberg and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, the film centers on a prison break aboard a J ...
'' (1997) and ''
Out of Sight
''Out of Sight'' is a 1998 American crime comedy film directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Scott Frank, adapted from Elmore Leonard's 1996 novel of the same name. The first of several collaborations between Soderbergh and actor George C ...
'' (1998).
*
Eric Stoltz
Eric Cameron Stoltz (born September 30, 1961) is an American actor, director and producer. He played the role of Rocky Dennis in the biographical drama film ''Mask'', which earned him the nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Support ...
as Lance:
:Vincent's drug dealer. Gary Oldman was the preferred choice among TriStar executives, based on his portrayal of drug-dealing pimp Drexl Spivey in ''
True Romance
''True Romance'' is a 1993 American romantic crime film directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino. It features an ensemble cast led by Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, with Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, ...
'' (1993).
*
Rosanna Arquette
Rosanna Lisa Arquette (; born August 10, 1959) is an American actress. She was nominated for an Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie, Emmy Award for her performance in the TV film ''The Executioner's Song ( ...
as Jody:
:Lance's wife.
Pam Grier
Pamela Suzette Grier (born May 26, 1949) is an American actress and singer. Described by Quentin Tarantino as cinema's first female action star (although, there are some who dispute that claim and believe Cheng Pei-pei actually holds that distin ...
read for the role, but Tarantino did not believe audiences would find it plausible for Lance to yell at her. Tarantino later cast Grier as the lead role for ''
Jackie Brown
''Jackie Brown'' is a 1997 American crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, based on Elmore Leonard's 1992 novel ''Rum Punch.'' It stars Pam Grier as Jackie Brown, a flight attendant who is caught smuggling money. Samuel L. Ja ...
''.
Ellen DeGeneres
Ellen Lee DeGeneres ( ; born January 26, 1958) is an American comedian, television host, actress, writer, and producer. She starred in the sitcom ''Ellen'' from 1994 to 1998, which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award for " The Puppy Episode". Sh ...
also read for the part of Jody. Rosanna's sister
Alexis Alexis may refer to:
People Mononym
* Alexis (poet) ( – ), a Greek comic poet
* Alexis (sculptor), an ancient Greek artist who lived around the 3rd or 4th century BC
* Alexis (singer) (born 1968), German pop singer
* Alexis (comics) (1946–197 ...
(then known as Robert Arquette) also appears in the film, as a man emerging from a bathroom to shoot at and miss Vincent and Jules who then kill him.
*
Christopher Walken
Christopher Walken (born Ronald Walken; March 31, 1943) is an American actor. Prolific in film, television and on stage, Walken is the recipient of numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Awar ...
as Captain Koons:
:A
USAF
The United States Air Force (USAF) is the air service branch of the United States Armed Forces, and is one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. Originally created on 1 August 1907, as a part of the United States Army Sign ...
veteran of the
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
who delivers a young Butch his father's coveted gold watch. During Koons' monologue, which is interspersed with colorful descriptions of the
Viet Cong
,
, war = the Vietnam War
, image = FNL Flag.svg
, caption = The flag of the Viet Cong, adopted in 1960, is a variation on the flag of North Vietnam. Sometimes the lower stripe was green.
, active ...
, he mentions a soldier called "Winocki". Joe Winocki (
John Garfield
John Garfield (born Jacob Julius Garfinkle, March 4, 1913 – May 21, 1952) was an American actor who played brooding, rebellious, working-class characters. He grew up in poverty in New York City. In the early 1930s, he became a member of ...
) is a character in the 1943 film ''
Air Force
An air force – in the broadest sense – is the national military branch that primarily conducts aerial warfare. More specifically, it is the branch of a nation's armed services that is responsible for aerial warfare as distinct from an a ...
'' directed by
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him "the greatest American director who is not a household name."
A v ...
, one of Tarantino's favorite directors.
Tarantino played a character named Desmond Winocki in a guest appearance on an episode of ''
All-American Girl'' titled ''Pulp Sitcom''.
*
Bruce Willis
Walter Bruce Willis (born March 19, 1955) is a retired American actor. He achieved fame with a leading role on the comedy-drama series ''Moonlighting'' (1985–1989) and appeared in over a hundred films, gaining recognition as an action hero a ...
as Butch Coolidge:
:An aging boxer on the run from Marsellus having
double-crossed him. Willis was already a star but most of his recent films had been critical and box-office disappointments. As related by
Peter Bart
Peter Benton Bart (born July 24, 1932) is an American journalist and film producer, writing a column for ''Deadline Hollywood'' since 2015. He is perhaps best known for his lengthy tenure (1989–2009) as the editor in chief of ''Variety'', an ...
, participating in the modestly budgeted film "meant lowering his salary and risking his star status but the strategy ... paid off royally: ''Pulp Fiction'' not only brought Willis new respect as an actor but also earned him several million dollars". Willis' appearance and physical presence were crucial to Tarantino, "Bruce has the look of a 50s actor. I can't think of any other star that has that look". Butch's look was modeled on
Aldo Ray
Aldo Ray (born Aldo Da Re; September 25, 1926 – March 27, 1991) was an American actor of film and television. He began his career as a contract player for Columbia Studios before achieving stardom through his roles in '' The Marrying Kind ...
in ''
Nightfall'' and his demeanor based on
Ralph Meeker
Ralph Meeker (born Ralph Rathgeber; November 21, 1920 August 5, 1988) was an American film, stage, and television actor. He first rose to prominence for his roles in the Broadway productions of '' Mister Roberts'' (1948–1951) and ''Picnic'' ...
's portrayal of
Mike Hammer Michael Hammer or Mike Hammer may refer to:
*Michael Armand Hammer (1955–2022), American philanthropist and businessman
*Michael Martin Hammer (1948–2008), engineer and author
*Mike Hammer (character), a fictional hard boiled detective
** ''Mick ...
in
Robert Aldrich
Robert Burgess Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. His notable credits include '' Vera Cruz'' (1954), ''Kiss Me Deadly'' (1955), ''The Big Knife'' (1955), '' Autumn L ...
's ''
Kiss Me Deadly
''Kiss Me Deadly'' is a 1955 American film noir produced and directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Juano Hernandez, and Wesley Addy. It also features Maxine Cooper and Cloris Leachman appearing in the ...
''. Chandler Lindauer plays a young Butch.
Bronagh Gallagher
Bronagh Gallagher (born 26 April 1972) is an Irish singer and actress from Northern Ireland. Gallagher had her first acting role in the 1989 television movie '' Dear Sarah''. In 2020, she was listed at number 33 on ''The Irish Times'' list of I ...
plays Jody's friend Trudi who does little but smoke a
bong
A bong (also known as a water pipe) is a filtration device generally used for smoking cannabis, tobacco, or other herbal substances. In the bong shown in the photo, the gas flows from the lower port on the left to the upper port on the right.
...
during the scene where Vincent revives Mia. According to author Jason Bailey, "Quentin thought it would be funny to have this casual observer who just happened to be there. All of this was born out of the experience of, when you go to someone's house to buy drugs, there are always people who are just there".
Phil LaMarr
Phillip LaMarr (born January 24, 1967) is an American actor, comedian and screenwriter. LaMarr was one of the original featured cast members on the sketch comedy television series ''Mad TV''. His voice acting roles in animated series include Jo ...
portrays Marvin, an associate of Jules and Vincent. LaMarr auditioned for Tarantino after both had done a show for an improv group a few months prior.
He read for the roles of Jules Winnfield and Brett before being cast as Marvin.
Tarantino appears as Jules' friend Jimmie, in whose house they clean up a murder. Tarantino was unsure whether to play Jimmie or Lance, choosing Jimmie as he wanted to be behind the camera during Mia's overdose scene.
Frank Whaley
Frank Joseph Whaley (born July 20, 1963) is an American actor, film director, screenwriter, and comedian. His roles include Brett in ''Pulp Fiction'', Robby Krieger in ''The Doors'', young Archie "Moonlight" Graham in ''Field of Dreams'', and Guy ...
portrays Brett, who has a briefcase requested by Marcellus. Whaley met Tarantino while he was filming ''Reservoir Dogs'' at a lab in
Sundance Institute
Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford committed to the growth of independent artists. The institute is driven by its programs that discover and support independent filmmakers, theatre artists and composers f ...
. He recalls, "we ended up meeting and spending time together, and I liked him, so I was really happy when he asked me to be in this movie."
Burr Steers
Burr Gore Steers is an American actor, screenwriter, and director. His films include ''Igby Goes Down'' (2002) and '' 17 Again'' (2009). He is a nephew of writer Gore Vidal.
Family
Steers was born in Washington, D.C. His father, Newton Ivan ...
appears as Roger, a friend of Brett's nicknamed "Flock of Seagulls" by Jules. The scene of the confrontation between Brett and Jules went through several takes due to Steers making mistakes. Steers recalled in an interview that he had found acting difficult due to the loudness of the gunshots.
Angela Jones
Angela Jones (born December 23, 1968) is an American actress.
Biography
Jones was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and then raised in Jeannette, Pennsylvania, where she graduated in 1986. She is a graduate of Point Park College in Pittsburgh. ...
portrays Esmeralda Villalobos, a cab driver who aids Butch's escape. Her casting and character were inspired by her performance in the 1991 short film ''Curdled'', later remade as a
1996 feature film with finance from Tarantino and again starring Jones.
Duane Whitaker
Nathan Duane Whitaker Jr. (born June 23, 1959) is an American character actor.
Early life
Whitaker was born in Abilene, Texas, the oldest child of Nathan Duane Whitaker Sr. and Barbara Ella Hudson, a nurse. He has two younger sisters, both bor ...
,
Peter Greene
Peter Greene (born Peter Green; October 8, 1965) is an American actor. A character actor, he is generally known for portraying villains. He is best known for the roles in the 1994 films ''The Mask'', where he plays the films antagonist, Dorian ...
and Stephen Hibbert play Maynard, Zed and the gimp.
