Pulp Fiction

This article is about the movie. For the literature, see Pulp magazine.

Pulp Fiction is a movie directed by Quentin Tarantino. It was released in 1994. The stories were written by Tarantino and Roger Avary.

Half film noir and half black comedy, Pulp Fiction weaves through the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles gangsters, fringe characters, petty thieves and a mysterious attaché case. Following Quentin Tarantino's more traditional crime movie, Reservoir Dogs, the storyline is chopped up, rearranged and shown out of sequence, a technique borrowed from French nouvelle vague (New Wave) directors such as Jean Luc Godard and François Truffaut and from low-budget American crime films such as Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956) and Don Siegel's The Killers (1964). The highly stylized and fluid action sequences and deadpan dialogue was inspired by Italian neo-realist director Sergio Leone's famed spaghetti western pictures of the 1960s.

Originally titled Black Mask, the film won the 1994 Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival. Tarantino and Avary also won Oscars for the Screenplay in the same year. Travolta and Jackson were nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor Oscars, respectively.

The movie was moderately controversial, partly due to the graphic (but largely off-screen) violence and partly due to its perceived racism, as Tarantino and Jackson played moderately sympathetic characters who freely used the words "nigger" and "motherfucker". Later, in response, director Spike Lee made a point of challenging Tarantino's attitude towards race relations in his movie Bamboozled.

The success of Pulp Fiction spurred studios to release a slew of 'copycat' films soon after that tried to duplicate the film's formula of witty and offbeat dialogue, an elliptical/non-chronological plot and unconventional storyline, and gritty subject matter. Most, if not all of these films, did not fare well at the box office and were dismissed by critics as inferior and derivative, though the raver film Go received some acclaim, and Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels was a successful transplant of the film's basic premise into the underworld of London.

Storylines

There are four main storylines in Pulp Fiction: Vincent & Jules; Mia Wallace; Butch Coolidge; and Pumpkin & Honey Bunny. All four are intertwined, though Butch never meets Jules or Mia, and Mia never meets the diner robbers.

Vincent & Jules

Hitmen Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) and Vincent Vega (John Travolta) head to a Los Angeles apartment to retrieve a stolen briefcase for their boss, gangster Marsellus Wallace, and to kill Brett (Frank Whaley), the leader of a gang of petty thieves who had stolen it. The case is a classic MacGuffin, whose contents are never revealed except indirectly as a glowing yellow light (a homage to the 1955 Robert Aldrich film Kiss Me Deadly and the 1984 Alex Cox project, Repo Man). There has been speculation among fans that the case contains something of supernatural origin, possibly Marsellus' soul; see The mysterious briefcase.

After a long and bizarre conversation led by the Scripture-spouting Jules, the pair shoot and kill Brett and two of his accomplices, quickly departing with the last of the gang, who in fact is Jules' informant, Marvin. Shortly afterward, while in Jules's car, Vincent accidentally shoots Marvin in the head, killing him, and the two hitmen quickly try to find a place to hide and clean up the mess in the car with the aid of snotty suburbanite Jimmie Dimmick (Quentin Tarantino) and the associate/henchman of Marsellus, the dapper and mysterious Winston Wolfe (Harvey Keitel). Jackson's and Travolta's characters had been reportedly inspired by the pair of hitmen played by Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager in Don Siegel's 1964 film The Killers.

Mia Wallace

Marsellus requests that Vincent Vega show his wife Mia (Uma Thurman) a good time while he is out of town. They head to a (fictional) restaurant by the name of Jackrabbit Slim's, a slick 1950s-themed restaurant with lookalikes of the decade's top pop culture icons as staff (e.g., television impresario Ed Sullivan as the maitre d', and servers such as singer Buddy Holly and actress Marilyn Monroe), an option for patrons to eat at a booth or a replica of a period car, and the famous five-dollar milkshake. Vincent and Mia make small talk, and then Mia demands that Vincent dance with her in the Jackrabbit Slim's twist contest. Back at the house, they are seen carrying a trophy. Mia overdoses after snorting heroin, believing it to be cocaine, and a fearful Vincent tries to save her life with the aid of the small-time drug dealer (Eric Stoltz) who had previously sold him the heroin. Mia is finally revived after Vincent, at the climax of a painfully comic and suspenseful scene, stabs her in the heart with a syringeful of adrenaline.

Butch Coolidge

Aging prizefighter Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) accepts a large sum of money from Marsellus, agreeing to "take a dive" (deliberately lose a fight) by allowing himself to be knocked out in the fifth round of his upcoming match. However, Butch double-crosses Marsellus, instead betting the money he received from Marsellus on himself (with, due to the fight's being fixed, presumably very favorable odds) and winning the bout, accidentally killing his opponent in the process. Although now flush with cash, Butch must quickly leave town, as a vengeful Marsellus is hot on his trail. (Butch's character and his situation appear to have been inspired by a similar character previously played by Robert Ryan in the 1949 film noir classic The Set-Up.)

There is also a flashback at the beginning of the "The Gold Watch" storyline (Butch's story), in which the child Butch Coolidge receives his watch from a buddy of his father's (Christopher Walken), his father having died in a Vietnam War prison camp. This gold watch, which has been passed down from father to son since his great-grandfather fought in World War I, is understandably of great sentimental value to Butch.

