Pulp Fiction is a 1994 film by director Quentin Tarantino, who cowrote the film with Roger Avary. A crime
drama with a fragmented storyline, the film is known for its rich, eclectic dialogue, its
ironic mix of humor and violence, and its host of cinematic and pop culture references. The film was nominated for seven Oscars, including Best Picture; Tarantino and
Avary won for Best Original Screenplay. It was also
awarded the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film
Festival. A major commercial success, it revitalized the career of its leading man, John
Travolta, who received an Academy Award nomination, as did costars Samuel L.
Jackson and Uma Thurman.
The film's title refers to the pulp magazines and hardboiled crime novels popular during the mid-20th century, known for their graphic violence and punchy
dialogue. Pulp Fiction is self-referential from its opening moments, beginning
with a title card that gives two dictionary definitions of "pulp". The plot, in keeping with
most of Tarantino's other works, is nonlinear. The picture's self-reflexivity,
unconventional structure, and extensive use of homage and pastiche have led critics to describe it as a prime example of postmodern
film. Pulp Fiction is viewed as the inspiration for many later movies that adopted various elements of its style.
The nature of its development, marketing, and distribution and its consequent profitability had a sweeping effect on the field of
independent cinema. A cultural watershed, Pulp Fiction's influence has been felt
in several other popular mediums.
Overview
Directed in a highly stylized manner, employing many cinematic allusions, Pulp
Fiction joins the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles mobsters, fringe
players, petty thieves, and a mysterious briefcase. Considerable screen time is devoted to conversations and monologues that
reveal the characters' senses of humor and perspectives on life. Considered by some critics a black comedy,[3] the film is also
frequently labeled a "neo-noir".[4] Critic Geoffrey O'Brein argues otherwise:
The old-time 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. Neither neo-noir nor a parody of
noir, Pulp Fiction is more a guided tour of an infernal theme park decorated with cultural detritus, Buddy Holly 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.[5]
Nicholas Christopher similarly calls it "more gangland camp than neo-noir".[6] Foster Hirsch also suggests that its "trippy fantasy
landscape" characterizes it more definitively than any genre label: Set "in a world that could exist only in the movies", Pulp
Fiction is "a succulent guilty pleasure, beautifully made junk food for cinéastes".[7]
In keeping with writer-director Quentin Tarantino's trademark of nonlinear storytelling, the narrative is presented out of
sequence. Pulp Fiction is structured around three distinct but interrelated storylines—in Tarantino's conception, mob
hitman Vincent Vega is the lead of the first
story, prizefighter Butch Coolidge is the lead of the second, and Vincent's fellow
contract killer, Jules Winnfield, is the lead of the third.[8] Although each storyline focuses on a different series of incidents, they
connect and intersect in various ways. The film starts out with a diner hold-up staged by "Pumpkin" and "Honey Bunny", then picks
up the stories of Vincent, Jules, Butch, and several other important characters, including mob kingpin Marsellus Wallace, his
wife, Mia, and underworld problem-solver Winston Wolf. It finally returns to where it began, in the diner, where Vincent and
Jules have stopped for a bite; they foil the hold-up and set the robbers on a more righteous path. There are a total of seven
narrative sequences—the three primary storylines are preceded by identifying intertitles on a black screen:
- 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 and 2 and 6
partially overlap and are presented from different points of view. The narrative course, with all its detours, is virtually
circular, as the final scene overlaps and resolves the interrupted first scene. Reflecting on the film, Tarantino says, "One
thing that's cool is that by breaking up the linear structure, when I watch the film with an audience, it does break [the
audience's] alpha 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."[9]
Plot
"Pumpkin" (Tim Roth) and "Honey Bunny" (Amanda
Plummer) are having breakfast in a diner. They decide to rob it after realizing they could make money off not just the
business but the customers as well, as occurred during their previous heist. Moments after they initiate the hold-up, the scene
breaks off and the title credits roll.
As Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) drives, Vincent Vega (John Travolta), riding shotgun, reports on his experiences in Europe, from which he's just returned—the
hash bars in Amsterdam; the French McDonald's and its "Royale with Cheese". The dress-suited pair are on their way to retrieve a
briefcase from Brett (Frank Whaley), who has transgressed against their boss, gangster
Marsellus Wallace. Jules tells Vincent how Marsellus had someone thrown off a fourth-floor balcony for giving his wife a foot
massage. Vincent says that Marsellus has asked him to escort his wife while Marsellus is out of town. After their witty,
philosophical banter they "get into character", which involves executing Brett in dramatic fashion after Jules recites a baleful
"biblical" pronouncement.
Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife
In a virtually empty cocktail lounge, aging prizefighter Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis)
accepts a large sum of money from Marsellus (Ving Rhames), agreeing to take a dive in the fifth round of his upcoming match. Butch and Vincent briefly cross paths as Vincent and
Jules—now inexplicably dressed in T-shirts and shorts—come to Marsellus's lounge to deliver the briefcase. The next day, Vincent
drops by the house of Lance (Eric Stoltz) and Jody (Rosanna Arquette) to score some high-grade heroin. He shoots up before driving over to meet Mrs. Mia
Wallace (Uma Thurman) and take her out. They head to Jack Rabbit Slim's, a slick 1950s-themed restaurant staffed
by lookalikes of the decade's pop icons. Mia recounts her experience as an actress in a failed television pilot, "Fox Force Five".
After participating in a twist contest, they return to the Wallace house with the
trophy. While Vincent is in the bathroom convincing himself not to act on his growing attraction to his boss's wife, Mia finds
Vincent's stash of heroin in the pocket of his coat. Mistaking it for cocaine, she snorts it and overdoses. Vincent finds her and
fearfully rushes her to Lance's house for help. Together, they administer an adrenaline shot to Mia's heart, reviving her. Before
the two part ways, Mia and Vincent agree not to tell Marsellus of the incident, fearing what he might do to them.
Television time for young Butch (Chandler Lindauer) is interrupted by the arrival of Vietnam veteran Captain Koons
(Christopher Walken). Koons explains that he has brought a gold watch, passed down
through generations of Coolidge men since World War I. Butch's father died in a POW camp, and at his dying request Koons hid the
watch in his rectum for two years in order to deliver it to Butch. A bell rings, startling the adult Butch out of this reverie.
He is in his boxing colors—it's time for the fight that he's been paid to throw.
The Gold Watch
Butch flees the arena, having won the bout. Making his getaway by taxi, he learns from the death-obsessed driver, Esmeralda
VillaLobos (Angela Jones), that he killed the opposing fighter. Butch has double-crossed
Marsellus, betting his payoff on himself at very favorable odds. The next morning at the motel where they're laying low, Butch
discovers that his girlfriend, Fabienne (Maria de Medeiros), has forgotten to pack the
irreplaceable watch. He returns to his apartment to retrieve it, although Marsellus's men are almost certainly looking for him.
Butch finds the watch quickly, but thinking he's alone, pauses for toaster pastries. Only then does he notice a submachine gun on the kitchen counter. Hearing the toilet flush, Butch readies the gun in time to kill a
startled Vincent Vega exiting the bathroom.
Driving back from the apartment, Butch encounters Marsellus by chance. Butch rams him with the car, then is almost immediately
involved in a collision. A chase on foot ensues, and the two men land in a pawnshop. Butch is about to shoot Marsellus, when the
shopowner, Maynard (Duane Whitaker), captures them at gunpoint. Maynard and his
accomplice, Zed (Peter Greene), take Marsellus into the back room and rape him, leaving a silent masked figure referred to as "the gimp" to watch a tied-up Butch. Butch
breaks loose and knocks out the gimp. He is about to flee when he decides to save Marsellus. As Zed is raping Marsellus on a
pommel horse, Butch kills Maynard with a katana. Marsellus
retrieves Maynard's shotgun, shooting Zed in the groin. Marsellus informs Butch that they are even with respect to the botched
fight fix, so long as he never tells anyone about the rape and departs Los Angeles forever. Butch agrees, leaving town on Zed's
chopper with Fabienne.
The Bonnie Situation
The story returns to Vincent and Jules at Brett's. After they execute him, another man (Alexis Arquette, Rosanna Arquette's brother) bursts out of the bathroom and shoots wildly at them,
missing every time before an astonished Jules and Vincent can return fire. Jules decides this is a miracle and a sign from God
for him to retire as a hit man. Vincent disagrees. They drive off with one of Brett's associates, Marvin (Phil LaMarr), their informant. Vincent asks Marvin for his opinion about the "miracle", accidentally
shooting him in the head while carelessly waving his gun.
