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{{Short description|1994 crime film by Quentin Tarantino}}
{{otheruses4|the movie Pulp Fiction|the inexpensive fiction magazines|pulp magazine}}
{{About|the film||Pulp fiction (disambiguation){{!}}Pulp fiction}}
{{Infobox Film |
{{pp-semi-indef|small=yes}}
name = Pulp Fiction |
{{Use American English|date=September 2019}}
image = Pulp Fiction cover.jpg |
{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2019}}
caption = ] ] 8.8/10 (184,085 votes)<br> |
{{Infobox film
writer = ]<BR>] |
| name = Pulp Fiction
starring = ]<BR>]<BR>]<BR>]<br>]<br>]<BR>]<BR>]<br>]<br>]<br>]<br>]<br>] |
| image = Pulp Fiction (1994) poster.jpg
director = ] |
| alt = A pulp-magazine themed poster shows with a woman in a bedroom lying on her stomach in a bed holding a cigarette. Her left hands lays over a novel that reads "Pulp Fiction" on it. An ash tray, pack of cigarettes, and a pistol is laid down near her. The top tagline reads "WINNER - BEST PICTURE - 1994 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL". A sticker below the title reads "10¢".
producer = ] |
| caption = Theatrical release poster
cinematography = ] |
editing = ] | | director = ]
distributor = ] | | producer = ]
| writer = Quentin Tarantino<!-- Credits state "Written by" -->
released = ], ] (]) |
| story = {{Plainlist|
runtime = 154 min. (168 min. deluxe edition) |
* Quentin Tarantino
language = English |
* ]
budget = $8 million |
}}
music = |
awards = | | starring = {{Plainlist|
* ]
amg_id = 131235 |
* ]
imdb_id = 0110912 |
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
* ]
}}
| cinematography = ]
| editing = ]
| production_companies = {{Plainlist|
* ]
* ]
}}
| distributor = ]
| released = {{Film date|1994|5|21|]|1994|10|14|United States}}
| runtime = 154 minutes<!--Theatrical runtime: 154:22--><!-- Only for theatrical runtime --><ref>{{cite web |title=Pulp Fiction |url=https://www.bbfc.co.uk/BFF065215 |website=] |access-date=November 11, 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150510235257/http://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/pulp-fiction-film-0 |archive-date=May 10, 2015 |url-status=live }}</ref>
| country = United States
| language = English
| budget = $8–8.5 million<ref name="Mojo">{{cite web|access-date=May 13, 2012|url=https://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pulpfiction.htm|title=Pulp Fiction (1994)|website=]|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110430222745/http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pulpfiction.htm|archive-date=April 30, 2011|url-status=live}}</ref>{{efn|name="8.5 Budget"|In {{harvtxt|Waxman|2005|p=67}}, {{harvtxt|Biskind|2004|p=170}}, {{harvtxt|Polan|2000|p=69}},
{{harvtxt|Dawson|1995a|pp=147–148}}}}
| gross = $213.9 million<ref name="Mojo" />
}} }}
'''''Pulp Fiction''''' is an ]-winning ] directed by ] who also co-wrote the screenplay with ]. It caused a sensation upon its release and continues to have an impact on film-making to this day. The film's idiosyncratic characteristics include fragmented storyline, ] dialogue, ] and ] influences, unorthodox camerawork, and numerous ] references. Tarantino and Avary won ] for ] and the film was nominated for seven Oscars in total, including ]. It also took home the ] at the ].


'''''Pulp Fiction''''' is a 1994 American ] ] written and directed by ] from a story he conceived with ].<ref name="washingtonpost.com">See, e.g., King (2002), pp. 185–7; {{cite news |last=Kempley |first=Rita |title=''Pulp Fiction'' (R) |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/pulpfictionrkempley_a01ac7.htm |newspaper=] |date=1994-10-14 |access-date=2007-09-19 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170709034854/http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/pulpfictionrkempley_a01ac7.htm |archive-date=July 9, 2017 |url-status=live }}; {{cite news |last=LaSalle |first=Mike |title=''Pulp'' Grabs You Like a Novel |url=https://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/FILM-REVIEW-Pulp-Grabs-You-Like-a-Novel-3024865.php |work=San Francisco Chronicle |date=1995-09-15 |access-date=2007-09-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120112023743/http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F1995%2F09%2F15%2FDD26653.DTL |archive-date=January 12, 2012 |url-status=live }}</ref> It tells four intertwining tales of crime and violence in ]. The film stars ], ], ], ], ], and ]. The title refers to the ]s and ] crime novels popular during the mid-20th century, known for their graphic violence and punchy dialogue.
The plot, in keeping with most other Tarantino works, runs in ] order. The unconventional structure of the movie is an example of a so-called ].


Tarantino wrote ''Pulp Fiction'' in 1992 and 1993, incorporating scenes that Avary originally wrote for '']'' (1993). Its plot occurs ]. The film is also ] from its opening moments, beginning with a ] 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 ] combination of humor and strong violence. ] reportedly turned down the script as "too demented". ] co-chairman ] was enthralled, however, and the film became the first that Miramax Films fully financed.
The film's title refers to the ]s popular during the mid&ndash;], known for their strongly graphic nature.


''Pulp Fiction'' won the ] at the ] and was a major critical and commercial success. It was nominated for seven awards at the ], including ], and won ]; Travolta, Jackson, and Thurman were nominated for ], ], and ] respectively. As a result of the film's success, Travolta's career was reinvigorated. The film's development, marketing, distribution, and profitability&nbsp;had a sweeping effect on independent cinema.
The screenplay is available as a paperback.<ref>(ISBN 0-7868-8104-6, ])</ref>