According to ''The Daily Beast'', these "three psycho
hillbillies
Hillbilly is a term (often derogatory
A pejorative or slur is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or a disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express critici ...
" that rape Marsellus in Maynard's shop's basement allude to the film ''
Deliverance
''Deliverance'' is a 1972 American survival thriller film produced and directed by John Boorman, and starring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, with the latter two making their feature film debuts. The screenplay was adapted ...
''.
Steve Buscemi
Steven Vincent Buscemi ( ,As stated in interviews by Buscemi himself, some may insist that his pronunciation of his own name is "wrong" because it does not match the original Italian pronunciation as well. It is not uncommon for people to pronou ...
makes a
cameo appearance
A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly eit ...
as a waiter at Jack Rabbit Slim's, dressed as
Buddy Holly
Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer and songwriter who was a central and pioneering figure of mid-1950s rock and roll. He was born to a musical family in Lubbock, Texas ...
. Buscemi, who had appeared in ''Reservoir Dogs'', was originally considered for the role of Jimmie but was unable to commit.
Kathy Griffin
Kathleen Mary Griffin (born November 4, 1960) is an American comedian and actress who has starred in television comedy specials and has released comedy albums. In 2007 and 2008, Griffin won Primetime Emmy Awards for her reality show '' Kathy ...
appears as herself.
[ ]Michael Gilden
Michael Jeffrey Gilden (September 22, 1962 – December 5, 2006) was an American actor with dwarfism.
Biography
The -tall Gilden had a form of dwarfism. He lived and worked in Los Angeles.
Gilden performed or did stunt work in a variety of tel ...
and Joseph Pilato
Joseph Pilato (March 16, 1949 – March 24, 2019) was an American film and voice actor. He was perhaps best known for his performance as Captain Rhodes in the 1985 film ''Day of the Dead''.
Early life
He was born in Fitchburg in 1949 to an Ita ...
also appear at Jack Rabbit Slim’s as waiter Phillip Morris Page and a Dean Martin
Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti; June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995) was an American singer, actor and comedian. One of the most popular and enduring American entertainers of the mid-20th century, Martin was nicknamed "The King of Cool". M ...
impersonator, respectively. Emil Sitka
Emil Sitka (December 22, 1914January 16, 1998) was a veteran American actor, who appeared in hundreds of movies, short films, and television shows, and is best known for his numerous appearances with The Three Stooges. He is one of only two acto ...
made a cameo via posthumous archive footage, Karen Maruyama
Karen Maruyama (born May 29, 1958) is an American actress and comedian.
Career
Maruyama has appeared on television in supporting roles in a number of sitcoms, including recurring characters on ''The Jamie Foxx Show'', ''Strip Mall'', ''Suddenly ...
appears as “Gawker #1” after Butch’s car accident, and Julia Sweeney
Julia Anne Sweeney (born October 10, 1959) is an American actress, comedian, and author, who gained fame as a cast member on ''Saturday Night Live'' from 1990 to 1994. She played Mrs. Keeper in the film ''Stuart Little'' and voiced Brittany in ' ...
portrays Raquel, the daughter of the owner of the junkyard in which Marvin’s body is disposed of. Producer Lawrence Bender
Lawrence Bender (born October 17, 1957) is an American film producer. Throughout his career, Bender-produced films have received 36 Academy Award nominations, resulting in eight wins.
Bender rose to fame by producing ''Reservoir Dogs'' in 1992 an ...
makes a cameo as a victim of the diner robbery, credited as “Long Hair Yuppie-Scum”. Jerome Patrick Hoban appears in the Jack Rabbit Slim's segment as an Ed Sullivan
Edward Vincent Sullivan (September 28, 1901 – October 13, 1974) was an American television personality, impresario, sports and entertainment reporter, and syndicated columnist for the ''New York Daily News'' and the Chicago Tribune New York ...
impersonator. Susan Griffiths appears alongside Hoban as a Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as wel ...
impersonator.
Production
Writing
Roger Avary
Roger Roberts Avary (born August 23, 1965) is a Canadian-American film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. He collaborated with Quentin Tarantino on ''Pulp Fiction'', for which they won Best Original Screenplay at the 67th Acad ...
wrote the first element of what would become the ''Pulp Fiction'' screenplay in the fall of 1990:
The initial inspiration was the three-part horror anthology film
An anthology film (also known as an omnibus film, package film, or portmanteau film) is a single film consisting of several shorter films, each complete in itself and distinguished from the other, though frequently tied together by a single theme ...
''Black Sabbath
Black Sabbath were an English rock music, rock band formed in Birmingham in 1968 by guitarist Tony Iommi, drummer Bill Ward (musician), Bill Ward, bassist Geezer Butler and vocalist Ozzy Osbourne. They are often cited as pioneers of heavy met ...
'' (1963), by Italian filmmaker Mario Bava
Mario Bava (31 July 1914 – 27 April 1980) was an Italian filmmaker who worked variously as a director, cinematographer, special effects artist and screenwriter, frequently referred to as the "Master of Italian Horror" and the "Master of the Ma ...
. The Tarantino–Avary project was provisionally titled " Black Mask", after the seminal hardboiled
Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence o ...
crime fiction magazine.[Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 14, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).] Tarantino's script was produced as ''Reservoir Dogs
''Reservoir Dogs'' is a 1992 American crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino in his feature-length debut. It stars Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Michael Madsen, Tarantino, and Edward Bunke ...
'', his directorial debut; Avary created the basis for the "Gold Watch" storyline of ''Pulp Fiction''.
With work on ''Reservoir Dogs'' completed, Tarantino returned to the notion of a trilogy film: "I got the idea of doing something that novelists get a chance to do but filmmakers don't: telling three separate stories, having characters float in and out with different weights depending on the story." Tarantino explains that the idea "was basically to take like the oldest chestnuts that you've ever seen when it comes to crime stories – the oldest stories in the book ... You know, 'Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife' – the oldest story about ... the guy's gotta go out with the big man's wife and don't touch her. You know, you've seen the story a zillion times." "I'm using old forms of storytelling and then purposely having them run awry", he says. "Part of the trick is to take these movie characters, these genre characters and these genre situations and actually apply them to some of real life's rules and see how they unravel." In at least one case, boxer Butch Coolidge, Tarantino had in mind a specific character from a classic Hollywood crime story: "I wanted him to be basically like Ralph Meeker
Ralph Meeker (born Ralph Rathgeber; November 21, 1920 August 5, 1988) was an American film, stage, and television actor. He first rose to prominence for his roles in the Broadway productions of '' Mister Roberts'' (1948–1951) and ''Picnic'' ...
as Mike Hammer Michael Hammer or Mike Hammer may refer to:
*Michael Armand Hammer (1955–2022), American philanthropist and businessman
*Michael Martin Hammer (1948–2008), engineer and author
*Mike Hammer (character), a fictional hard boiled detective
** ''Mick ...
in Aldrich Aldrich may refer to:
Places United States
*Aldrich, Alabama, unincorporated community
*Aldrich, Minnesota, city
*Aldrich Township, Wadena County, Minnesota
*Aldrich, Missouri, village
People
*Aldrich (surname), a surname (including a list of pe ...
's ''Kiss Me Deadly
''Kiss Me Deadly'' is a 1955 American film noir produced and directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Juano Hernandez, and Wesley Addy. It also features Maxine Cooper and Cloris Leachman appearing in the ...
'' 955
Year 955 (Roman numerals, CMLV) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
Events
By place
Europe
* August 10 – Battle of Lechfeld (955), Battle of Lechfeld: King Otto I, H ...
I wanted him to be a bully and a jerk".
Tarantino went to work on the script for ''Pulp Fiction'' in Amsterdam in March 1992, possibly at the Winston Hotel in the Red Light District
A red-light district or pleasure district is a part of an urban area where a concentration of prostitution and sex-oriented businesses, such as sex shops, strip clubs, and adult theaters, are found. In most cases, red-light districts are partic ...
. He was joined there by Avary, who contributed "Pandemonium Reigns" to the project and participated in its rewriting as well as the development of the new storylines that would link up with it. Two scenes originally written by Avary for the ''True Romance
''True Romance'' is a 1993 American romantic crime film directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino. It features an ensemble cast led by Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, with Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, ...
'' screenplay, exclusively credited to Tarantino, were incorporated into the opening of "The Bonnie Situation": the "miraculous" missed shots by the hidden gunman and the rear seat automobile killing. The notion of the crimeworld "cleaner" that became the heart of the episode was inspired by a short, ''Curdled
Curdling is the breaking of an emulsion or colloid into large parts of different composition through the physio-chemical processes of flocculation, creaming, and coalescence. Curdling is purposeful in the production of cheese curd and tofu; und ...
'', that Tarantino saw at a film festival. He cast the lead actress, Angela Jones
Angela Jones (born December 23, 1968) is an American actress.
Biography
Jones was born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and then raised in Jeannette, Pennsylvania, where she graduated in 1986. She is a graduate of Point Park College in Pittsburgh. ...
, in ''Pulp Fiction'' and later backed the filmmakers' production of a feature-length version of ''Curdled''. The script included a couple of made-up commercial brands that often featured in later Tarantino films: Big Kahuna burgers (a Big Kahuna soda cup appears in ''Reservoir Dogs'') and Red Apple cigarettes. As he worked on the script, Tarantino also accompanied ''Reservoir Dogs'' around the European film festivals. Released in the United States in October 1992, the picture was a critical and commercial success. In January 1993, the ''Pulp Fiction'' script was complete.
Financing
Tarantino and his producer, Lawrence Bender
Lawrence Bender (born October 17, 1957) is an American film producer. Throughout his career, Bender-produced films have received 36 Academy Award nominations, resulting in eight wins.
Bender rose to fame by producing ''Reservoir Dogs'' in 1992 an ...
, brought the script to Jersey Films. Before even seeing ''Reservoir Dogs'', Jersey had attempted to sign Tarantino for his next project. Ultimately a development deal worth around $1 million had been struck: The deal gave A Band Apart
A Band Apart Films was a production company founded by Quentin Tarantino, Michael Bodnarchek, and Lawrence Bender that was active from 1991 to 2006. Its name is a play on the French New Wave classic film, ''Bande à part (film), Bande à part'' ("B ...