Forced to remove their bloodied car from the road, Jules calls upon the house of his friend Jimmy (Quentin Tarantino). Jimmy's wife, Bonnie, is due back from work soon and he is very anxious that she
not encounter the scene. At Jules's request, Marsellus arranges for the help of Winston Wolf (Harvey Keitel). Wolf takes charge of the situation, ordering Jules and Vincent to clean the car, hide the
body in the trunk, dispose of their bloody clothes, and change into T-shirts and shorts provided by Jimmy. He also pays Jimmy for
his linens, used to cover the bloody seats while they drive to a junkyard where Wolf's girlfriend, Raquel (Julia Sweeney), works. Wolf and Raquel leave for breakfast, and Jules and Vincent decide to do the
same.
Jules and Vincent eat, and the discussion returns to Jules's decision to retire. In a brief cutaway, we see "Pumpkin" and
"Honey Bunny" shortly before they initiate the hold-up from the movie's first scene. While Vincent is in the bathroom, the
hold-up commences. "Pumpkin" demands all of the patrons' valuables, including Jules's mysterious case. Jules surprises "Pumpkin",
holding him at gunpoint. "Honey Bunny", hysterical, trains her gun on Jules. Vincent emerges from the restroom with his gun
trained on her, creating a Mexican standoff. Jules explains his ambivalence toward his
life of crime and as his first act of redemption convinces the two robbers to take the cash they've gathered and go, pondering
how they were spared and leaving the briefcase to be returned to its rightful owner.
Development and production
The first element of what would become the Pulp Fiction screenplay was written by Roger
Avary in the fall of 1990:
Tarantino and Avary decided to write a short, on the theory that it would be easier to get made than a feature. But they
quickly realized that nobody produces shorts, so the film became a trilogy, with one section by Tarantino, one by Avary, and one
by a third director who never materialized. Each eventually expanded his section into a feature-length script....[11]
The initial inspiration was the three-part horror anthology film Black
Sabbath (1963), by Italian filmmaker Mario Bava; the project was provisionally
titled "Black Mask", after the seminal hardboiled crime fiction magazine.[12] Tarantino's script was produced as Reservoir Dogs,
his directorial debut; Avary's, titled "Pandemonium Reigns", would form 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."[13]
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."[8] "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."[14]
Tarantino went to work on the script for Pulp Fiction in Amsterdam in March 1992.[15] 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.[16] Two scenes originally written by Avary for the
True Romance screenplay, exclusively credited to Tarantino, were incorporated into
the opening of "The Bonnie Situation".[17] The notion of
the crimeworld "cleaner" that became the heart of the episode was inspired by a short, Curdled, that Tarantino saw at a
film festival. He cast the lead actress, Angela Jones, in Pulp Fiction and later
backed the filmmakers' production of a feature-length version of Curdled.[18] The script included a couple of made-up commercial brands that would feature often in later
Tarantino films: Big Kahuna burgers (a Big Kahuna soda cup appears in Reservoir Dogs) and Red Apple cigarettes.[19] As he worked on the script, Tarantino also accompanied
Reservoir Dogs around the European film festivals. Released in the U.S. in October 1992, the picture was a critical and
commercial success. In January 1993, the Pulp Fiction script was finished.[20]
Tarantino and his producer, Lawrence Bender, brought the script to Jersey Films, the
production company run by Danny DeVito, Michael
Shamberg, and Stacey Sher. Before even seeing Reservoir Dogs, Jersey had
attempted to sign Tarantino for his next project.[21]
Ultimately a development deal worth around $1 million had been struck—the deal gave A Band
Apart, 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.[22] Jersey had a distribution and "first look" deal with Columbia
TriStar, which paid Tarantino for the right to consider exercising its option.[23] In February, Pulp Fiction appeared on a Variety list of films in preproduction at
TriStar.[24] In June, however, the studio put the script
into turnaround.[23] According to a studio executive, TriStar chief Mike Medavoy
found it "too demented".[25] There were suggestions that
TriStar was resistant to backing 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.[26] Bender brought the script to Miramax, the formerly
independent studio that had recently been acquired by Disney. Harvey Weinstein—co-chairman of Miramax, along with his brother, Bob—was instantly enthralled by the script and the company picked it up.[27] Pulp Fiction, the first Miramax project to get a green light after the Disney acquisition, was budgeted at $8.5 million.[28] It became the first movie that Miramax completely financed.[29] 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.[30] The biggest star to sign on to the project was Bruce Willis.