''Pulp Fiction'' is widely regarded as Tarantino's '']'', with particular praise for its screenwriting.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.wga.org/subpage_newsevents.aspx?id=1807 |title=101 Greatest Screenplays |publisher=] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130306065813/http://www.wga.org/subpage_newsevents.aspx?id=1807 |archive-date=March 6, 2013 |url-status=dead |access-date=November 29, 2015}}</ref> The self-reflexivity, unconventional structure, and extensive ] and ] have led critics to describe it as a touchstone of ]. 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 high acclaim. In 2008, '']'' named it the best film since 1983<ref name=EWClassic>{{cite magazine |url= https://ew.com/article/2007/06/18/new-classics-movies/ |title=The New Classics: Movies |date=2007-06-18 |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |access-date=2013-09-29 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080828181342/http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20207076_20207079_20207442_24,00.html |archive-date=2008-08-28 |url-status=live }}</ref> and it has appeared on many critics' lists of the ]. In 2013, ''Pulp Fiction'' was selected for preservation in the United States ] by the ] as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".<ref name="2013Add2">{{cite news |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/movies/library-of-congress-announces-2013-national-film-registry-selections/2013/12/17/eba98bce-6737-11e3-ae56-22de072140a2_story.html |title=Library of Congress announces 2013 National Film Registry selections |last=O'Sullivan |first=Michael |date=December 18, 2013 |newspaper=] |access-date=December 18, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131218140500/http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/movies/library-of-congress-announces-2013-national-film-registry-selections/2013/12/17/eba98bce-6737-11e3-ae56-22de072140a2_story.html |archive-date=December 18, 2013 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Complete National Film Registry Listing |url=https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/|website=Library of Congress|access-date=2020-05-08|archive-date=October 31, 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161031213743/https://www.loc.gov/programs/national-film-preservation-board/film-registry/complete-national-film-registry-listing/|url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=Cinema with the Right Stuff Marks 2013 National Film Registry|url=https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-13-216/2013-national-film-registry/2013-12-18/|website=Library of Congress|access-date=2020-05-08|archive-date=June 4, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200604221938/https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-13-216/2013-national-film-registry/2013-12-18/|url-status=live}}</ref>
The film had an impact on the careers of its cast members. It provided a breakthough role for ], previously a ] who became an international star in a part Tarantino wrote especially for him. It revived the fortunes of ] who was going through something of a career slump at the time (again), and allowed ] to move away from the ] reputation he had gained through films such as '']''. It raised the profile of ] and led to greater recognition for character actors such as ] and ]. ] was also acclaimed for his role as Lance.


===Taglines=== == Plot ==
* Girls like me don't make invitations like this to just anyone!
* You won't know the facts until you've seen the fiction.
* From the creators of '']'' & '']''
* Three stories about one story.
* I don't smile for pictures.
* Just because you are a character doesn't mean you have character.


=== Narrative structure ===
==Plot==
''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 partner in crime.<ref name="PF93">"Pulp Fiction: The Facts" (1993 location interview), ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref>
{{spoiler}}
Using many elements of a ] with many stylistic and pop culture touches, ''Pulp Fiction'' weaves through the intersecting storylines of Los Angeles gangsters, fringe characters, petty thieves and a mysterious ]. In keeping with Quentin Tarantino's directorial trademark of non chronological story telling, Pulp Fiction is written out of sequence. i.e., it was not written in chronological order then rearranged out of sequence. <ref>Pulp Fiction DVD trivia subtitle.</ref>


The film begins with a diner robbery staged by a couple, then begins to shift from one story line to another before returning to the diner for the conclusion. There are seven narrative sequences; the three primary story lines are preceded by intertitles:
There are three main storylines in ''Pulp Fiction'': Vincent and Jules; Vincent and Mia Wallace; Butch Coolidge. All three are intertwined. <ref> Pulp Fiction DVD trivia subtitle tells how QT describes Pulp Fiction as three intertwined stories.</ref>


===The Diner (first part)=== # "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".{{sfn|Parker|2002|p=23}} Other analysts describe the structure as a "circular narrative".{{sfn|Dancyger|2002|p=235}}<ref>{{cite web |last=Villella |first=Fiona A. |title=Circular Narratives: Highlights of Popular Cinema in the '90s |url=http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/3/circular.html#b2 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061231115331/http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/3/circular.html#b2 |archive-date=2006-12-31 |work=Senses of Cinema |date=January 2000 |access-date=2006-12-31}}</ref>
<div style="clear: both; width: 45%; float:right; margin-left: 1em; background: #f7f8ff; border:1px solid #8888aa;" class="NavFrame">
<div style="background: #ccccff"| class="NavHead">Events in film order (chronological order in brackets)
</div>
<div class="NavContent" align=left>
*'''The Diner (first half) (3)'''
*'''Vincent and Jules (1)'''
*'''"Mia Wallace and Vincent" (4)'''
*'''"The Gold Watch" (5)'''
*'''"The Bonnie Situation" (2)'''
*'''The Diner (second half) (3)'''
</div>
</div>


=== Summary ===
Pumpkin (]) and Honey Bunny (]) discuss robbing restaurants instead of liquor stores, their normal target, due to lack of awareness in restaurants. They decide to rob the one they are currently in and pull out revolvers. Pumpkin jumps up and screams "Everybody be cool, this is a robbery!" Honey Bunny grabs a revolver and screams "Any of you fucking pricks move, and I'll execute every motherfucking last one of you!"
<!-- Plot length should be 400-700 words. See WP:FILMPLOT. -->


A pair of thieves, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, reminisce on their past robbery attempts as they eat breakfast in a diner. Pumpkin proposes they rob the diner at that moment because he believes the patrons and employees will be unprepared to stop them. Honey Bunny agrees.
The title credits play.


Two hitmen, Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega, arrive at an apartment to retrieve a briefcase for their boss, influential local ] Marsellus Wallace, from a business partner, Brett, and his friends. After Vincent checks the contents of the briefcase, Jules shoots one of Brett's friends. Jules rebukes Brett over his attempt to double-cross Marsellus and recites a passage from the Bible, before he and Vincent kill Brett.
===Vincent & Jules===
].]]


==== "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife" ====
] Jules Winnfield (]) and ] (]) head to a ] apartment to retrieve a briefcase that was involved in a failed deal for their boss, ] Marsellus Wallace (]). They also have to kill Brett (]), the one who was supposed to have set up the deal, and his cohorts. The briefcase is a classic ], whose contents are never revealed except indirectly as a glowing, gold light.
Jules and Vincent give the briefcase to Marsellus, who bribes ] Butch Coolidge to ] in his upcoming match. Vincent purchases ] from his drug dealer, Lance. He shoots up and drives to meet Marsellus's wife, ], having agreed to escort her while Marsellus is out of town for the night. They eat at a 1950s-themed restaurant and participate in a ] contest, then return home. While Vincent is in the bathroom, Mia finds his heroin, mistakes it for ], and snorts it, resulting in an overdose. Vincent rushes her to Lance's house, where Lance helps revive her by ]. Vincent takes Mia home, and they agree never to tell Marsellus about the incident.