, Bender and Tarantino's newly formed production company, initial financing and office facilities; Jersey got a share of the project and the right to shop the script to a studio. Jersey had a distribution and "first look" deal with Columbia TriStar, which paid Tarantino for the right to consider exercising its option. In February, ''Pulp Fiction'' appeared on a ''Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' list of films in pre-production
Pre-production is the process of planning some of the elements involved in a film, television show, play, or other performance, as distinct from production and post-production. Pre-production ends when the planning ends and the content starts ...
at TriStar. In June, however, the studio put the script into turnaround. According to a studio executive, TriStar chief Mike Medavoy
Morris Mike Medavoy (born January 21, 1941) is an American film producer and business executive. He is the co-founder of Orion Pictures (1978), former chairman of TriStar Pictures, former head of production for United Artists (1974–1978), and ...
found it "too demented". There were suggestions that TriStar was resistant to back a film featuring a heroin user; there were also indications that the studio simply saw the project as too low-budget for its desired star-driven image. Avary – who was about to start shooting his own directorial debut, ''Killing Zoe
''Killing Zoe'' is a 1993 crime film written and directed by Roger Avary and starring Eric Stoltz, Jean-Hugues Anglade and Julie Delpy. The story details a safe cracker named Zed who returns to France to aid an old friend in performing a doomed b ...
'' – has said that TriStar's objections were comprehensive, encompassing the script's fundamental structure. He characterizes the studio's position: This is the worst thing ever written. It makes no sense. Someone's dead and then they're alive. It's too long, violent, and unfilmable.' ... So I thought, 'That's that!
Bender brought the script to Miramax
Miramax, LLC, also known as Miramax Films, is an American film and television production and distribution company founded on December 19, 1979, by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein, and based in Los Angeles, California.
It was initially a leadi ...
, the formerly independent studio that had recently been acquired by Disney
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
. Harvey Weinstein
Harvey Weinstein (; born March 19, 1952) is an American former film producer and convicted sex offender. He and his brother, Bob Weinstein, co-founded the entertainment company Miramax, which produced several successful independent films inclu ...
– co-chairman of Miramax, along with his brother Bob
Bob, BOB, or B.O.B. may refer to:
Places
*Mount Bob, New York, United States
*Bob Island, Palmer Archipelago, Antarctica
People, fictional characters, and named animals
*Bob (given name), a list of people and fictional characters
*Bob (surname) ...
– was instantly enthralled by the script and the company picked it up. ''Pulp Fiction'', the first Miramax project to get a green light after the Disney acquisition, was budgeted at $8.5 million. It became the first movie that Miramax completely financed. Helping hold costs down was the plan Bender executed to pay all the main actors the same amount per week, regardless of their industry status. ''The New York Times'' reported, "Most of the actors received relatively small salaries along with a percentage of the profits." The biggest star to sign on to the project was Bruce Willis
Walter Bruce Willis (born March 19, 1955) is a retired American actor. He achieved fame with a leading role on the comedy-drama series ''Moonlighting'' (1985–1989) and appeared in over a hundred films, gaining recognition as an action hero a ...
. Though he had recently appeared in several big-budget flops, he was still a major overseas draw. On the strength of his name, Miramax garnered $11 million for the film's worldwide rights, virtually ensuring its profitability.
Filming
Principal photography
Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production.
Personnel
Besides the main film personnel, such as actor ...
commenced on September 20, 1993. The lead offscreen talent had all worked with Tarantino on ''Reservoir Dogs'' – cinematographer
The cinematographer or director of photography (sometimes shortened to DP or DOP) is the person responsible for the photographing or recording of a film, television production, music video or other live action piece. The cinematographer is the ch ...
Andrzej Sekuła
Andrzej Sekuła (born December 19, 1954) is a Polish cinematographer and film director, known for his work on various critically acclaimed films throughout the 1990s.
Career
Born in Wrocław, Poland in 1954, he emigrated to Los Angeles in 1980. ...
, film editor
Film editing is both a creative and a technical part of the post-production process of filmmaking. The term is derived from the traditional process of working with film which increasingly involves the use of digital technology.
The film edit ...
Sally Menke
Sally JoAnne Menke (December 17, 1953 – September 27, 2010) was an American film editor, who worked in cinema and television. Over the span of her 30-year career in film, she accumulated more than 20 feature film credits.
She had a long-time c ...
, production designer
In film and television, the production designer is the individual responsible for the overall aesthetic of the story. The production design gives the viewers a sense of the time period, the plot location, and character actions and feelings. Wo ...
David Wasco, and costume designer
A costume designer is a person who designs costumes for a film, stage production or television show. The role of the costume designer is to create the characters' outfits or costumes and balance the scenes with texture and colour, etc. The costume ...
Betsy Heimann. According to Tarantino, " had $8 million. I wanted it to look like a $20–25 million movie. I wanted it to look like an epic. It's an epic in everything – in invention, in ambition, in length, in scope, in everything except the price tag."[Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 8, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).] The film, he says, was shot "on 50 ASA film stock, which is the slowest stock they make. The reason we use it is that it creates an almost no-grain image, it's lustrous. It's the closest thing we have to 50s Technicolor
Technicolor is a series of Color motion picture film, color motion picture processes, the first version dating back to 1916, and followed by improved versions over several decades.
Definitive Technicolor movies using three black and white films ...
." The largest chunk of the budget – $150,000 – went to creating the Jack Rabbit Slim's set. It was built in a Culver City
Culver City is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 40,779. Founded in 1917 as a "whites only" sundown town, it is now an ethnically diverse city with what was called the "third-most ...
warehouse, where it was joined by several other sets, as well as the film's production offices. The diner sequence was shot on location in Hawthorne
Hawthorne often refers to the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Hawthorne may also refer to:
Places
Australia
*Hawthorne, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane
Canada
* Hawthorne Village, Ontario, a suburb of Milton, Ontario
United States
* Hawt ...
at the Hawthorne Grill, known for its Googie architecture
Googie architecture ( ) is a type of futurist architecture influenced by car culture, Jet aircraft, jets, the Atomic Age and the Space Age. It originated in Southern California from the Streamline Moderne architecture of the 1930s, and was pop ...
. For the costumes, Tarantino took his inspiration from French director Jean-Pierre Melville
Jean-Pierre Melville (; born Jean-Pierre Grumbach; 20 October 1917 – 2 August 1973) was a French filmmaker and actor. Among his films are ''Le Silence de la mer'' (1949), ''Bob le flambeur'' (1956), '' Le Doulos'' (1962), ''Le Samouraï'' (196 ...
, who believed that the clothes his characters wore were their symbolic suits of armor. Tarantino cast himself in a modest-sized role as he had in ''Reservoir Dogs''. One of his pop totems, Fruit Brute, a long-discontinued General Mills
General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...
cereal, also returned from the earlier film. The shoot wrapped on November 30. Before ''Pulp Fiction''s premiere, Tarantino convinced Avary to forfeit his agreed-on cowriting credit and accept a "story by" credit, so the line "Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino" could be used in advertising and onscreen.
Music
No film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...
was composed for ''Pulp Fiction''; Quentin Tarantino instead used an eclectic assortment of surf music
Surf music (or surf rock, surf pop, or surf guitar) is a genre of rock music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Southern California. It was especially popular from 1958 to 1964 in two major forms. The first is instrumental s ...
, rock and roll
Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock 'n' roll, or rock 'n roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from Africa ...
, soul
In many religious and philosophical traditions, there is a belief that a soul is "the immaterial aspect or essence of a human being".
Etymology
The Modern English noun ''soul'' is derived from Old English ''sāwol, sāwel''. The earliest attes ...
, and pop songs. Dick Dale
Richard Anthony Monsour (May 4, 1937 – March 16, 2019), known professionally as Dick Dale, was an American rock guitarist. He was a pioneer of surf music, drawing on Middle Eastern music scale (music), scales and experimenting with reverb eff ...
's rendition of "Misirlou
"Misirlou" ( el, Μισιρλού < tr, Mısırlı 'Egyptian' < ar, مصر ''Miṣr'' 'Egypt') is a folk song from the Eastern Mediterranean region. The original author of the song is not known, but Arabic, Greek, and Jewish musicians wer ...
" plays during the opening credits. Tarantino chose surf music as the basic musical style for the film, but not, he insists, because of its association with surfing culture: "To me it just sounds like rock and roll, even Morricone music. It sounds like rock and roll spaghetti Western
The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...
music." Tarantino planned to use a power pop
Power pop (also typeset as powerpop) is a form of pop rock based on the early music of bands such as the Who, the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Byrds. It typically incorporates melodic hooks, vocal harmonies, an energetic performance, and ch ...
song, My Sharona
"My Sharona" () is the debut single by the Knack. The song was written by Berton Averre and Doug Fieger, and it was released in 1979 from their debut album, '' Get the Knack''. It reached number one on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 singles chart, w ...
by The Knack
The Knack was an American rock band based in Los Angeles that rose to fame with its first single, "My Sharona", an international number-one hit in 1979.
History Founding (1977–1978)
Singer Doug Fieger was a native of Oak Park, Michigan, a no ...
, during the film's rape scene, but ultimately discounted it.
Some of the songs were suggested to Tarantino by his friends Chuck Kelley and Laura Lovelace, who were credited as music consultants. Lovelace also appeared in the film as Laura, a waitress; she reprises the role in ''Jackie Brown''. The soundtrack album
A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television show. The first such album to be commercially released was Walt Disney's ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' ...
was released along with the film in 1994. The album peaked on the ''Billboard'' 200 chart at number 21. The single, Urge Overkill
Urge Overkill is an American alternative rock band, formed in Chicago, Illinois, United States, consisting of Nathan Kaatrud, who took the stage name Nash Kato (vocals/guitar), and Eddie "King" Roeser (vocals/guitar/bass guitar). They are widely ...