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.[31]
The Pulp Fiction shoot commenced on September 20, 1993.[32] The lead offscreen talent had all
worked with Tarantino on Reservoir Dogs—cinematographer Andrzej Sekula, film editor Sally
Menke, and production designer David Wasco. According to Tarantino, "[W]e had
$8 million [sic]. 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."[33] 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."[34] The
largest chunk of the budget—$150,000—went to creating the Jack Rabbit Slim's set.[35] It was built in a Culver City warehouse, where it
was joined by several other sets as well as the film's production offices.[36] For the costumes, Tarantino took his inspiration from French director Jean-Pierre Melville, who believed that the clothes his characters wore were their symbolic suits
of armor.[34] 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 cereal, also returned from the earlier film.[37] The shoot wrapped on November
30.[38] 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.[39]
Cast
- John Travolta as Vincent Vega:
Tarantino cast Travolta in Pulp Fiction only because Michael Madsen, who had a
major role in Reservoir Dogs, chose to appear in Kevin Costner's
Wyatt Earp instead. Madsen was still rueing his choice over a decade
later.[40] Harvey Weinstein pushed for Daniel Day-Lewis in the part.[41] Travolta accepted a bargain rate for his services—sources claim either $100,000 or $140,000—but the
film's success and his Oscar nomination as Best Actor revitalized his career.[42] Travolta was subsequently cast in several hits including Get
Shorty, in which he played a similar character, and the John Woo blockbuster
Face/Off.
- Samuel L. Jackson as Jules
Winnfield: Tarantino had written the part with Jackson in mind, but the actor nearly lost it after his first
audition—Jackson assumed it was merely a reading—was overshadowed by Paul Calderon's.
Harvey Weinstein convinced Jackson to audition a second time, and his performance of the final diner scene won over
Tarantino.[43] Jules was originally scripted with a giant
afro, but Tarantino and Jackson agreed on the Jheri-curled wig seen in the film.[44] (One reviewer took it as a "tacit comic statement about
the ghettoization of blacks in movies".[45]) Jackson
received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Calderon appears in the movie as Paul, Marsellus's right-hand man.
- Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace: Miramax favored Holly Hunter or Meg Ryan for the role. Alfre Woodard and Meg Tilly were also considered, but Tarantino wanted
Thurman after their first meeting.[39][46] She dominated most of the film's promotional material,
appearing on a bed with cigarette in hand. She was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar and was launched into the
celebrity A-list. She took little advantage of her newfound fame, choosing to not do any
big-budget films for the next three years.[47] Thurman
would later star in Tarantino's two Kill Bill movies.
![Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), before the fight of his life. Tarantino said, "Bruce has the look of a 50s actor. I can't think of any other star that has that look."[48]](http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/d/d5/250px-PulpFictionColors.jpg)
Butch Coolidge (
Bruce Willis), before the fight of his life. Tarantino said, "Bruce has the
look of a 50s actor. I can't think of any other star that has that look."
[48]
- Bruce Willis as Butch Coolidge:
Willis was a major star, but most of his recent films had been box-office disappointments. As described by Peter Bart, taking a
role 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 as a result of
his gross participation."[49] In conceiving the character, Tarantino said, "I basically wanted him to be like Ralph Meeker as Mike Hammer in Kiss Me Deadly [1955]. I wanted him to be a bully and a jerk...."[50]
- Harvey Keitel as Winston Wolf or simply "The Wolf": The part was
written specifically for Keitel, who had starred in Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs and was instrumental in getting it
produced. In the filmmaker's words, "Harvey had been my favorite actor since I was 16 years old."[51] Keitel's role as a "cleaner" is very similar to his character in
Point of No Return, released a year earlier.
- Tim Roth as "Pumpkin" or "Ringo": Roth had starred in Reservoir
Dogs alongside Keitel and was brought on board again. He had used an American accent in the earlier film, but uses his
natural, London one in Pulp Fiction. Though Tarantino had written the part specifically with Roth in mind, TriStar head
Mike Medavoy preferred Johnny Depp or Christian
Slater.[52]
- Amanda Plummer as Yolanda or "Honey Bunny": Plummer gained a lot
of attention with a small amount of screen time. She followed up with director Michael
Winterbottom's Butterfly Kiss, in which she plays a serial killer. Tarantino wrote the role for Plummer,
specifically to partner Roth onscreen. Roth had introduced the actress and director, telling Tarantino, "I want to work with
Amanda in one of your films, but she has to have a really big gun."[53]
- Maria de Medeiros as Fabienne: Butch's girlfriend. Tarantino met the
Portuguese actress while traveling with Reservoir Dogs around the European film festival circuit.[12] She had previously costarred with Thurman in Henry & June (1990), playing Anaïs Nin.
