Pulp Fiction

I can still remember the fall of 1994 and my first experience with Pulp Fiction. I was at my local theater and there was this poster with a long list of actors I knew and loved: Bruce Willis, John Travolta, Uma Thurman, and Samuel L. Jackson among others. The list of who was in this was impressive and, knowing nothing about the movie beyond the cast I simply had to see it. I had no idea who Quentin Tarantino was at the time. I had never heard of Reservoir Dogs. I only knew the poster looked intriguing and I loved the cast. Come October I was there. What I experienced that day opened my mind to a whole new type of film, a type of movie that was not only repulsive at times but also so fascinating that I just couldn’t look away. The film was full of rat-a-tat quotable dialogue that was simultaneously about nothing and everything at the same time. The following day as I’m telling my co-workers about this movie one of them tells me that the guy who made it made another one earlier that’s even better and I should go rent it. I did. It was not better but I could see how he would think that. Tarantino had a way of writing scripts that were uniquely his own and, thirty years later, he is still doing it with each new film being anxiously awaited for by his legions of fans. 

So what exactly was this film that so resonated with me when I was just eighteen years old, barely old enough to buy a ticket to it without an adult present? The film plays out of chronological order, something that I only fully pieced together on repeat viewings. What it boils down to is a couple of plots that play out like short films but are very much of a whole. Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) are hitman working for Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames). They have been sent to retrieve a mysterious briefcase from a group of men that have in some way crossed Marsellus. While executing the men they are miraculously unharmed when one of them opens fire, missing them entirely. This has caused Jules to rethink his lifestyle, praise God, and to retire living off the land. Driving away from the scene the two men get in an argument over the significance of the situation and Vincent turns to ask the third man, their inside man planted with the group they just killed, what his thoughts on the situation are. Vincent has his gun out at the time and it accidently goes off, blowing the man’s head off. The rest of this story involves cleaning up the massive amount of gore from inside the car and getting back to Marsellus safely and unnoticed.

Vincent has been asked to keep Marsellus’s wife company while he is out of town. This is an intimidating assignment for him as word on the street is Marsellus is very protective of his wife, supposedly throwing a man out a four story window for giving her a foot massage. Vincent takes her to dinner but afterwards she mistakes his heroin for cocaine and overdoses on it. Vincent must save her life without taking her to the hospital otherwise his life will be forfeit. This culminates in the most intense moment in the film as he has to penetrate her breastbone with a long needle and inject adrenaline directly into her heart.

Butch (Bruce Willis) is a boxer being paid by Marsellus to take a fall. Instead he ends up killing his opponent in the ring. He goes into hiding, intending to flee the country before Marsellus can find him. Unfortunately his girlfriend, Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros), forgot to grab his father’s watch, an important heirloom handed down to him from his father’s friend in the war after he was killed in action. The story of how the watch made it home from the war and into Butch’s hands is the only truly farcical moment in the script, played straight-faced by a perfectly cast Christopher Walken. Butch goes back to his apartment to get it only to run into Vincent there, then Marcellus. What happens next is extremely violent and very unpleasant. It’s also the most notorious moment in the film, a scene that people were talking about long after having seen it.

Finally there is the bookend story. After the incident involving the accidental killing by Vincent Vega in the car, Vincent and Jules stop at a diner before checking in with Marcellus. While there Ringo (Tim Roth) and Yolanda (Amanda Plummer) attempt to rob the place. When Ringo tries to take Marsellus’s briefcase along with everyone’s wallets Jules turns the tables on him. This leads to a stand-off between Jules, Ringo and Yolanda where Jules expounds on his new found enlightenment while holding a gun to Ringo’s head. Wendy never learn what is in that briefcase nor why it is so important to Marcellus. This has led to decades of speculations and theories, some of them outright bizarre. 

This is considered Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece, the film that he will be forever associated with and many feel he has never beat. Watching it again today I can see where they are coming from. The dialogue is spot on throughout beginning with Ringo expounding on how robbing a diner is so much easier than a bank or liquor store and why. There is a poetry to the way Tarantino dialogue rolls off the tongue of the characters that has been attempted by lessor directors largely to poor results. This scene ends abruptly, to be continued in the film’s conclusion. Next up is the duo of Vincent Vega and Jules. These two are functionally duo-leads in the film, something that gave the Academy difficulty when selecting who would get nominated for what categories. Ultimately the solution they came up with was to give the lead actor nomination to the one with the most screen time, John Travolta. 