's cover of the Neil Diamond
Neil Leslie Diamond (born January 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. He has sold more than 130 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time. He has had ten No. 1 singles on the Hot 100 and Adul ...
song "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon
"Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon" is a song written by American musician Neil Diamond, whose recording of it on Bang Records reached number 10 on the US pop singles chart in 1967. The song enjoyed a second life when it appeared on the 1994 ''Pulp ...
", reached number 59.
Estella Tincknell describes how the particular combination of well-known and obscure recordings helps establish the film as a "self-consciously 'cool' text. heuse of the mono-tracked, beat-heavy style of early 1960s U.S. 'underground' pop mixed with 'classic' ballads such as Dusty Springfield
Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien (16 April 1939 – 2 March 1999), known professionally as Dusty Springfield, was an English singer. With her distinctive mezzo-soprano sound, she was a popular singer of blue-eyed soul, Pop music, p ...
's 'Son of a Preacher Man
"Son of a Preacher Man" is a song written and composed by American songwriters John Hurley and Ronnie Wilkins and recorded by British singer Dusty Springfield in September 1968 for the album ''Dusty in Memphis.''
Springfield's version was produc ...
' is crucial to the film's postmodern knowingness." She contrasts the soundtrack with that of ''Forrest Gump
''Forrest Gump'' is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Eric Roth. It is based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Winston Groom and stars Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson and ...
'', the highest-grossing film of 1994, which also relies on period pop recordings: " e version of 'the sixties' offered by ''Pulp Fiction'' ... is certainly not that of the publicly recognized counter-culture featured in ''Forrest Gump'', but is, rather, a more genuinely marginal form of sub-culture based around a lifestyle – surfing, 'hanging' – that is resolutely apolitical." The soundtrack is central, she says, to the film's engagement with the "younger, cinematically knowledgeable spectator" it solicits.
Release and reception
Release and box office
''Pulp Fiction'' premiered in May 1994 at the Cannes Film Festival
The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...
. The Weinsteins "hit the beach like commandos", bringing the picture's entire cast over. The film was unveiled at a midnight hour screening and caused a sensation It won the Palme d'Or
The Palme d'Or (; en, Golden Palm) is the highest prize awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It was introduced in 1955 by the festival's organizing committee. Previously, from 1939 to 1954, the festival's highest prize was the Grand Prix du Fe ...
, the festival's top prize, generating a further wave of publicity.
The first U.S. review of the film was published on May 23 in industry trade magazine ''Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
''. Todd McCarthy
Todd McCarthy (born February 16, 1950) is an American film critic and author. He wrote for ''Variety'' for 31 years as its chief film critic until 2010. In October of that year, he joined ''The Hollywood Reporter'', where he subsequently served ...
called ''Pulp Fiction'' a "spectacularly entertaining piece of pop culture ... a startling, massive success." From Cannes forward, Tarantino was on the road continuously, promoting the film. Over the next few months it played in smaller festivals around Europe, building buzz: Nottingham, Munich, Taormina
Taormina ( , , also , ; scn, Taurmina) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Messina, on the east coast of the island of Sicily, Italy. Taormina has been a tourist destination since the 19th century. Its beaches on ...
, Locarno, Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...
, and San Sebastián
San Sebastian, officially known as Donostia–San Sebastián (names in both local languages: ''Donostia'' () and ''San Sebastián'' ()) is a city and Municipalities of Spain, municipality located in the Basque Country (autonomous community), B ...
. Tarantino later said, "One thing that's cool is that by breaking up the linear structure, when I watch the film with an audience, it does break he audience's
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' in ...
alpha
Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , whic ...
state. It's like, all of a sudden, 'I gotta watch this ... I gotta pay attention.' You can almost feel everybody moving in their seats. It's actually fun to watch an audience in some ways chase after a movie."[Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 24, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).] In late September, it opened the New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, it is ...
. ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' published its review the day of the opening. Janet Maslin
Janet R. Maslin (born August 12, 1949) is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for ''The New York Times''. She served as a ''Times'' film critic from 1977 to 1999 and as a book critic from 2000 to 2015. In 2000 Maslin ...
called the film a "triumphant, cleverly disorienting journey through a demimonde that springs entirely from Mr. Tarantino's ripe imagination, a landscape of danger, shock, hilarity and vibrant local color ... ehas come up with a work of such depth, wit and blazing originality that it places him in the front ranks of American film makers."
On October 14, 1994, ''Pulp Fiction'' went into general release in the United States. As Peter Biskind describes, "It was not platformed, that is, it did not open in a handful of theaters and roll out slowly as word of mouth built, the traditional way of releasing an indie film
An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies (or, in ...
; it went wide immediately, into 1,100 theaters." In the eyes of some cultural critics, ''Reservoir Dogs'' had given Tarantino a reputation for glamorizing violence. Miramax played with the issue in its marketing campaign: "You won't know the facts till you've seen the fiction", went one slogan. ''Pulp Fiction'' was the top-grossing film at the US box office its first weekend with a gross of $9,311,882, edging out a Sylvester Stallone
Sylvester Enzio Stallone (; born Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone, ) is an American actor and filmmaker. After his beginnings as a struggling actor for a number of years upon arriving to New York City in 1969 and later Hollywood in 1974, h ...
vehicle, ''The Specialist
''The Specialist'' is a 1994 American action thriller film directed by Luis Llosa and starring Sylvester Stallone, Sharon Stone, James Woods, Eric Roberts, and Rod Steiger. It is loosely based on "The Specialist" series of novels by John Shirley. ...
'', which was in its second week and playing at more than twice as many theaters. The gross claimed by Miramax was disputed by others. Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (commonly known as Warner Bros. or abbreviated as WB) is an American film and entertainment studio headquartered at the Warner Bros. Studios complex in Burbank, California, and a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Di ...
initially reported an estimated gross of $8.9 million for ''The Specialist'' with Bob Weinstein then reporting a gross for ''Pulp Fiction'' of $9.1 million, claiming that the film was on another 100 screens that had previously been overlooked. Warners then updated their gross to $9.3 million, claiming they had made a calculation error.
Early Monday morning, Miramax reported a gross of $9.3 million with Warners reporting $8.9 million for ''The Specialist'', placing ''Pulp Fiction'' first but other industry sources did not believe Miramax's numbers. ''Variety'' estimated that ''Pulp Fiction'' grossed $8.6 to $9 million for the weekend.
Against its budget of $8.5 million and about $10 million in marketing costs, ''Pulp Fiction'' grossed $107.93 million at the U.S. box office, making it the first "indie" film to surpass $100 million. Worldwide, it took in nearly $213 million. In terms of domestic grosses, it was the tenth biggest film of 1994, even though it played on substantially fewer screens than any other film in the top 20. Popular engagement with the film, such as speculation about the contents of the precious briefcase, "indicates the kind of cult status that ''Pulp Fiction'' achieved almost immediately." As ''MovieMaker
''MovieMaker'' is a magazine, website and podcast network focused on the art and business of filmmaking with a special emphasis on independent film. The magazine is published on a quarterly basis.
See also
* List of film periodicals
Film period ...
'' puts it, "The movie was nothing less than a national cultural phenomenon." Abroad, as well: in Britain, where it opened a week after its U.S. release, not only was the film a big hit, but in book form its screenplay became the most successful in UK publishing history, a top-ten bestseller.
Critical response
On review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 92% based on 110 reviews, with an average rating of 9.20/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "One of the most influential films of the 1990s, ''Pulp Fiction'' is a delirious post-modern mix of neo-noir thrills, pitch-black humor, and pop-culture touchstones." On Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, the film has a weighted average score of 94 out of 100, based on 24 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore
CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data.
Background
Ed Mintz founded Ci ...
gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.
The response of major American film reviewers was widely favorable. Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
called it "a comedy about blood, guts, violence, strange sex, drugs, fixed fights, dead body disposal, leather freaks and a wristwatch that makes a dark journey down through the generations... The screenplay by Tarantino and Roger Avary so well-written in a scruffy, fanzine
A fanzine (blend word, blend of ''fan (person), fan'' and ''magazine'' or ''-zine'') is a non-professional and non-official publication produced by fan (person), enthusiasts of a particular cultural phenomenon (such as a literary or musical genre) ...
way that you want to rub noses in it – the noses of those zombie writers who take 'screenwriting' classes that teach them the formulas for 'hit films. Richard Corliss
Richard Nelson Corliss (March 6, 1944 – April 23, 2015) was an American film critic and magazine editor for ''Time''. He focused on movies, with occasional articles on other subjects.
He was the former editor-in-chief of ''Film Comment' ...
of ''TIME
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' wrote, "It towers over the year's other movies as majestically and menacingly as a gang lord at a preschool. It dares Hollywood films to be this smart about going this far. If good directors accept Tarantino's implicit challenge, the movie theater could again be a great place to live in." In ''Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'', David Ansen
David Ansen is an American film critic. He was a senior editor for ''Newsweek'', where he served as film critic from 1977 to 2008 and subsequently contribute to the magazined in a freelance capacity. Prior to writing for ''Newsweek'', he served a ...
wrote, "The miracle of Quentin Tarantino's ''Pulp Fiction'' is how, being composed of secondhand, debased parts, it succeeds in gleaming like something new." "You get intoxicated by it," wrote ''Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
''s Owen Gleiberman
Owen Gleiberman (born February 24, 1959) is an American film critic who has been chief film critic for ''Variety'' magazine since May 2016, a title he shares with . Previously, Gleiberman wrote for ''Entertainment Weekly'' from 1990 until 2014. ...
, "high on the rediscovery of how pleasurable a movie can be. I'm not sure I've ever encountered a filmmaker who combined discipline and control with sheer wild-ass joy the way that Tarantino does." "There's a special kick that comes from watching something this thrillingly alive", wrote Peter Travers
Peter Joseph Travers (born ) is an American film critic, journalist, and television presenter. He reviews films for ABC News and previously served as a movie critic for ''People'' and ''Rolling Stone''. Travers also hosts the film interview prog ...
of ''Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
''. "''Pulp Fiction'' is indisputably great."