- Eric Stoltz as Lance: Vincent's drug dealer. Courtney Love later reported that Kurt Cobain was originally offered
the role of Lance; if he had taken it, Love would have played the role of his wife.[55]
Soundtrack
-
No film score was composed for Pulp Fiction, with Quentin Tarantino instead using
an eclectic assortment of surf music, rock and roll,
soul, and pop songs. Dick
Dale's rendition of "Misirlou" 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 music."[58] 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.[59] The soundtrack album, Music from the Motion Picture Pulp Fiction, was released along with the film in 1994. The
album peaked on the Billboard 200 chart at number 21.[60] The single, Urge Overkill's cover of the
Neil Diamond song "Girl, You'll Be a Woman
Soon" reached number 59.[61]
Estella Tincknell describes how the particular combination of well-known and obscure recordings helps establish the film as a
"self-consciously 'cool' text. [The] use of the mono-tracked, beat-heavy style of early 1960s U.S. 'underground' pop mixed with
'classic' ballads such as Dusty Springfield's 'Son of a Preacher Man' is crucial to the film's postmodern knowningness." She contrasts the
soundtrack with that of Forrest Gump, the highest-grossing film of 1994, which also
relies on period pop recordings: "[T]he 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.[62]
Release and reception
Pulp Fiction premiered in May 1994 at the Cannes Film Festival. The
Weinsteins "hit the beach like commandos", bringing the picture's entire cast over.[63] The film was unveiled at a midnight hour screening and caused a
sensation.[64][65] It won the Palme d'Or, the festival's top
prize, generating a further wave of publicity.[66]
The first U.S. review of the film was published on May 23 in industry trade magazine
Variety. Todd McCarthy called Pulp Fiction a "spectacularly
entertaining piece of pop culture...a startling, massive success."[67] From Cannes forward, Tarantino was on the road continuously, promoting the film.[68] Over the next few months it played in smaller festivals
around Europe, building buzz: Nottingham, Munich, Taormina, Locarno, Norway, and San Sebastian.[69] In late September, it opened the New York Film
Festival. At the moment a giant hypodermic needle pierced the breastplate of Uma Thurman's character, aimed straight for
her heart, an audience member passed out.[70]
The New York Times published its review the day of the opening.
Janet 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.... [He] has come up with a work of such depth, wit and blazing originality that it places him in the front ranks of
American film makers."[65]
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; it went wide immediately,
into 1,100 theaters."[2] 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.[71] Pulp Fiction was the top-grossing film at the box office its first
weekend, edging out a Sylvester Stallone vehicle, The Specialist, which was in its second week and playing at more than twice as many theaters. Against
its budget of $8.5 million and about $10 million in marketing costs, Pulp Fiction wound up earning $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.[72] 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.[73] 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."[74] As MovieMaker puts it, "The movie was nothing less than a national cultural phenomenon."[75] Abroad, as well: In Britain, where it opened a week after its U.S.
release, not only was the film a major hit, but in book form its screenplay became the most successful in UK publishing history,
a top-ten bestseller.[76]
The response of major American movie reviewers was widely favorable. Roger Ebert of the
Chicago Sun-Times describing it as "so well-written in a scruffy,
fanzine 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.'"[77] Richard Corliss of Time 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."[78] In Newsweek, David
Ansen wrote, "The miracle of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction is how, being composed of secondhand, debased parts,
it succeeds in gleaming like something new."[79] "You get
intoxicated by it," wrote Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman, "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."[45] "There's a special kick that comes from watching something
this thrillingly alive", wrote Peter Travers of Rolling
Stone. "Pulp Fiction is indisputably great."[80] Overall, the film attained exceptionally high ratings among U.S. reviewers: a 96% score at
Rotten Tomatoes[81] and a Metascore of 94 on Metacritic.[82]
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."[83] 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 Kauffman 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."[84] 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 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."[85] Observing in the National Review that "[n]o film
arrives with more advance hype", John Simon was unswayed: "titillation cures neither
hollowness nor shallowness".[86]
Debate about the film spread beyond the review pages. Violence was often the theme. In the Washington Post, Donna Britt described how she was happy to not 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".[87] Some commentators took exception to the
movie's frequent use of the word "nigger". 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".[88] In Britain, 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."[89]
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, Southeastern Film Critics Association, and Kansas City Film Critics Circle.