Compelled to return to his apartment to retrieve the wristwatch, which his girlfriend (Maria de Medeiros) has forgotten to pack, he come across Vincent Vega. Butch grabs a silenced submachinegun on the kitchen counter left by Marsellus, who had left to get coffee for himself and Vince;(Although it is never shown that Marsellus was at Butch's apartment there are clues in the scene. One is that after Butch leaves his apartment he will find Marsellus walking across the street holding two cups of coffee, one for himself another for Vince. This would also explain why Marsellus is in that area at all. Also one would wonder why a professional such as Vince would not keep his gun on him the answer is that it was Marsellus' gun. And yet another clue is that Vince does nothing when the door to Butch's apartment opens, he thinks he knows who it is.) Butch picks up the gun just in time to encounter Vincent coming out of the bathroom. The Pop Tarts in the toaster pop up, startling Butch into firing and killing Vincent.

While driving back to the motel from the apartment complex, Butch accidentally (and literally) runs into Marsellus himself. Following a scuffle replete with car collisions, gunplay and fisticuffs, Butch and Marsellus are captured and tied up by a couple of hicks (a pawnshop owner and a security guard) who turn out to be sexual predators and sadists. They take Marsellus into the back room; Butch escapes his bonds and in a disturbing, comic, and somewhat surreal scene, he is faced with the choice of saving himself or aiding Marsellus.

Pumpkin & Honey Bunny

Over a late breakfast in a diner, a pair of petty thieves (Roth and Plummer) discuss the merits of robbing restaurants instead of their usual targets, small banks and liquor stores. After establishing that restaurants are far easier and more lucrative to rob (the employees are less invested in the business, and there are plenty of customers with fat wallets), they spontaneously decide to hold up the diner, demanding all the patrons' money and valuables. Vincent and Jules (fresh from Jimmie's house, wearing a couple of "dorky" borrowed T-shirts) happen to be among the diner patrons. When Ringo demands that Jules hand over the case, Jules holds him at gunpoint in a Mexican standoff with Yolanda (and Vincent, who emerges from the restroom with gun drawn and pointed at Yolanda). Jules explains his ambivalence toward his life of crime, takes his wallet back from Ringo, and lets the pair go free.

The mysterious briefcase

A number of things can be observed about the stolen attache case recovered by shooters Jules and Vincent. The most obvious is that its latch lock combination is 666, the number of the "Beast" (Satan) as given in the Biblical Book of Revelation.

Whenever asked, director Tarantino has replied that there is no explanation for the case's contents. Originally, it was to contain diamonds, but this was seen as too mundane; it is simply a MacGuffin. As noted before, it's possible Tarantino, a longtime film buff, had been influenced by Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly (1955), in which a briefcase glows because it contains a small nuclear device.

This being said, fans have offered up several theories, the most popular of which says that Brett had made a deal with Marsellus Wallace for Marsellus's soul. (This deal may have also included the unseen Antwan Rockamora ("Tony Rocky Horror,") explaining why Marsellus had him thrown out a fourth-story apartment window.) The exit point of Marsellus' soul was probably in the back of the neck, covered by a band-aid (the truth in real life being that actor Ving Rhames wanted to cover up a visible keloid scar). Each time the briefcase is opened, a golden glow is emitted. Why Brett had to be killed by Marsellus' men for buying Marsellus' soul is unclear. It could be speculated he just changed his mind, and wanted it back. However, when Brett is killed, a similar golden light flares across the screen, showing Brett's soul depart from his body. Before Jules safely returns Marsellus' soul to "quit the life" (as a hitman) and leaving to "walk the Earth", he tells the asking resturant robber that it contains "his Boss's laundry", but that may or may not have been a flippant remark.

Other theories include the golden Elvis Presley jumpsuit from True Romance or the stolen diamonds from Reservoir Dogs, also by Tarantino. Some suggest it was a would-be present from Marsellus to his "party girl" wife Mia: a stolen Academy Award. The fact that Tarantino sensed beforehand that he might be "robbed" of his Best Picture Oscar adds a tiny speck of credibility to this last theory.

Connections to Reservoir Dogs

In Tarantino's 1992 mainstream directorial debut Reservoir Dogs, Michael Madsen plays a character named "Vic Vega" — suspiciously close to Travolta's "Vincent Vega." Tarantino would later confirm that the two are brothers.

Tarantino's Jimmie Dimmick character in Pulp Fiction has the same last name as Harvey Keitel's Reservoir Dogs character Larry Dimmick (Mr. White); however, the two characters are apparently not related in the universe of the films, especially as Tarantino and Keitel appear in both movies, in different roles (Tarantino in Dogs as Mr. Brown and Keitel in Pulp Fiction as Winston Wolfe).

There are some who think that the briefcase contains the diamonds from Reservoir Dogs. Steve Buscemi (Mr. Pink in Dogs) in a cameo as a surly waiter at Jackrabbit Slim's is also interesting – could it actually be Mr. Pink, who escaped from the police and went to a place where no-one would look for him (in Dogs, Mr. Pink refuses to tip waiters)?

Cast

External links

• Pulp Fiction at the Internet Movie Database
• Pulp Fiction page at the "Everything Tarantino" fan site
• What's in the Briefcase? From the Urban Legends Reference Page
• Jules' Bad Mother Fucker Wallet from Pulp Fiction