==== "The Gold Watch" ====
Jules shoots Brett's cohort (whom he had referred to as "]" for his hairstyle) and then, after a long and bizarre conversation led by the scripture-spouting Jules (a variation on ], 'The path of the righteous man'), Vincent and Jules execute Brett in a hail of gunfire. They spare their informant, Marvin (]), who happened to be there with the gang.
Butch double-crosses Marsellus by winning the bout, but he accidentally kills his opponent in the process. He plans to flee with his girlfriend, Fabienne, but discovers she has forgotten to pack an ]: a gold watch which belonged to Butch's father. 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. Marsellus chases him into a ]. Maynard, the shop owner, 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. Butch breaks free and is about to escape, but decides to save Marsellus and arms himself with a ] from the pawnshop. He kills Maynard and frees Marsellus, who shoots Zed in the crotch with Maynard's shotgun. Marsellus tells Butch that they are even, and instructs him to tell no one about the incident and depart Los Angeles forever. Butch picks up Fabienne on Zed's ] and they drive away.
===Mia Wallace and Vincent===
]
Vincent and Jules arrive at a bar owned by Marsellus Wallace just as Butch Coolidge is concluding a meeting with Wallace himself. As Butch leaves, he has a minor altercation with Vincent. At Marsellus's request, Vincent Vega shows his wife Mia (]) a good time while Marsellus is out of town. Vincent shows up at Mia's house and while waiting for her to get ready, she plays "]", by ] on the sound system. They head to the fictional restaurant Jack Rabbit Slim's, a slick ]-] with lookalikes of the decade's top ] icons as staff (e.g., television impresario ] as the ], and servers such as singer ] and actresses ] and ]), an option for patrons to eat at a booth or a ] refitted as a booth, and the famous "Five-Dollar ]".


==== "The Bonnie Situation" ====
Vincent and Mia make small talk, wherein she recounts her experience as an actress in a failed television ], "Fox Force Five". The show followed the exploits of an all-female team of secret agents, each having a particular specialty. Mia's character, Raven McCoy, was raised by circus performers and, according to the show, was "''...the deadliest woman in the world with a knife''." She also knew a ] old jokes her grandfather, an old ], taught her, though she initially refuses to share with Vincent the joke Raven tells in the pilot out of fear of being embarrassed.
In the apartment, after Jules and Vincent kill Brett, another man bursts out of the bathroom and fires at them. Every shot misses and they shoot him dead. Jules says that their survival was a miracle, which Vincent disputes, believing the man was just a lousy shot. While driving away with another one of Brett's friends, Marvin (who was actually a plant from Marsellus's organization), Vincent accidentally shoots him in the head after Jules drives over an unidentified inconsistency in the roadbed, covering Vincent, Jules, and the car interior in blood. They hide the car at the home of Jules's old friend and former business partner Jimmie, who demands they deal with the problem before his wife Bonnie comes home. Marsellus sends a ], Winston Wolfe, who directs Jules and Vincent to hide the body in the trunk, clean the car, dispose of their bloody clothes and take the car to a junkyard.


At the diner from the film's prologue, Jules tells Vincent that he plans to retire from his life of crime, convinced that their survival at the apartment was ]. While Vincent is in the bathroom, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny hold up the restaurant and demand Marsellus's briefcase. Pumpkin initially holds Jules at gunpoint, but Jules soon overpowers Pumpkin 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 Mia's words, the rest of the troupe had other formidable abilities:


== Cast ==<!-- Other articles link here -->
:''"Fox, as in we're a bunch of foxy chicks. Force, as in we're a force to be reckoned with. Five, as in there's one... two... three... four... five of us. There was a blonde one, Sommerset O'Neal from that show "Baton Rouge", she was the leader. A Japanese one, a black one, a French one and a brunette one, me. We all had special skills. Sommerset had a photographic memory, the Japanese fox was a kung fu master, the black girl was a demolition expert, the French fox's specialty was sex..."''
<!-- Cast per opening credits order. -->
* ] as Vincent Vega:
:Jules' partner-in-crime, working for Marsellus Wallace. Tarantino cast Travolta in ''Pulp Fiction'' because ], who had played Vic Vega in '']'' (1992), chose to appear in ]'s '']'' instead. Madsen has since expressed regret over his decision.<ref>{{cite news |last=Bhattacharya |first=Sanjiv |title=Mr Blonde's Ambition |url=http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1194170,00.html |work=The Guardian |date=2004-04-18 |access-date=2006-12-27 |location=London |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080709093114/http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,6737,1194170,00.html |archive-date=July 9, 2008 |url-status=live}}</ref> ] pushed for ] in the part.{{sfn|Charyn|2006|p=68}} Travolta accepted a reduced rate; sources say either US$100,000 or US$140,000. The film's success and his ] nomination for Best Actor revitalized his career.<ref>For $100,000, see e.g., Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 3, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment). For USD$140,000, see e.g., {{cite web |last=Wills |first=Dominic |title=John Travolta Biography |publisher=Tiscali|url=http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/john_travolta_biog/4 |access-date=2006-12-27 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070104050530/http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/john_travolta_biog/4 |archive-date=2007-01-04}} Note again that all the main actors were paid identical weekly salaries. It appears that these figures cited for Travolta do not include his participation, if any, in the film's profits.</ref> Vincent is the brother of Vic Vega, also known as Mr. Blonde in ''Reservoir Dogs'', and in 2004, Tarantino discussed an idea for a movie starring Travolta and Madsen as the "Vega Brothers"; the concept remains unrealized.<ref name="Vega">{{cite web |last=Haddon |first=Cole |title=Michael Madsen Talks Hell Ride, Inglorious Bastards, and Sin City 2 |url=http://www.film.com/movies/story/michael-madsen-talks-hell-ride/22258175 |website=Film.com |date=2008-08-07 |access-date=2008-11-18 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081023235552/http://www.film.com/movies/story/michael-madsen-talks-hell-ride/22258175 |archive-date=October 23, 2008}}</ref>
* ] as Jules Winnfield:
:Vincent's partner in crime, working for Marsellus Wallace. Jackson's first audition was overshadowed by ]; 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.{{sfn|Dawson|1995|p=154}}<ref>Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 5, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref> Jules was originally scripted with a giant afro,<ref name="T3">Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 3, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref> but Tarantino's PA mistakenly bought a ]ed wig. Tarantino was enraged but Jackson persuaded him to keep it since the hairstyle had gained popularity through the rap group ].<ref>{{Cite web |date=January 6, 2016 |title=Samuel L. Jackson's 'Pulp Fiction' Jheri Curl Wig Was a Happy Accident |url=https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/samuel-l-jacksons-pulp-fiction-jheri-curl-wig-000105962.html |access-date=2022-02-17 |website=Yahoo |language=en-US |archive-date=February 17, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220217105859/https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/samuel-l-jacksons-pulp-fiction-jheri-curl-wig-000105962.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Film critic ] took it as a "tacit comic statement about the ghettoization of in movies".<ref name="OG">{{cite magazine |last=Gleiberman |first=Owen |title=''Pulp Fiction'' (1994) |url=https://ew.com/article/1994/10/14/movie-review-pulp-fiction/ |magazine=Entertainment Weekly |date=1994-10-10 |access-date=2007-09-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071015004935/http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,304048,00.html |archive-date=October 15, 2007 |url-status=live }}</ref> 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 ], who turned it down. According to Tarantino, Fishburne refused it because his team did not see it as a starring role;<ref>{{Cite web|title=Laurence Fishburne Turned Down Samuel L. Jackson's Role in 'Pulp Fiction'|url=https://www.theringer.com/video/2020/1/16/21068675/laurence-fishburne-turned-down-samuel-l-jackson-role-in-pulp-fiction|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200820185534/https://www.theringer.com/video/2020/1/16/21068675/laurence-fishburne-turned-down-samuel-l-jackson-role-in-pulp-fiction|archive-date=August 20, 2020|access-date=2020-08-21|website=]|language=en}}</ref> Fishburne later said he turned it down because he felt the film glamorized heroin.<ref>{{Cite web|last=Jung|first=E. Alex|date=2020-08-19|title=Laurence Fishburne Knows Who He Is|url=https://www.vulture.com/article/laurence-fishburne-in-conversation.html|access-date=2020-08-21|website=Vulture|language=en-us|archive-date=August 21, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200821082213/https://www.vulture.com/article/laurence-fishburne-in-conversation.html|url-status=live}}</ref>
* ] as ]:
:Wallace's wife and an aspiring actress. Miramax favored ] or ] for the role of Mia. ] and ] were also considered but Tarantino wanted Thurman after their first meeting.{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=170}}{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=155}} 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 ], Thurman chose not to do any big-budget films until '']'' (1997) three years later.<ref>{{cite web |last=Wills |first=Dominic |title=Uma Thurman Biography |publisher=Tiscali |url=http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/uma_thurman_biog/6 |access-date=2006-12-29 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070507080424/http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/uma_thurman_biog/6 |archive-date=2007-05-07}}</ref>
* ] as Winston Wolfe:
:A "]" 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."<ref name="T23">Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 23, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref> Keitel had played a similarly employed character in '']'' (1993).<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=McCarthy |first=Todd |date=1993-03-19 |title=Point of No Return |url=https://variety.com/1993/film/reviews/point-of-no-return-2-1200431702/ |access-date=2024-06-04 |magazine=Variety |language=en-US}}</ref>
* ] 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 ] preferred ] or ].{{sfn|Charyn|2006|p=73}} Early in development, Tarantino had contemplated casting Roth as Vincent and ] as Jules, rewriting the characters as "two English guys".{{sfn|Bailey|2013|p=84}}
* ] 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."<ref name=PremiereUK>{{cite news |last=Dawson |first=Jeff |title=Hit Man |url=http://www.tim-roth.com/index.php?id=ukpremieredec95 |work=Premiere (UK) |publisher=Tim-Roth.com |date=December 1995 |access-date=2012-04-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130120090146/http://www.tim-roth.com/index.php?id=ukpremieredec95 |archive-date=January 20, 2013 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
* ] as Fabienne:
:Butch's girlfriend. Tarantino met de Medeiros, a Portuguese actress, while traveling with ''Reservoir Dogs'' around the European film festival circuit.<ref name="T14">Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 14, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref>
* ] as Marsellus Wallace:
:A crime boss and employer of Jules and Vincent. Before Rhames was cast, the part of Wallace was initially offered to ] and ], but both turned down the role.<ref>{{cite web| last=Seal| first=Mark| date=February 13, 2013| title=Cinema Tarantino: The Making of ''Pulp Fiction''| website=]| url=https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/03/making-of-pulp-fiction-oral-history/amp| access-date=July 9, 2020| archive-date=January 15, 2019| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190115053439/https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/03/making-of-pulp-fiction-oral-history/amp| url-status=live}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Sid Haig Interview! Episode: 40 |url=http://www.a3upodcast.com/node/187 |access-date=2008-07-20 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081120065456/http://www.a3upodcast.com/node/187 |archive-date=November 20, 2008 |df=mdy-all}}</ref> According to Bender, Rhames gave "one of the best auditions I've ever seen".{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=155}} His acclaimed performance led to him being cast in big-budget features such as '']'' (1996), '']'' (1997) and '']'' (1998).<ref>{{cite web |title=Ving Rhames Biography |website=AllMovie |url=https://www.allmovie.com/artist/ving-rhames-p59836 |access-date=2012-04-11 |first=Sandra |last=Brennan |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120413180958/http://www.allmovie.com/artist/ving-rhames-p59836 |archive-date=April 13, 2012 |url-status=live }}</ref>
* ] as Lance:
:Vincent's drug dealer.<ref>{{cite news |title=Cobain Turned Down 'Pulp Fiction' Role |url=http://www.hollywood.com/news/Cobain_Turned_Down_Pulp_Fiction_Role/3555873 |work=Hollywood.com |date=2006-09-20 |access-date=2007-09-16 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20120604135659/http://www.hollywood.com/news/Cobain_Turned_Down_Pulp_Fiction_Role/3555873 |archive-date=June 4, 2012 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Gary Oldman was the preferred choice among TriStar executives, based on his portrayal of drug-dealing pimp Drexl Spivey in '']'' (1993).<ref>{{cite journal |last=Roberts |first=Chris |date=August 1999 |title=Gary Oldman: A sheep in wolf's clothing |journal=] |publisher=] |issue=27 |quote= wouldn't have been last Tarantino collaboration, had TriStar execs gotten their way&nbsp;... Oldman was the preferred choice for .}}</ref><ref name=shortlist50facts>{{cite web |url=http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/films/50-things-you-%28probably%29-didnt-know-about-pulp-fiction |title=50 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Pulp Fiction |date=October 28, 2013 |website=] |access-date=August 26, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131105123711/http://www.shortlist.com/entertainment/films/50-things-you-(probably)-didnt-know-about-pulp-fiction |archive-date=November 5, 2013 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
* ] as Jody:
:Lance's wife. ] read for the role, but Tarantino did not believe audiences would find it plausible for Lance to yell at her.<ref>Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 6, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment). See also {{cite web |last=Rabin |first=Nathan |title=Interviews: Pam Grier |url=https://www.avclub.com/pam-grier-1798208273 |website=The A.V. Club |publisher=The Onion |date=2003-06-25 |access-date=2007-09-20 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071002130523/http://www.avclub.com/content/node/22535 |archive-date=October 2, 2007 |url-status=live}}</ref> Tarantino later cast Grier as the lead role for '']''. ] also read for the part of Jody.{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=189}} Rosanna's sister ] (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.
* ] as Captain Koons:
:A ] veteran of the ] who delivers a young Butch his father's coveted gold watch. During Koons' monologue, which is interspersed with colorful descriptions of the ], he mentions a soldier called "Winocki".{{efn|Walken's speech to the young Butch has been described as a "bravura performance of patriotic zeal and scatological fetishism worthy of a Kubrickian anti-hero".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Howley |first=K. |year=2004 |title=Breaking, Making, and Killing Time in Pulp Fiction |journal=Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies |page=10}}</ref>}} Joe Winocki (]) is a character in the 1943 film '']'' directed by ], one of Tarantino's favorite directors.<ref name=LisaFrance>{{cite web|url=http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/23/showbiz/movies/pulp-fiction-20th-anniversary/index.html|title='Pulp Fiction': 20 fun facts as the film turns 20|website=]|date=October 14, 2014|last=France|first=Lisa|access-date=August 14, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180729150353/http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/23/showbiz/movies/pulp-fiction-20th-anniversary/index.html|archive-date=July 29, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> Tarantino played a character named Desmond Winocki in a guest appearance on an episode of '']'' titled ''Pulp Sitcom''.<ref>{{cite web |date=November 26, 2007 |title=Quentin Tarantino on All-American Girl (February 22, 1995) |url=http://www.chronologicalsnobbery.com/2007/11/quentin-tarantino-on-all-american-girl.html |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160312154706/http://www.chronologicalsnobbery.com/2007/11/quentin-tarantino-on-all-american-girl.html |archive-date=March 12, 2016 |access-date=March 11, 2016 |work=Chronological Snobbery}}</ref>
* ] as Butch Coolidge:
:An aging boxer on the run from Marsellus after having ] him. Willis was already a star but most of his recent films had been critical and box-office disappointments. As related by ], participating in the modestly budgeted film "meant lowering his salary and risking his star status but the strategy&nbsp;... paid off royally: ''Pulp Fiction'' not only brought Willis new respect as an actor but also earned him several million dollars".{{sfn|Bart|2000|p=85}}{{sfn|Polan|2000|loc=p. 69: Willis's deal for a percentage of the box office gross was presumably on top of a base weekly salary that was identical to the other main actors, per Polan}}{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=148}} 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".{{sfn|Dargis|1994a|p=10}} Butch's look was modeled on ] in '']'' and his demeanor based on ]'s portrayal of ] in ]'s '']''.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RRmcAQAAQBAJ&q=%22aldo+ray%22+interview&pg=PA50|pages=50–51|title=Quentin Tarantino: Interviews, Revised and Updated|last1=Tarantino|first1=Quentin|last2=Peary|first2=Gerald|author-link2=Gerald Peary|publisher=]|date=2013|access-date=March 4, 2022|isbn=9781617038747|archive-date=October 23, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211023050607/https://books.google.com/books?id=RRmcAQAAQBAJ&q=%22aldo+ray%22+interview&pg=PA50|url-status=live|via=]}}</ref> Chandler Lindauer plays a young Butch.