Tarantino was named Best Director by all six 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 Golden Globe Awards, Tarantino,
named as sole recipient of the Best Screenplay honor, failed to mention Avary in his acceptance speech.[90] 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. At
the ceremony the following month, Tarantino and Avary were announced as joint winners of the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.[91] The furor around the film was still going strong: much of the March issue
of Artforum was devoted to its critical dissection.[92] At the British
Academy Film Awards, Tarantino and Avary shared the BAFTA Award
for Best Original Screenplay, with Jackson winning for Best Supporting Actor.[93]
Influence and reputation
Pulp Fiction quickly came to be regarded as one of the most significant films of its era. In 1995, in a special edition
of Siskel & Ebert devoted to Tarantino, Gene
Siskel argued that Pulp Fiction 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. Hitchcock's Psycho [1960], Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde [1967], and Stanley Kubrick's
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.[94]
Ken Dancyger writes that its "imitative and innovative style"—like that of its predecessor, Reservoir Dogs—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.[95]
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,
in fact, mentioned the film; he cited two less celebrated movies based on Tarantino screenplays, Natural Born Killers and True Romance.[96] In September 1996, Dole did accuse Pulp Fiction—which
he had not seen—of promoting "the romance of heroin".[97]
Paula Rabinowitz expresses the general film industry opinion that Pulp Fiction "simultaneously resurrected John
Travolta and film noir".[98] In Peter Biskind's
description, it created a "guys-with-guns frenzy".[99]
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 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 idiosyncracies 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."[100] Among the first
Hollywood films cited as its imitators were Destiny Turns on the Radio (1995), in which Tarantino acted,[94] Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995),[101] and 2 Days in the Valley
(1996).[102] It "triggered a myriad of clones",
writes Fiona Villella.[103] 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.[104]
Its impact on Hollywood was deeper still. According to Variety, the
trajectory of Pulp Fiction from Cannes launch to commercial smash "forever altered the game" of so-called independent cinema.[105] It
"cemented Miramax's place as the reigning indie superpower",[106] writes Biskind. "Pulp became the Star Wars of
independents, exploding expectations for what an indie film could do at the box office."[107] 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.[108]
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.[109]
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.[103][110] Not long after its
release, it was identified as a significant focus of attention within the growing community of Internet users.[111] Adding Pulp Fiction to his roster of "Great Movies"
in 2001, Roger Ebert called it "the most influential film of the decade".[112] Four years later, Time's Corliss wrote much the same: "(unquestionably) the most
influential American movie of the 90s".[113]
Image:PulpFictionGuns.jpg
Vincent and Jules Winnfield (
Samuel L. Jackson) in their
classic pose. This image represents
Pulp Fiction on
Time's "All-Time 100 Movies" list.
Several scenes and images from the film achieved iconic status. Jules and Vincent's "Royale with Cheese" dialogue became
famous.[114] 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.[115] 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."[116] Certain lines were adopted popularly as catchphrases, in particular
Marsellus's threat, "I'm 'a get medieval on your ass."[117] Jules's "Ezekiel" soliloquy was voted the fourth greatest movie speech of all time in a 2004
poll.[118]
![Banksy's "famous mural" was painted in 2002 and painted over by municipal workers five years later.[119]](http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/8/85/250px-Banksy_pulp_fiction.jpg)
Banksy's "famous mural" was painted in 2002 and painted over by municipal workers five years
later.
[119]
Pulp Fiction now appears in several critical assessments of all-time great films. In 2007, it was voted 94th on the
American Film Institute's "100 Years...100 Movies" list.[120] In 2005, it was named one of Time's "All-Time 100
Movies".[113] As of September 2007, it is number 8
on Metacritic's list of all-time highest scores.[121] The
film ranks very highly in popular surveys. In a 2007 poll of the online film community, Pulp Fiction came in at eleventh
all-time.[122] In a 2006 readers' poll by the British
magazine Total Film, it ranked as the number 3 film in history.[123] It was voted as the fourth greatest film of all time in a nationwide
poll for Britain's Channel 4 in 2001.[124] As of October 2007, it ranks fifth on the IMDb Top 250
List.[125]
Critical analysis
Tarantino has stated that he originally planned "to do a Black Mask
movie", referring to the magazine largely responsible for popularizing hardboiled detective
fiction. "[I]t kind of went somewhere else".[126]
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."[127] 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.[128]
Robert Kolker sees the "flourishes, the apparent witty banality of the dialogue, the goofy fracturing of temporality [as] a
patina ove
![The "famous dance scene":[10] Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) do the twist at Jack Rabbit Slim's.](http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/5/5d/250px-PulpFictionTwist.jpg)