The ''Los Angeles Times'' was one of the few major news outlets to publish a negative review on the film's opening weekend. Kenneth Turan wrote, "The writer-director appears to be straining for his effects. Some sequences, especially one involving bondage harnesses and homosexual rape, have the uncomfortable feeling of creative desperation, of someone who's afraid of losing his reputation scrambling for any way to offend sensibilities." Some who reviewed it in the following weeks took more exception to the predominant critical reaction than to ''Pulp Fiction'' itself. While not panning the film, Stanley Kauffmann of ''The New Republic'' felt that "the way that [it] has been so widely ravened up and drooled over verges on the disgusting. ''Pulp Fiction'' nourishes, abets, cultural slumming." Responding to comparisons between Tarantino's film and the work of French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard, especially his first, most famous feature, Jonathan Rosenbaum of the ''Chicago Reader'' wrote, "The fact that ''Pulp Fiction'' is garnering more extravagant raves than ''Breathless (1960 film), Breathless'' ever did tells you plenty about which kind of cultural references are regarded as more fruitful – namely, the ones we already have and don't wish to expand."[ Observing in the ''National Review'' that "[n]o film arrives with more advance hype", John Simon (critic), John Simon was unswayed: "titillation cures neither hollowness nor shallowness".
Debate about the film spread beyond the review pages, with its violence often being the theme. In ''The Washington Post'', Donna Britt described how she was happy not to see ''Pulp Fiction'' on a recent weekend and thus avoid "discussing the rousing scene in which a gunshot sprays somebody's brains around a car interior". Some commentators took exception to the film's frequent use of the word "nigger" (mentioned 18 times). In the ''Chicago Tribune'', Todd Boyd argued that the word's recurrence "has the ability to signify the ultimate level of hipness for white males who have historically used their perception of black masculinity as the embodiment of cool". In Britain, James Wood (critic), James Wood, writing in ''The Guardian'', set the tone for much subsequent criticism: "Tarantino represents the final triumph of postmodernism, which is to empty the artwork of all content, thus avoiding its capacity to do anything except helplessly represent our agonies ... Only in this age could a writer as talented as Tarantino produce artworks so vacuous, so entirely stripped of any politics, metaphysics, or moral interest."
]
Awards season
Around the turn of the year, ''Pulp Fiction'' was named Best Picture by the National Society of Film Critics, National Board of Review, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Boston Society of Film Critics, Society of Texas Film Critics, Southeastern Film Critics Association, and Kansas City Film Critics Circle. Tarantino was named Best Director by all seven of those organizations as well as by the New York Film Critics Circle and Chicago Film Critics Association. The screenplay won several prizes, with various awarding bodies ascribing credit differently. At the 52nd Golden Globe Awards, Tarantino, named as sole recipient of the Best Screenplay honor, failed to mention Avary in his acceptance speech. In February 1995, the film received seven Oscar nominations – Best Picture, Director, Actor (Travolta), Supporting Actor (Jackson), Supporting Actress (Thurman), Original Screenplay, and Film Editing. Travolta, Jackson, and Thurman were each nominated as well for the 1st Screen Actors Guild Awards, presented on February 25, but none took home the honor. At the Academy Awards ceremony the following month, Tarantino and Avary were announced as joint winners of the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The furor around the film was still going strong: much of the March issue of ''Artforum'' was devoted to its critical dissection. ''Pulp Fiction'' garnered four honors at the Independent Spirit Awards, held at the end of the month – Independent Spirit Award for Best Film, Best Feature, Independent Spirit Award for Best Director, Best Director, Independent Spirit Award for Best Male Lead, Male Lead (Jackson), and Independent Spirit Award for Best Screenplay, Best Screenplay (Tarantino). At the British Academy Film Awards (BAFTA), Tarantino and Avary shared the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay, and Jackson won for BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, Best Supporting Actor. The film was nominated for the Grand Prix (Belgian Film Critics Association), Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.
The February 2020 issue of ''New York Magazine'' lists ''Pulp Fiction'' alongside ''Citizen Kane'', ''Sunset Boulevard (film), Sunset Boulevard'', ''Dr. Strangelove'', ''Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid'', ''The Conversation'', ''Nashville (film), Nashville'', ''Taxi Driver'', ''The Elephant Man (film), The Elephant Man'', ''In the Bedroom'', ''There Will Be Blood'', and ''Roma (2018 film), Roma'' as "''The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars''".
Influence and legacy
''Pulp Fiction'' quickly came to be regarded as one of the most significant films of its era. In 1995, in a special edition of ''At the Movies (1986 TV program), Siskel & Ebert'' devoted to Tarantino, Gene Siskel argued that the work posed a major challenge to the "ossification of American movies with their brutal formulas". In Siskel's view,
the violent intensity of ''Pulp Fiction'' calls to mind other violent watershed films that were considered classics in their time and still are. Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock's ''Psycho (1960 film), Psycho'' [1960], Arthur Penn's ''Bonnie and Clyde (film), Bonnie and Clyde'' [1967], and Stanley Kubrick's ''A Clockwork Orange (film), A Clockwork Orange'' [1971]. Each film shook up a tired, bloated movie industry and used a world of lively lowlifes to reflect how dull other movies had become. And that, I predict, will be the ultimate honor for ''Pulp Fiction''. Like all great films, it criticizes other movies.["Pulp Faction: The Tarantino Generation", ''Siskel & Ebert'', ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).]
Ken Dancyger writes that its "imitative and innovative style" – like that of its predecessor, ''Reservoir Dogs
''Reservoir Dogs'' is a 1992 American crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino in his feature-length debut. It stars Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Chris Penn, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Michael Madsen, Tarantino, and Edward Bunke ...
'' – represents
a new phenomenon, the movie whose style is created from the context of movie life rather than real life. The consequence is twofold – the presumption of deep knowledge on the part of the audience of those forms such as the gangster films or Westerns, horror films or adventure films. And that the parody or alteration of that film creates a new form, a different experience for the audience.
In a widely covered speech on May 31, 1995, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole attacked the American entertainment industry for peddling "nightmares of depravity". ''Pulp Fiction'' was soon associated with his charges concerning gratuitous violence. Dole had not mentioned the film; he cited two less-celebrated movies based on Tarantino screenplays, ''Natural Born Killers'' and ''True Romance
''True Romance'' is a 1993 American romantic crime film directed by Tony Scott and written by Quentin Tarantino. It features an ensemble cast led by Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette, with Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Gary Oldman, Brad Pitt, ...
''. In September 1996, Dole did accuse ''Pulp Fiction'' – which he had not seen – of promoting "the romance of heroin".
Paula Rabinowitz expresses the general film industry opinion that ''Pulp Fiction'' "simultaneously resurrected John Travolta and film noir". In Peter Biskind's description, it created a "guys-with-guns frenzy". The film has also been labeled as a black comedy and a "Film noir#Neo-noir and echoes of the classic mode, neo-noir". Critic Geoffrey O'Brien, however, argued against the classification of ''Pulp Fiction'' into the neo-noir genre: "The old-time film noir, noir passions, the brooding melancholy and operatic death scenes, would be altogether out of place in the crisp and brightly lit wonderland that Tarantino conjures up. [It is] neither neo-noir nor a parody of noir." Similarly, Nicholas Christopher calls it "more gangland Camp (style), camp than neo-noir", and Foster Hirsch suggests that its "trippy fantasy landscape" characterizes it more definitively than any genre label. Regardless, the stylistic influence of ''Pulp Fiction'' soon became apparent. Less than a year after the picture's release, British critic Jon Ronson attended the National Film and Television School, National Film School's end-of-semester screenings and assessed the impact: "Out of the five student movies I watched, four incorporated violent shoot-outs over a soundtrack of iconoclastic 70s pop hits, two climaxed with all the main characters shooting each other at once, and one had two hitmen discussing the idiosyncrasies of ''The Brady Bunch'' before offing their victim. Not since ''Citizen Kane'' has one man appeared from relative obscurity to redefine the art of moviemaking." Among the first Hollywood films cited as its imitators were ''Destiny Turns on the Radio'' (1995), in which Tarantino acted, ''Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead'' (1995), and ''2 Days in the Valley'' (1996). It "triggered a myriad of clones", writes Fiona Villella. Internationally, according to David Desser, it "not only influenced a British brand of noir, but extended the noir vision virtually around the world". ''Pulp Fiction''s effect on film form was still reverberating in 2007, when David Denby of ''The New Yorker'' credited it with initiating the ongoing cycle of disordered cinematic narratives.
Its impact on Hollywood was deeper still. According to ''Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'', the trajectory of ''Pulp Fiction'' from Cannes launch to commercial smash "forever altered the game" of so-called independent cinema. It "cemented Miramax's place as the reigning indie superpower", writes Biskind. "''Pulp'' became the ''Star Wars'' of independents, exploding expectations for what an indie film could do at the box office." The film's large financial return on its small budget
transform[ed] the industry's attitude toward the lowly indies ... spawning a flock of me-too classics divisions ... [S]mart studio executives suddenly woke up to the fact that grosses and market share, which got all the press, were not the same as profits ... Once the studios realized that they could exploit the economies of (small) scale, they more or less gave up buying or remaking the films themselves, and either bought the distributors, as Disney had Miramax, or started their own ... copy[ing] Miramax's marketing and distribution strategies.
In 2001, ''Variety'', noting the increasing number of actors switching back and forth between expensive studio films and low-budget independent or indie-style projects, suggested that the "watershed moment for movie stars" came with the decision by Willis – one of Hollywood's highest-paid performers – to appear in ''Pulp Fiction''.
And its impact was even broader than that. It has been described as a "major cultural event", an "international phenomenon" that influenced television, music, literature, and advertising. Not long after its release, it was identified as a significant focus of attention within the growing community of Internet users. Adding ''Pulp Fiction'' to his roster of The Great Movies in 2001, Roger Ebert called it "the most influential film of the decade". Four years later, ''Time''s Corliss wrote much the same: "(unquestionably) the most influential American movie of the 90s".