] plays Jody's friend Trudi who does little but smoke a ] 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".<ref>{{cite news|last=Getlen |first=Larry |date=October 18, 2014 |url=https://nypost.com/2014/10/18/inside-the-grisly-scene-that-made-pulp-fiction/ |title=Inside the grisly scene that made 'Pulp Fiction' |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171114030842/http://nypost.com/2014/10/18/inside-the-grisly-scene-that-made-pulp-fiction/ |archivedate=November 14, 2017 |work=] |access-date=March 15, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> ] 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.<ref name="LaMarrCastINterview">{{cite news|last=Harris |first=Will |date=June 26, 2012 |url=https://www.avclub.com/article/phil-lamarr-on-ifuturamai-and-getting-shot-in-the--81774 |title=Phil LaMarr on Futurama and getting shot in the face for Pulp Fiction |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170316113201/http://www.avclub.com/article/phil-lamarr-on-ifuturamai-and-getting-shot-in-the--81774 |archive-date=March 16, 2017 |work=] |publisher=] |access-date=March 15, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> He read for the roles of Jules Winnfield and Brett before being cast as Marvin.<ref name="LaMarrCastINterview" /> 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.<ref name=shortlist50facts />
(Tarantino has acknowledged the similarity between Fox Force Five and the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad (DiVAS) in '']''.)


