Pulp Fiction turns 30. The game changer of game changers.
Obviously, the film hit during 1994, the year that I think I have mentioned before here was the year that movies went from being a thing I liked into being a bona-fide obsession.
Most of the films most responsible for making that year what it was were kind of out of nowhere surprises. Pulp Fiction was no different. I do remember seeing the trailer a handful of times in the lead-up to its release, and it definitely looked cool. This was basically still pre-internet, but even I heard the buzz. It had won the top prize at Cannes.
And I knew most of the actors mentioned in the trailer. But I didn't know Tarantino. Now, I had not seen Reservoir Dogs at this point. I'm pretty sure I had seen True Romance, which he wrote, but I also was not someone who paid attention to the names of screenwriters. So it wasn't like I saw him coming as the next big thing. I had no idea what was coming.
My school year moviegoing was well established by now. Saturday afternoon was my one time (Sunday was for football), and Pulp Fiction was definitely my choice for its opening weekend.
Now, perhaps in retrospect, this film is not something that a 15 year old should be seeing, but I was a budding movie freak. And watching this film, which was like nothing I had ever seen before, the synapses in my brain exploded. I never saw movies the same again. It literally changed my life.
The film became so instantly iconic in basically every scene that it's hard to believe it was technically an independent film. Miramax, the decade's most important studio, released it.
Tarantino won an Oscar for his screenplay, which is easily one of the best of all time. Again, there has been 30 years of films and TV influenced by this, so just the idea of a film being non-chronological or having characters have quirky conversations that have little to do with the plot, is not as novel now. But in 1994, this was revolutionary.
What even IS Pulp Fiction? Is it a comedy, a drama, a thriller? Yes. It's everything.
There isn't so much a plot, just a group of characters having individual experiences that also sometimes intersect. As Tarantino now does routinely, there are chapters:
1. "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife," where criminal henchman John Travolta takes out his crime boss's wife Uma Thurman for dinner.
2. "The Gold Watch," where boxer Bruce Willis is on the run after running afoul of said crime boss.
3. "The Bonnie Situation," where Travolta and his partner Samuel L. Jackson get in a sticky situation they need to get out of.
So nothing too outlandish. Tarantino based the idea and name of the film off simple little crime stories. But I bet they never went to the places he took this.
The game changer for this film was the dialogue. Nobody has ever done this like Tarantino. The dark humor, the strange pop culture references, this was all new. Certainly, it was to me. Again, this has become so commonplace now (aided by others like Scream) that the film's influence is undeniable.
Tarantino's other thing he was most known for, at least earlier in his career, was the resurrecting of struggling former stars. That all began with him grabbing John Travolta out of a decade-long career tumble to star. He wasn't the original choice, but it's impossible to imagine the movie without his shaggy charm (not to mention the dance skills). The film rocketed him back to mega stardom, and kicked off a great 2nd act of his career throughout the rest of the 90s.
The biggest star at the time in the film was definitely Bruce Willis, who was also having some box office issues (the infamous Color Of Night opened just a couple months earlier). But this film got him back on track and really bolstered his artistic cred.
Uma Thurman was Oscar nominated for her awesome performance as Mia. She was known at the time, but just seemed like an average actress with above average looks. Tbh, that may have been true, but she is dynamic here. And while working on the film, she and Tarantino cooked up Kill Bill.
No performer towers in this film more than Samuel L. Jackson. He had already become a workaholic actor who was showing up in lots of things (Jurassic Park, Fresh just before this) but hadn't blown up yet. Here, too, this was not Tarantino's 1st choice. It was Laurence Fishburne, who I'm sure would have been great, but not THIS great. Jackson's performance here has to be in my top 10 all time, maybe higher. He is charismatic, funny, menacing, and deadly serious during that incredible final monologue in the diner. He should have won the Oscar without question.
Tarantino had enough industry buzz to corral a bunch of other big names into the film, like Harvey Keitel, and Christopher Walken. But he was also spot on in casting largely unknown people like Ving Rhames and Tim Roth. Everybody who was in this carried an extra kind of coolness seal for years to come.
Now, Tarantino wasn't perfect. I often skip through the scenes of Willis's girlfriend, played very annoyingly by European actress Maria de Madeiros, but the material itself is fine.
The film got plenty of attention for its violence, but much like how in Reservoir Dogs where the ear slice is not actually shown, most of the extreme violence here is more implied than shown in grisly detail. Most of the film is about the moments before or after the violence.
The music is, of course, incredible. A few of the choice songs here were well known, but many weren't and became huge because of the movie. This was definitely one of the soundtracks that got the most play from me in the 90s.
Pulp Fiction wasn't one of these films that took a while to catch on. It was pretty much immediately agreed upon that it was a great film and maybe one of the best films of all time. It wound up being a huge hit. And of course, it got nominated for a bunch of Oscars. Now, only Tarantino's screenplay won in the big categories. Forrest Gump cleaned up that year, and that's a great film, too, so whatever. Look, 1994 was an all-time movie year, and not everything can win. But no film from that year cast a shadow like Pulp Fiction.
It changed how I looked at movies. The film was one of those sacred texts amongst me and my fellow film fan friends. It saved careers, launched others, spawned many imitators, bolstered the 90s indie film scene that led to many other classics.
It is simply impossible to imagine the 1990s as I knew then and remember now without this film.
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