Several scenes and images from the film achieved iconic status; in 2008, ''Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
'' declared, "You'd be hard-pressed, by now, to name a moment from Quentin Tarantino's film that isn't iconic."[ Jules and Vincent's "Royale with Cheese" dialogue became famous. It was referenced more than a decade and a half later in the Travolta vehicle ''From Paris with Love (film), From Paris with Love''. The adrenalin shot to Mia Wallace's heart is on ''Premiere (magazine), Premiere''s list of "100 Greatest Movie Moments". The scene of Travolta and Thurman's characters dancing has been frequently homaged, most unambiguously in the 2005 film ''Be Cool'', starring the same two actors. The image of Travolta and Jackson's characters standing side by side in suit and tie, pointing their guns, has also become widely familiar. In 2007, BBC News reported that "London transport workers have painted over an iconic mural by 'guerrilla artist' Banksy ... The image depicted a scene from Quentin Tarantino's ''Pulp Fiction'', with Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta clutching bananas instead of guns." Certain lines were adopted popularly as catchphrases, in particular Marsellus's threat, "I'm 'a get medieval on your ass." Jules's "Ezekiel" recitation was voted the fourth greatest movie speech of all time in a 2004 poll. One of the more notable homages to Jules "Biblical" quote was one Jackson himself played a part in, near the end of 2014's ''Captain America: The Winter Soldier'', Jackson's character Nick Fury, Col. Nick Fury, presumed dead, visits his own gravestone, on which, below Fury's name is inscribed "The path of the righteous man ..." Ezekiel 25:17. In 2019, it was reported that Dominic Cummings, Special advisers (UK government), special political adviser to Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, quoted Jules by telling Conservative MPs to "be cool like Fonzies" as political pressure built to request an extension to the date of Brexit negotiations in 2019#August 2019, the UK's withdrawal from the European Union.
''Pulp Fiction'' now appears in several critical assessments of all-time great films. In 2008, ''Entertainment Weekly'' named it the best film of the past quarter-century.][ That same year, the American Film Institute's "Ten Top Ten" poll ranked it number 7 all-time in the gangster film genre. In 2007, it was voted 94th overall on the AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies list.] In 2005, it was named one of "Time's All-Time 100 Movies". As of September 2018, it is number 54 on Metacritic's list of all-time highest scores. The film ranks very highly in popular surveys. A 2008 ''Empire (film magazine), Empire'' poll combining the opinions of readers, movie industry professionals, and critics named ''Pulp Fiction'' the ninth-best film of all time. In a 2006 readers' poll by the British magazine ''Total Film'', it ranked as the number three film in history. It was voted as the fourth-greatest film of all time in a nationwide poll for Britain's Channel 4 in 2001.
Critical analysis
Tarantino has stated that he originally planned "to do a '' Black Mask'' movie", referring to the magazine largely responsible for popularizing hardboiled
Hardboiled (or hard-boiled) fiction is a literary genre that shares some of its characters and settings with crime fiction (especially detective fiction and noir fiction). The genre's typical protagonist is a detective who battles the violence o ...
detective fiction. "[I]t kind of went somewhere else". Geoffrey O'Brien sees the result as connected "rather powerfully to a parallel pulp tradition: the tales of terror and the uncanny practiced by such writers as Cornell Woolrich [and] Fredric Brown ... Both dealt heavily in the realm of improbable coincidences and cruel cosmic jokes, a realm that ''Pulp Fiction'' makes its own." In particular, O'Brien finds a strong affinity between the intricate plot mechanics and twists of Brown's novels and the recursive, interweaving structure of ''Pulp Fiction''. Philip French describes the film's narrative as a "circular movement or Möbius strip of a kind Alain Resnais, Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet, Robbe-Grillet would admire". James Mottram regards crime novelist Elmore Leonard, whose influence Tarantino has acknowledged, as the film's primary literary antecedent. He suggests that Leonard's "rich dialogue" is reflected in Tarantino's "popular-culture-strewn jive"; he also points to the acute, extremely dark sense of humor Leonard applies to the realm of violence as a source of inspiration.
Film scholar/historian Robert P. Kolker, Robert Kolker sees the "flourishes, the apparent witty banality of the dialogue, the goofy fracturing of temporality [as] a patina over a pastiche
A pastiche is a work of visual art, literature, theatre, music, or architecture that imitates the style or character of the work of one or more other artists. Unlike parody, pastiche pays homage to the work it imitates, rather than mocking it ...
. The pastiche ... is essentially of two films that Tarantino can't seem to get out of his mind: ''Mean Streets'' [1973; directed by Martin Scorsese, who loved ''Pulp Fiction'' and the way the film was told] and ''The Killing (film), The Killing'' [1956; directed by Stanley Kubrick]." He contrasts ''Pulp Fiction'' with postmodern Hollywood predecessors ''Hudson Hawk'' (1991; starring Willis) and ''Last Action Hero'' (1993; starring Arnold Schwarzenegger) that "took the joke too far ... simply mocked or suggested that they were smarter than the audience" and flopped. Todd McCarthy writes that the film's "striking widescreen compositions often contain objects in extreme close-up as well as vivid contrasts, sometimes bringing to mind the visual strategies of Sergio Leone", an acknowledged hero of Tarantino's. To Martin Rubin, the "expansive, brightly colored widescreen visuals" evoke comedy directors such as Frank Tashlin and Blake Edwards.
The movie's host of popular culture, pop culture allusions, ranging from the famous image of Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe (; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; 1 June 1926 4 August 1962) was an American actress. Famous for playing comedic " blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as wel ...
's skirt flying up over a subway grating to Jules addressing a soon-to-be victim as "A Flock of Seagulls, Flock of Seagulls" because of his haircut, have led many critics to discuss it within the framework of postmodernism. Describing the film in 2005 as Tarantino's "postmodern masterpiece ... to date", David Walker writes that it "is marked by its playful reverence for the 1950s ... and its constantly teasing and often deferential references to other films". He characterizes its convoluted narrative technique as "postmodern tricksiness". Calling the film a "terminally hip postmodern collage", Foster Hirsch finds ''Pulp Fiction'' far from a masterpiece: "authoritative, influential, and meaningless". Set "in a world that could exist only in the movies", it is "a succulent guilty pleasure, beautifully made junk food for Filmophile, cinéastes". O'Brien, dismissing attempts to associate the movie with film noir, argues that "''Pulp Fiction'' is more a guided tour of an infernal theme park decorated with cultural detritus, Buddy Holly
Charles Hardin Holley (September 7, 1936 – February 3, 1959), known as Buddy Holly, was an American singer and songwriter who was a central and pioneering figure of mid-1950s rock and roll. He was born to a musical family in Lubbock, Texas ...
and Mamie Van Doren, fragments of blaxploitation and Roger Corman and ''Shogun Assassin'', music out of a twenty-four-hour oldies station for which all the decades since the fifties exist simultaneously." Catherine Constable takes the moment in which a needle filled with adrenalin is plunged into the comatose Mia's heart as exemplary. She proposes that it "can be seen as effecting her resurrection from the dead, simultaneously recalling and undermining the Gothic fiction, Gothic convention of the vampire's stake. On this model, the referencing of previous aesthetic forms and styles moves beyond ... empty pastiche, sustaining an 'inventive and affirmative' mode of postmodernism."
Mark T. Conard asks, "[W]hat is the film ''about''?" and answers, "American nihilism." Hirsch suggests, "If the film is actually about anything other than its own cleverness, it seems dedicated to the dubious thesis that hit men are part of the human family." Richard Alleva argues that "''Pulp Fiction'' has about as much to do with actual criminality or violence as ''Cyrano de Bergerac (play), Cyrano de Bergerac'' with the realities of seventeenth-century France or ''The Prisoner of Zenda'' with Balkan politics." He reads the movie as a form of romance whose allure is centered in the characters' nonnaturalistic discourse, "wise-guy literate, media-smart, obscenely epigrammatic". In Alan Stone's view, the "absurd dialogue", like that between Vincent and Jules in the scene where the former accidentally kills Marvin, "unexpectedly transforms the meaning of the violence cliché ... ''Pulp Fiction'' unmasks the macho myth by making it laughable and deheroicizes the power trip glorified by standard Hollywood violence." Stone reads the film as "Political correctness, politically correct. There is no nudity and no violence directed against women ... [It] celebrates interracial friendship and cultural diversity; there are strong women and strong black men, and the director swims against the current of class stereotype."
Where Stone sees a celebration, Kolker finds a vacuum: "The postmodern insouciance, violence, homophobia, and racism of ''Pulp Fiction'' were perfectly acceptable because the film didn't pretend seriousness and therefore didn't mock it." Calling it the "acme of postmodern nineties filmmaking", he explains, "the postmodern is about surfaces; it is flattened spatiality in which event and character are in a steady state of reminding us that they are pop-cultural figures." According to Kolker:
That's why ''Pulp Fiction'' was so popular. Not because all audiences got all or any of its references to Scorsese and Kubrick, but because the narrative and spatial structure of the film never threatened to go beyond themselves into signification. The film's cycle of racist and homophobic jokes might threaten to break out into a quite nasty view of the world, but this nastiness keeps being laughed off – by the mock intensity of the action, the prowling, confronting, perverse, confined, and airless nastiness of the world Tarantino creates.
Henry Giroux, Henry A. Giroux argues that Tarantino "empties violence of any critical social consequences, offering viewers only the immediacy of shock, humor, and irony-without-insight as elements of mediation. None of these elements gets beyond the seduction of voyeuristic gazing ... [t]he facile consumption of shocking images and hallucinatory delight."
Regarding the violence and nihilism in the film, Pamela Demory has suggested that ''Pulp Fiction'' should be seen in light of the short stories of Flannery O'Connor, which likewise feature "religious elements, banality, and violence with grotesque humor." Discussing "the connection between violence and redemption," Demory concludes that while O'Connor's purpose is to convince readers "of the powerful force of evil in the world and of our need for grace," Tarantino "seeks to demonstrate that in spite of everything we have seen in the film – all the violence, degradation, death, crime, amoral behavior – grace is still possible; there might still be a God who doesn't judge us on merits."