] portrays Brett, who has a briefcase requested by Marsellus. Whaley met Tarantino while he was filming ''Reservoir Dogs'' at a lab in ]. 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."<ref name="WhaleAVCLUB">{{cite news|last=Harris |first=Will |date=April 9, 2015 |url=https://www.avclub.com/article/frank-whaley-acting-directing-and-getting-yelled-s-215751 |title=Frank Whaley on acting, directing, and getting yelled at by Samuel L. Jackson and Oliver Stone |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170103174249/http://www.avclub.com/article/frank-whaley-acting-directing-and-getting-yelled-s-215751 |archive-date=January 3, 2017 |work=The A.V. Club |publisher=The Onion |access-date=March 15, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> ] appears as Roger, a friend of Brett's nicknamed "]" 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.<ref>{{cite news|last=Eisenberg |first=Eric |url=https://www.cinemablend.com/new/Pulp-Fiction-Scene-Burr-Steers-Kept-Screwing-Up-Why-108537.html |date=January 27, 2016 |title=The Pulp Fiction Scene That Burr Steers Kept Screwing Up, And Why |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170426201242/http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Pulp-Fiction-Scene-Burr-Steers-Kept-Screwing-Up-Why-108537.html |archive-date=April 26, 2017 |work=Cinema Blend |access-date=March 15, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref>
Mia then demands that Vincent dance with her in the Jack Rabbit Slim's ] contest and they dance to ]'s "You Never Can Tell". When they return to the Wallace house, she is seen carrying the trophy. While listening to ]'s version of ]'s "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon", Mia overdoses after snorting ]. She had found the heroin in the pocket of Vince's coat, which she was wearing, and believed it to be ]. A fearful Vincent rushes her over to small-time drug dealer Lance, (]) who had previously sold him the heroin. Lance helps Vincent ready the adrenaline shot and Lance's dysfunctional wife Jody (]) watches. Vincent stabs Mia with the syringe full of adrenaline. She wakes up with a howl and when asked to say something, says "something". Jody remarks "That was fucking trippy".


] portrays Esmarelda 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 ] with finance from Tarantino and again starring Jones.<ref name="DailyBeast">{{cite news|url=http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/19/the-secrets-of-pulp-fiction-20-things-you-didn-t-know-about-the-movie-on-its-20th-anniversary.html |date=October 19, 2014 |title=The Secrets of 'Pulp Fiction': 20 Things You Didn't Know About the Movie on Its 20th Anniversary |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170315174845/http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/19/the-secrets-of-pulp-fiction-20-things-you-didn-t-know-about-the-movie-on-its-20th-anniversary.html |archive-date=March 15, 2017 |work=] |access-date=March 15, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> ], ] and Stephen Hibbert play Maynard, Zed and the gimp.<ref name="RollingStoneNotorious">{{cite magazine|last=Edwards |first=Gavin |date=May 21, 2014 |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/get-the-gimp-breaking-down-pulp-fictions-most-notorious-scene-20140521 |title='Get the Gimp': Breaking Down 'Pulp Fiction's Most Notorious Scene |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170917193424/http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/get-the-gimp-breaking-down-pulp-fictions-most-notorious-scene-20140521 |archive-date=September 17, 2017 |magazine=] |access-date=March 15, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> According to ''The Daily Beast'', these "three psycho ]" that rape Marsellus in Maynard's shop's basement allude to the film '']''.<ref name="DailyBeast" /><ref name="RollingStoneNotorious"/> ] makes a ] as a waiter at Jack Rabbit Slim's, dressed as ]. Buscemi, who had appeared in ''Reservoir Dogs'', was originally considered for the role of Jimmie but was unable to commit.<ref name="DailyBeast" /> ] appears as herself.<ref name=LisaFrance/><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/6lv6qj/kathy_griffin_was_playing_herself_in_pulp_fiction/ |title=Kathy Griffin was playing herself in Pulp Fiction. |url-status=live |website=Reddit |date=July 7, 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210629195239/https://www.reddit.com/r/MovieDetails/comments/6lv6qj/kathy_griffin_was_playing_herself_in_pulp_fiction/ |archive-date=June 29, 2021}} A screenshot from the movie confirming that Griffin was cast as herself may be found here.</ref> ] and ] also appear at Jack Rabbit Slim's as waiter Phillip Morris Page and a ] impersonator, respectively. ] made a cameo via archival footage from the '']'' short '']'' (1947), ] appears as "Gawker #1" after Butch's car accident, and ] portrays Raquel, the daughter of the owner of the junkyard in which Marvin's body is disposed of. Producer ] 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 ] impersonator. Susan Griffiths appears alongside Hoban as a ] impersonator.
Upon arriving back at the Wallace residence, Mia finally reveals her corny joke: "''So there's Papa Tomato, Momma Tomato and Baby Tomato walking along the street. Baby Tomato starts lagging behind, and Papa Tomato starts getting really angry. So, he turns around and squishes Baby Tomato and says, 'Ketchup.' ''"


== Production ==
In their last conversation, they agree not to tell Marsellus of the overdosing incident, both fearing what he might do to either of them.


===The Gold Watch=== === Writing ===
]]]
]
<span data-darkreader-inline-color="" data-darkreader-inline-bgcolor="">The roots of </span>''Pulp Fiction'' <span data-darkreader-inline-color="" data-darkreader-inline-bgcolor="">can be traced back to the late 1980s, when Tarantino and </span>] <span data-darkreader-inline-color="" data-darkreader-inline-bgcolor="">worked together at </span>]<span data-darkreader-inline-color="" data-darkreader-inline-bgcolor="">, a video store in Southern California. Avary recalls that their initial concept was to create three short films with three different filmmakers—himself, Tarantino, and a friend, Adam Rifkin.</span><ref name=":0">{{Cite web |last=Gilchrist |first=Todd |date=2024-10-14 |title='Pulp Fiction' Turns 30: How Quentin Tarantino's Masterpiece Saved Careers, Conquered Film Festivals and Changed Cinema Forever |url=https://variety.com/2024/film/news/pulp-fiction-quentin-tarantino-30th-anniversary-retrospective-part-one-1236175164/ |access-date=2024-10-21 |website=Variety |language=en-US}}</ref> <span data-darkreader-inline-color="" data-darkreader-inline-bgcolor="">Avary wrote the first element of what would become the film's screenplay in the fall of 1990,{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=129}} titled "Pandemonium Reigns," which eventually expanded into a feature-length screenplay. While Tarantino's short film similarly evolved into a full script, Rifkin never completed his contribution, leaving </span>''Pulp Fiction'' <span data-darkreader-inline-color="" data-darkreader-inline-bgcolor="">initially uncertain.</span><ref name=":0" /> The initial inspiration was the three-part horror ] '']'' (1963), by Italian filmmaker ]. The Tarantino–Avary project was provisionally titled "]", after the seminal ] ].<ref name="T14" /> Tarantino's script was produced as '']'', his directorial debut; Avary created the basis for the "Gold Watch" storyline of ''Pulp Fiction''.{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=167}}{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|pp=144–146}}<ref name="PR">{{cite news |last=MacInnis |first=Craig |date=October 8, 1994 |title=Heavyweight Tarantino Won't Be Taken Lightly |work=]}}</ref><ref name="Creative">{{cite interview |last=Bauer |first=Erik |title=Method Writing: Interview with Quentin Tarantino - Originally published in January 1998 |url=https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/method-writing-interview-with-quentin-tarantino/ |access-date=March 19, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210909053014/https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/method-writing-interview-with-quentin-tarantino/ |archive-date=September 9, 2021 |url-status=live |work=Creative Screenwriting |date=August 10, 2013}}</ref>
Aging ] Butch Coolidge (]) accepts a large sum of money from Marsellus, agreeing to "]" (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.