These two instantly have a rapport as they drone on about McDonalds in Amsterdam, foot massages and Vega’s upcoming “date” with Marsellus’s wife. Vega has only recently come back to the states but there’s a real sense that these two have a long history together that will go unspoken about. Their confrontation with the men who screwed over Marsellus (just how is never really said) begins on a humorous, but menacing, note and ends with death. Tarantino brilliantly has Jules misquote the Bible because it sounds badass and because it juxtaposes the word of God with an act of extreme violence. He will later misquote the same verse, much more calmly, to Ringo in the diner, ending it on a much more peaceful note. 

Tarantino comes across as a man with an opinion on every subject and it would be fascinating to sit down with him and shoot the breeze for an hour or two. In the second main story, titled Vincent Vega and Marcellus Wallace’s Wife, things open with Rosanna Arquette rattling on about body piercing culture, expounding on her multiple piercings and why she has them. Her husband, Lance (Eric Stoltz) will go on and on about the different types of heroin he sells and why they cost what they do. Later, when Vincent brings the ODing wife, Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), Lance will be the one who not only has an adrenaline kit but will school Vincent on how to use it. When Lance is selling Vincent the heroin earlier he has to use cocaine bags for the drugs because he is out of the containers for the heroin. This is the reason Mia mistakes the heroin for cocaine later and almost costs her her life. 

Tarantino loves violence in his scripts, something that was apparent from even his earliest works like True Romance and Natural Born Killers. Reservoir Dogs was racked with violent moments with the main character spending most of the film gut shot and bleeding out on the floor. Pulp Fiction is no different. There is plenty of gun violence throughout but the topper is when Vincent’s gun goes off accidentally. His shot is seen from outside the car, filling the windows in blood and gore. The next half hour will be spent with the two men covered in blood and cleaning up pieces of skull and brain tissue from the vehicle’s upholstery. As gruesome as this is, Tarantino makes it palatable somehow with a ton of sharp dialogue as Jules and Vincent fight amongst themselves while trying to not get caught in a car covered in blood and brains. The only sour note in all of this is the director’s insistence on using the N-word often, especially with the character he plays himself. It’s unnecessary and uncomfortable and makes his character extremely unlikable. He also can’t act to save his life. Fortunately going forward he rarely appears in his own films again. This is mostly saved by the introduction of Winston Wolfe (Harvey Keitel), a fixer working for Marsellus who is dispatched to solve their little dilemma. Keitel is smart, straight forward, and adds a level of humor to what has been a cringy part of the overall film.

Some people cannot jive with Quentin Tarantino’s style of filmmaking. Some of his later efforts feel a bit more mainstream with The Hateful Eight, Django Unchained and, especially, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood almost feeling straightforward in comparison. But even those films have a feel to them that you only get in a Tarantino film. Pulp Fiction would go on to inspire other directors to try and imitate his style yet none would even come close. There is only one Quentin Tarantino and if you can get behind his over-indulgent dialogue and even more overblown violence you can find a lot to love in his films, this one especially. This would not be the last time he got a best picture nomination from the Academy but it was probably his best chance at winning it. Alas The Shawshank Redemption and Forrest Gump were also in the mix and split the vote with Forrest Gump coming out on top. Of the three, Gump is the one that aged the worst. Pulp Fiction is a violent masterpiece that is not for the faint of heart or for those sensitive to profanity and casual racism but if you can handle heavy doses of all that you just might enjoy this crazy little film.

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Picture: Lawrence Bender

Best Director: Quentin Tarantino

Best Actor: John Travolta

Best Supporting Actor: Samuel L. Jackson

Best Supporting Actress: Uma Thurman

Best Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen: Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary (won)

Best Film Editing: Sally Menke

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Release Date: October 14, 1994

Running Time: 154 Minutes

Rated R

Starring: John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer, Maria de Medeiros, Ving Rhames, Eric Stoltz, Rosanna Arquette, Christopher Walken and Bruce Willis

Directed By: Quentin Tarantino