Homage as essence
Cinema
''Pulp Fiction'' is full of Homage (arts), homages to other movies. "Tarantino's characters", writes Gary Groth, "inhabit a world where the entire landscape is composed of Hollywood product. Tarantino is a cinematic kleptomaniac – he literally can't help himself." Two scenes in particular have prompted discussion of the film's highly Intertextuality, intertextual style. Many have assumed that the dance sequence at Jack Rabbit Slim's was intended as a reference to Travolta's star-making performance as Tony Manero in the epochal ''Saturday Night Fever'' (1977); Tarantino, however, credits a scene in the Jean-Luc Godard film ''Bande à part (film), Bande à part'' (1964) with the inspiration. According to the filmmaker;
Everybody thinks that I wrote this scene just to have John Travolta dancing. But the scene existed before John Travolta was cast. But once he was cast, it was like, "Great. We get to see John dance. All the better."... My favorite musical sequences have always been in Godard, because they just come out of nowhere. It's so infectious, so friendly. And the fact that it's not a musical, but he's stopping the movie to have a musical sequence, makes it all the more sweet.[Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 9, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).]
Jerome Charyn argues that, beyond "all the better", Travolta's presence is essential to the power of the scene, and of the film:
Travolta's entire career becomes "backstory", the myth of a movie star who has fallen out of favor, but still resides in our memory as the king of disco. We keep waiting for him to shed his paunch, put on a white polyester suit, and enter the 2001 Odyssey club in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where he will dance for us and never, never stop. Daniel Day-Lewis couldn't have woken such a powerful longing in us. He isn't part of America's own mad cosmology ... Tony Manero [is] an angel sitting on Vince's shoulder ... [Vince and Mia's] actual dance may be closer to the choreography of Anna Karina's shuffle with her two bumbling gangster boyfriends in ''Bande à part'', but even ''that'' reference is lost to us, and we're with Tony again ...
Estella Tincknell notes that while the "diner setting seems to be a simulacrum of a 'fifties' restaurant ... the twist contest is a musical sequence which evokes 'the sixties,' while Travolta's dance performance inevitably references 'the seventies' and his appearance in ''Saturday Night Fever.'' ... The 'past' thus becomes a more general 'pastness' in which the stylistic signifiers of various decades are loaded in to a single moment." She also argues that in this passage the film "briefly shifts from its habitually ironic discourse to one that references the conventions of the classic Musical film, film musical and in doing so makes it possible for the film to inhabit an affective space that goes beyond stylistic allusion."
The pivotal moment in which Marsellus crosses the street in front of Butch's car and notices him evokes the scene in which Marion Crane's boss sees her under similar circumstances in ''Psycho (1960 film), Psycho'' (1960). Marsellus and Butch are soon held captive by Maynard and Zed, "two sadistic honkies straight out of ''Deliverance
''Deliverance'' is a 1972 American survival thriller film produced and directed by John Boorman, and starring Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, with the latter two making their feature film debuts. The screenplay was adapted ...
''" (1972), directed by John Boorman. Zed shares a name with Sean Connery's character in Boorman's follow-up, the science-fiction film ''Zardoz'' (1974). When Butch decides to rescue Marsellus, in Glyn White's words, "he finds a trove of items with film-hero resonances". Critics have identified these weapons with a range of possible allusions:
* Hammer – ''The Toolbox Murders'' (1978)
* Baseball bat – ''Walking Tall (1973 film), Walking Tall'' (1973); ''The Untouchables (film), The Untouchables'' (1987)
* Chainsaw – ''The Texas Chain Saw Massacre'' (1974); ''Evil Dead II'' (1987)
* Katana (samurai sword) – many, including ''Seven Samurai'' (1954); ''The Yakuza'' (1975); ''Shogun Assassin'' (1980)
At the conclusion of the scene, a portentous line of Marsellus's echoes one from the crime drama ''Charley Varrick'' (1973), directed by another of Tarantino's heroes, Don Siegel; the name of the character who speaks it there is Maynard.
David Bell argues that far from going against the "current of class stereotype", this scene, like ''Deliverance'', "mobilize[s] a certain construction of poor white country folk – and particularly their sexualization ... 'rustic sexual expression often takes the form of homosexual rape' in American movies." Stephen Paul Miller believes the ''Pulp Fiction'' scene goes down much easier than the one it echoes: "The buggery perpetrated is not at all as shocking as it was in ''Deliverance'' ... The nineties film reduces seventies competition, horror, and taboo into an entertainingly subtle adrenaline play – a fiction, a pulp fiction." Giroux reads the rape scene homage similarly: "in the end Tarantino's use of parody is about repetition, transgression, and softening the face of violence by reducing it to the property of film history." In Groth's view, the crucial difference is that "in ''Deliverance'' the rape created the film's central moral dilemma whereas in ''Pulp Fiction'' it was merely 'the single weirdest day of [Butch's] life.'" ("''American Me'' did it too," Tarantino observed. "There's like ''three'' butt-fucking scenes in ''American Me''. That's definitely the one to beat in that particular category!")
Neil Fulwood focuses on Butch's weapon selection, writing, "Here, Tarantino's love of movies is at its most open and nonjudgemental, tipping a nod to the noble and the notorious, as well as sending up his own reputation as an enfant terrible of movie violence. Moreover, the scene makes a sly comment about the readiness of cinema to seize upon whatever is to hand for its moments of mayhem and murder." White asserts that "the katana he finally, and significantly, selects identifies him with ... honourable heroes." Conard argues that the first three items symbolize a nihilism that Butch is rejecting. The traditional Japanese sword, in contrasts, represents a culture with a well-defined Morality, moral code and thus connects Butch with a more meaningful approach to life.
The List of biker films, biker film Nam's Angels is also shown with Fabienne characterizing it as "A motorcycle movie, I'm not sure the name."
Television
Robert Miklitsch argues that "Tarantino's telephilia" may be more central to the guiding sensibility of ''Pulp Fiction'' than the filmmaker's love for rock 'n' roll and even cinema:
Talking about his generation, one that came of age in the '70s, Tarantino has commented that the "number one thing we all shared wasn't music, that was a Sixties thing. Our culture was television." A random list of the TV programs referenced in ''Pulp Fiction'' confirms his observation: ''Speed Racer, Clutch Cargo, The Brady Bunch, The Partridge Family, The Avengers (TV series), The Avengers, The Three Stooges, The Flintstones, I Spy (1965 TV series), I Spy, Green Acres, Kung Fu (TV series), Kung Fu, Happy Days'', and last but not least, Mia's fictional pilot, ''Fox Force Five''.
"The above list, with the possible exception of ''The Avengers''," writes Miklitsch, "suggests that ''Pulp Fiction'' has less of an elective affinity with the cinematic avant-gardism of Godard than with mainstream network programming." Jonathan Rosenbaum had brought TV into his analysis of the Tarantino/Godard comparison, acknowledging that the directors were similar in wanting to cram everything they like onscreen: "But the differences between what Godard likes and what Tarantino likes and why are astronomical; it's like comparing a combined museum, library, film archive, record shop, and department store with a jukebox, a video-rental outlet, and an issue of ''TV Guide''."[
Sharon Willis focuses on the way a television show (''Clutch Cargo'') marks the beginning of, and plays on through, the scene between young Butch and his father's comrade-in-arms. The Vietnam War veteran is played by Christopher Walken, whose presence in the role evokes his performance as a traumatized G.I. in the Vietnam War movie ''The Deer Hunter'' (1978). Willis writes that "when Captain Koons enters the living room, we see Walken in his function as an image retrieved from a repertoire of 1970s television and movie versions of ruined masculinity in search of rehabilitation ... e gray light of the television presiding over the scene seems to inscribe the ghostly paternal gaze." Miklitsch asserts that, for some critics, the film is a "prime example of the pernicious ooze-like influence of mass culture exemplified by their bête noire: TV." Kolker might not disagree, arguing that "''Pulp Fiction'' is a simulacrum of our daily exposure to television; its homophobes, thugs and perverts, sentimental boxers and pimp promoters move through a series of long-take tableaux: we watch, laugh, and remain with nothing to comprehend."
]
Notable motifs
The mysterious 666 briefcase
The combination of the mysterious suitcase lock is 666, the "Number of the beast, Number of the Beast". Tarantino has said there is no explanation for its contents – it is simply a MacGuffin, a pure plot device. Originally, the case was to contain diamonds, but this was seen as too mundane. For filming purposes, it contained a hidden orange light bulb that produced an otherworldly glow when the case was opened. In a 2007 video interview with fellow director and friend Robert Rodriguez, Tarantino purportedly "reveals" the secret contents of the briefcase, but the film cuts out and skips the scene in the style employed in Tarantino and Rodriguez's ''Grindhouse (film), Grindhouse'' (2007), with an intertitle that reads "Missing Reel". The interview resumes with Rodriguez discussing how radically the "knowledge" of the briefcase's contents alters one's understanding of the movie.
Despite Tarantino's statements, many solutions to what one scholar calls this "unexplained postmodern puzzle" have been proposed. A strong similarity has often been observed with Robert Aldrich
Robert Burgess Aldrich (August 9, 1918 – December 5, 1983) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. His notable credits include '' Vera Cruz'' (1954), ''Kiss Me Deadly'' (1955), ''The Big Knife'' (1955), '' Autumn L ...
's 1955 film noir ''Kiss Me Deadly
''Kiss Me Deadly'' is a 1955 American film noir produced and directed by Robert Aldrich, starring Ralph Meeker, Albert Dekker, Paul Stewart, Juano Hernandez, and Wesley Addy. It also features Maxine Cooper and Cloris Leachman appearing in the ...