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."<ref>{{cite news|last=Lowry |first=Beverly |title=Criminals Rendered in 3 Parts, Poetically |work=The New York Times |date=September 11, 1994 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/11/movies/the-new-season-film-criminals-rendered-in-3-parts-poetically.html |access-date=May 20, 2023}}</ref> Tarantino explains that the idea "was basically to take like the oldest chestnuts that you've ever seen when it comes to crime stories&nbsp;– the oldest stories in the book&nbsp;... You know, 'Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife'&nbsp;– the oldest story about&nbsp;... 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."<ref name="PF93" /> "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."<ref>"Pulp Fiction: The Facts" (1994 promotional interview), ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref> 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 ] as ] in ]'s '']'' . I wanted him to be a bully and a jerk".{{sfn|Dargis|1994a|p=10}}
There is a flashback at the beginning of the "The Gold Watch" storyline (Butch's story), in which the child Butch Coolidge (Chandler Lindauer) receives his watch from a war buddy of his father's (]), who kept the watch in his ] for two years to hide it from the ] due to his father's death in a ] ] camp. This gold watch, which has been passed down from father to son since his great-grandfather fought in ], is of great sentimental value to Butch.


Tarantino went to work on the script for ''Pulp Fiction'' in Amsterdam in March 1992,{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=139}} possibly at the Winston Hotel in the ].<ref>{{Cite book|title = Rick Steves Amsterdam & the Netherlands|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=DBOCBgAAQBAJ&q=pulp%2520fiction%2520%2522the%2520winston%2522%2520tarantino%2520amsterdam&pg=PT168|publisher = Avalon Travel|date = 2015-04-14|isbn = 978-1-63121-067-9|first = Rick|last = Steves|access-date = October 18, 2020|archive-date = November 13, 2020|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20201113181753/https://books.google.com/books?id=DBOCBgAAQBAJ&q=pulp%2520fiction%2520%2522the%2520winston%2522%2520tarantino%2520amsterdam&pg=PT168|url-status = live}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=167}}{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|pp=144–146}}<ref name="PR" /> Two scenes originally written by Avary for the '']'' 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.{{sfn|Mottram|2006|p=71}} The notion of the crimeworld "cleaner" that became the heart of the episode was inspired by a short, '']'', that Tarantino saw at a film festival. He cast the lead actress, ], in ''Pulp Fiction'' and later backed the filmmakers' production of a feature-length version of ''Curdled''.<ref>Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 13, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref> The script included a couple of made-up commercial brands that often featured in later Tarantino films: ] (a Big Kahuna soda cup appears in ''Reservoir Dogs'') and Red Apple cigarettes.<ref>{{cite web|last=Wells|first=Jeffrey|title=Searching for a Big Kahuna Burger|url=http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/07-96/07-12-96/c04ae104.htm|work=SouthCoast Today|date=1996-07-12|access-date=2007-09-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091008125832/http://archive.southcoasttoday.com/daily/07-96/07-12-96/c04ae104.htm|archive-date=October 8, 2009|url-status=dead}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Charyn |2006|p=65}}{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|loc=p. 147: The published version of the screenplay identifies its basis as "May 1993/last draft," incorporating brief revisions made in August, September, and October (Tarantino , n.p.)}}
Butch is compelled to return to his apartment to retrieve the wristwatch after he discovers his girlfriend Fabienne (]) has forgotten to pack it. He is worried that most likely Marsellus is there looking for him. When Butch enters, the coast is clear. Butch quickly gets the watch and is ready to leave. Satisfied no-one awaits to kill him, Butch grabs a sack of toaster pastries in his kitchen and puts them in the toaster on the counter. While waiting for the pastries to pop out, Butch finally notices a ] ] ] on the ]. Butch is shocked and picks up the gun. Upon hearing his toilet flush in the bathroom next to the kitchen, he readies himself in time to encounter Vincent Vega coming out of the bathroom. They both freeze in shock. Butch concentrates intensely on Vincent, and when the toaster pastries pop up with a ring, the shock causes Butch to fire the gun at Vincent, who falls back into the bathroom dead.