''. That movie, features a glowing briefcase housing an atomic explosive. In their review of Alex Cox's 1984 film ''Repo Man (film), Repo Man'' in ''The Daily Telegraph'', Nick Cowen and Hari Patience suggest that ''Pulp Fiction'' may also owe "a debt of inspiration" to the glowing car trunk in that film. In scholar Paul Gormley's view, this connection with ''Kiss Me Deadly'', and a similar one with ''Raiders of the Lost Ark'' (1981), makes it possible to read the eerie glow as symbolic of violence itself. The idea that the briefcase contains Marsellus's soul gained popular currency in the mid-1990s. Analyzing the notion, Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
dismissed it as "nothing more than a widely distributed urban legend given false credibility by the mystique of the Net".
Jules' Bible passage
Jules ritually recites what he describes as a biblical passage, Book of Ezekiel, Ezekiel 25:17, before he executes someone. The passage is heard three times – in the introductory sequence in which Jules and Vincent reclaim Marsellus's briefcase from the doomed Brett; that same recitation a second time, at the beginning of "The Bonnie Situation", which overlaps the end of the earlier sequence; and in the epilogue at the diner. The first version of the passage is as follows:
The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of charity and goodwill shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy My brothers. And you will know My name is the Lord when I lay My vengeance upon thee.
The second version, from the diner scene, is identical except for the final line: "And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you."
While the final two sentences of Jules's speech are similar to the actual cited passage, the first two are fabricated from various biblical phrases. The text of Ezekiel 25 preceding verse 17 indicates that God's wrath is retribution for the hostility of the Philistines. In the King James Version from which Jules's speech is adapted, Ezekiel 25:17 reads in its entirety:
And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I ''am'' the LORD, when I shall lay My vengeance upon them.
Tarantino's primary inspiration for the speech was the work of Japanese martial arts film, martial arts star Sonny Chiba. Its text and its identification as Ezekiel 25:17 derive from an almost identical creed that appears at the beginning of the Chiba movie ''Karate Kiba'' (''The Bodyguard''; 1976), where it is both shown as a scrolling text and read by an offscreen narrator.
The version seen at the beginning of ''The Bodyguard'' (1976) is as follows:
The path of the righteous man and defender is beset on all sides by the inequity of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper, and the father of lost children. And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious anger, who poison and destroy my brothers; and they shall know that I am Chiba the Bodyguard when I shall lay my vengeance upon them!
In the 1980s television series ''Kage no Gundan'' (''Shadow Warriors (TV series), Shadow Warriors''), Chiba's character would lecture the villain-of-the-week about how the world must be rid of evil before killing him. A killer delivers a similar biblical rant in ''Modesty Blaise (novel), Modesty Blaise'', the hardback but pulp-style novel Vincent is shown with in two scenes.[Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 25, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).]
Two critics who have analyzed the role of the speech find different ties between Jules's transformation and the issue of postmodernity. Gormley argues that unlike the film's other major characters – Marsellus aside – Jules is:
linked to a "thing" beyond postmodern simulation ... is is perhaps most marked when he moves on from being a simulation of a Baptist preacher, spouting Ezekiel because it was "just a cool thing to say ..." In his conversion, Jules is shown to be cognizant of a place beyond this simulation, which, in this case, the film constructs as God.
Adele Reinhartz writes that the "depth of Jules's transformation" is indicated by the difference in his two deliveries of the passage: "In the first, he is a majestic and awe-inspiring figure, proclaiming the prophecy with fury and self-righteousness ... In the second ... he appears to be a different sort of man altogether ... [I]n true postmodern fashion, [he] reflects on the meaning of his speech and provides several different ways that it might pertain to his current situation." Similar to Gormley, Conard argues that as Jules reflects on the passage, it dawns on him "that it refers to an objective framework of value and meaning that is absent from his life"; to Conard, this contrasts with the film's prevalent representation of a nihilistic culture. Rosenbaum finds much less in Jules's revelation: " e Enlightenment (spiritual), spiritual awakening at the end of ''Pulp Fiction'', which Jackson performs beautifully, is a piece of jive avowedly inspired by kung-fu movies. It may make you feel good, but it certainly doesn't leave you any wiser."[ Note that the avowed inspiration is actually a TV show, ''Kung Fu''.]
The bathroom
Much of ''Pulp Fiction''s action revolves around characters who are either in the bathroom or need to use the toilet. To a lesser extent, Tarantino's other films also feature this narrative element. At Jack Rabbit Slim's, Mia goes to "powder her nose" – literally; she Cocaine#Insufflation, snorts coke in the restroom, surrounded by a bevy of women vainly primping. Butch and Fabienne play an extended scene in their motel bathroom, he in the shower, she brushing her teeth; the next morning, but just a few seconds later in screen time, she is again brushing her teeth. As Jules and Vincent confront Brett and two of his pals, a fourth man is hiding in the bathroom – his actions will lead to Jules' transformative "moment of clarity". After Marvin's absurd death, Vincent and Jules wash up in Jimmie's bathroom, where they get into a contretemps over a bloody hand towel. When the diner hold-up turns into a standoff, "Honey Bunny" whines, "I gotta go pee!"
As described by Peter and Will Brooker, "In three significant moments Vincent retires to the bathroom [and] returns to an utterly changed world where death is threatened." The threat increases in magnitude as the narrative progresses chronologically, and is realized in the third instance:
# Vincent and Jules's diner breakfast and philosophical conversation is aborted by Vincent's bathroom break; an armed robbery ensues while Vincent is reading on the toilet.
# While Vincent is in the bathroom worrying about the possibility of going too far with Marsellus's wife, Mia mistakes his heroin for cocaine, snorts it, and overdoses.
# During a stakeout at Butch's apartment, Vincent emerges from the toilet with his book and is killed by Butch.
In the Brookers' analysis, "Through Vince ... we see the contemporary world as utterly contingent, transformed, disastrously, in the instant you are not looking." Fraiman finds it particularly significant that Vincent is reading ''Modesty Blaise'' in two of these instances. She links this fact with the traditional derisive view of women as "the archetypal consumers of pulp":
Locating popular fiction in the bathroom, Tarantino reinforces its association with shit, already suggested by the dictionary meanings of "pulp" that preface the movie: moist, shapeless matter; also, lurid stories on cheap paper. What we have then is a series of damaging associations – pulp, women, shit – that taint not only male producers of mass-market fiction but also male consumers. Perched on the toilet with his book, Vincent is feminized by sitting instead of standing as well as by his trashy tastes; preoccupied by the anal, he is implicitly infantilized and homosexualized; and the seemingly inevitable result is being pulverized by Butch with a Czech M61 submachine gun. That this fate has to do with Vincent's reading habits is strongly suggested by a slow tilt from the book on the floor directly up to the corpse spilled into the tub.
Willis reads ''Pulp Fiction'' in almost precisely the opposite direction, finding "its overarching project as a drive to turn shit into gold. This is one way of describing the project of redeeming and recycling popular culture, especially the popular culture of one's childhood, as is Tarantino's wont as well as his stated aim." Despite that, argues Fraiman, "''Pulp Fiction'' demonstrates ... that even an open pulpophile like Tarantino may continue to feel anxious and emasculated by his preferences."
Accolades
''Pulp Fiction'' won eight major awards from a total of twenty-six nominations, including a Best Original Screenplay
The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the Academy Award for the best screenplay not based upon previously published material. It was created in 1940 as a separate writing award from the Academy Award for Best Story. Beginning with the ...
win at the 67th Academy Awards
The 67th Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) took place on March 27, 1995, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles beginning at 6:00 p.m. PST / 9:00 p.m. EST. During the cer ...
. Also, in the balloting by the National Society of Film Critics, Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel Leroy Jackson (born December 21, 1948) is an American actor and producer. One of the most widely recognized actors of his generation, the films in which he has appeared have collectively grossed over $27 billion worldwide, making him ...
was the runner-up in both the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor, Best Actor and the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actor categories.
American Film Institute Lists
* AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies –
* AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Heroes & Villains:
** Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield – Nominated Villains
* AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movie Quotes:
** "Bring out the Gimp" – Nominated Quote
** "They call it a Royale with Cheese" – Nominated Quote
* AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Laughs – Nominated
* AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) – [
* AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Thrills –
]
NFT dispute
In November 2021, Miramax filed a lawsuit against Tarantino who released seven Non-fungible token, NFTs based on uncut and unseen scenes of ''Pulp Fiction'' and including the original handwritten script "revealing secrets about the film and its creator." Miramax claimed they own the film rights. However, Tarantino disputed the lawsuit and claimed he had rights to the film script in written form. The matter was later settled with Miramax's lawyers filing a brief statement in court: "The parties have agreed to put this matter behind them and look forward to collaborating with each other on future projects, including possible NFTs."
See also
* The Killers (Hemingway short story)
* The Killers (1946 film), ''The Killers'' (1946)
* ''Plump Fiction''
* Quentin Tarantino filmography
Notes
References
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External links
''Pulp Fiction'' essay
by Jami Bernard at National Film Registry
The National Film Registry (NFR) is the United States National Film Preservation Board's (NFPB) collection of films selected for preservation, each selected for its historical, cultural and aesthetic contributions since the NFPB’s inception i ...
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''Pulp Fiction'' bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
{{Authority control
1994 films
1994 black comedy films
1990s crime comedy-drama films
1994 independent films
A Band Apart films
American anthology films
American black comedy films
American crime comedy-drama films
American independent films
Anthony Award-winning works
Edgar Award-winning works
1990s English-language films
Films about African-American organized crime
Films about contract killing in the United States
Films about drugs
Films directed by Quentin Tarantino
Films produced by Lawrence Bender
Films set in Los Angeles
Films shot in Los Angeles
Films whose writer won the Best Original Screenplay Academy Award
Films whose writer won the Best Original Screenplay BAFTA Award
Independent Spirit Award for Best Film winners
Miramax films
American nonlinear narrative films
Palme d'Or winners
Postmodern films
Films with screenplays by Quentin Tarantino
Films with screenplays by Roger Avary
United States National Film Registry films
Hyperlink films
American neo-noir films
BAFTA winners (films)
Films about rape
Films about revenge
Cultural depictions of the Mafia
1994 comedy films
National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film winners
1990s American films