=== Financing ===
While driving back to the motel from the apartment complex, Butch sees Marsellus crossing the street in front of him. They recognize each other, and Butch accelerates into Marcellus. He then collides with another car and rolls into a small parking lot. A group of ladies help Marsellus back to his feet. In his ], he sees Butch running away from the scene. He takes out his gun; the ladies run away. Butch runs down the sidewalk with an injured leg, while Marsellus limps on his trail, firing stray bullets. Butch punches Marsellus repeatedly, while they enter a pawnshop. Butch takes Marsellus gun and is about to execute him, when the pawnshop owner, Maynard, turns a shotgun on the two. Maynard picks up the phone and dials his partner Zed (]). Maynard tells Zed, "The spider just caught a couple of flies!". He knocks out Butch, while Marsellus is already knocked out.
Tarantino and his producer, ], brought the script to ]. Before even seeing ''Reservoir Dogs'', Jersey had attempted to sign Tarantino for his next project.{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=140}} Ultimately a development deal worth around $1&nbsp;million had been struck: The deal gave ], 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.{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=146}}{{sfn|Biskind|2004|loc=p. 167: Biskind says $1&nbsp;million}}{{sfn|Polan|2000|loc=p. 68: Polan says "close to a million dollars"}}<ref>Enhanced Trivia Track, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD, says $900,000 (ch. 14)</ref> Jersey had a distribution and "first look" deal with ], which paid Tarantino for the right to consider exercising its option.{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=148}} In February, ''Pulp Fiction'' appeared on a '']'' list of films in ] at ].<ref>{{cite news |title=TriStar Pictures Slate for 1993 |url=https://variety.com/1993/film/news/tristar-pictures-slate-for-1993-103729/ |work=Variety |date=1993-02-05 |access-date=2007-09-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080630001906/http://www.variety.com/article/VR103729.html?categoryid=13&cs=1&query=%22pulp+fiction%22+1994+tarantino |archive-date=June 30, 2008 |url-status=live}}</ref> In June, however, the studio put the script into ].{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=148}} According to a studio executive, TriStar chief ] found it "too demented".{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=168}} 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.{{sfn|Polan|2000|pp=68–69}}{{sfn|Biskind|2004|pp=167-168}} Avary{{em dash}}who was about to start shooting his own directorial debut, '']''{{em dash}}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.' ...&nbsp;So I thought, 'That's that!{{'"}}{{sfn|Mottram|2006|p=71}}


Bender brought the script to ], the formerly independent studio that had recently been acquired by ]. ]{{em dash}}co-chairman of Miramax Films, along with his brother ]{{em dash}}was instantly enthralled by the script and the company picked it up.{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=168–169}} ], the executive producer, reflected on the bidding process, saying, "Only Harvey placed a bid. Harvey believed he was engaged in a bidding war, but he wasn't. Even now, whenever I see ], he expresses regret for turning down Pulp Fiction. Quentin initially wanted to collaborate with ], given Medavoy's history with the great ] films. Ironically, when the opportunity arose, Mike deemed the script too violent."<ref name=":0" /> ''Pulp Fiction'', the first Miramax Films project to get a ] after the ] acquisition, was budgeted at $8.5&nbsp;million, and at the end $500,000 was returned, bringing the final budget to $8 million.{{efn|name="8.5 Budget"}}<ref name=":0" /> According to Bender, a lower budget meant that the producers could maintain more control over the movie itself.<ref name=":0" />
Marsellus and Butch wake up to find that they have been tied up to chairs with red ]s strapped in their mouths. Maynard and Zed turn out to be ]s and ]. Living in a hole in the floor is The ], their sexual slave. The Gimp, dressed in leather and leashed to the ceiling laughs at Butch while Zed and Maynard take Marsellus into the back room and rape him. Butch escapes his bonds and punches out the gimp, hanging him on his leash. He quickly runs back upstairs and is faced with the choice of saving himself or aiding Marsellus. Knowing Marsellus wanted him dead, he could easily leave Marsellus in the hands of the odd-ball assailants. Instead, he makes a choice to release Marsellus, risking failure or Marsellus rejecting his peace offering.
It became the first movie that Miramax Films completely financed.{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=149}} 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.{{sfn|Polan|2000|p=69}}{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=148}} ''The New York Times'' reported, "Most of the actors received relatively small salaries along with a percentage of the profits."<ref>{{cite news |last=Weinraub |first=Bernard |title=A Film Maker and the Art of the Deal |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/22/movies/a-film-maker-and-the-art-of-the-deal.html |work=The New York Times |date=1994-09-22 |access-date=2007-10-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170709114430/http://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/22/movies/a-film-maker-and-the-art-of-the-deal.html |archive-date=July 9, 2017 |url-status=live}}</ref> The biggest star to sign on to the project was ]. Though he had recently appeared in several big-budget flops, he was still a major overseas draw. On the strength of his name, Miramax Films garnered $11&nbsp;million for the film's worldwide rights, virtually ensuring its profitability.{{sfn|Biskind|2004|loc=p. 170: Tarantino claims the overseas sales were due to his own name}}{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=173}}


=== Casting ===
Butch looks around the shop, finding a variety of weapons, and finally a ] on a high shelf. He goes downstairs and opens the door; Zed is raping Marsellus on a small wooden ], while Maynard watches with glee in his eyes. Butch slashes Maynard across his chest and then, while stunned, stabs him through the torso. Zed retreats from Marsellus and sees Butch. Butch is about to kill Zed when Marsellus gets Maynard's shotgun, simply says "Step aside Butch", and shoots Zed in the groin/thigh. Butch asks "What now?" and awaits Marsellus' reply. Marsellus, who originally intended to hunt Butch down and exact his revenge for the botched boxing fix, now realizes that Butch has both saved his life and submitted to him: he decides that Butch is free as long as he never tells anyone about the rape, and never returns to Los Angeles. Butch agrees, and quickly leaves town on Zed's ] with Fabienne.
], one of the film's producers,<ref>{{Cite web |last=Kuperinsky |first=Amy |date=2024-10-14 |title=Danny DeVito: 'Pulp Fiction' producer Harvey Weinstein reamed me out for casting N.J. legend |url=https://www.nj.com/entertainment/2024/10/danny-devito-pulp-fiction-producer-harvey-weinstein-reamed-me-out-for-casting-nj-legend.html |access-date=2024-10-21 |website=nj |language=en}}</ref> recalls that Weinstein suggested casting ], who had just won an ] for '']''. DeVito responded by stating that Tarantino wanted John Travolta and reminded Weinstein that he had final cut and cast approval. He reflects, "I think he called me every name in the book, but of course, Quentin got what he wanted, and he was absolutely right, and the rest is history."<ref name=":0" />


Bender noted that during the casting process, while Samuel L. Jackson's initial audition was impressive, another candidate later delivered a performance that "blew them away." This prompted Bender to inform Jackson's agent that they might need to consider the other actor. The agent firmly insisted, "No, no, no, you can’t do that. Sam will come back." Initially hesitant to ask him for another audition, Bender discovered that Jackson believed he was simply reading for the role, not auditioning, and his subsequent return resulted in an outstanding performance.<ref name=":0" />
===The Bonnie Situation===
The story returns to Vincent and Jules. During Jules' discussion with and shooting Bret, there was another member of the gang in the bathroom. After Vincent and Jules shoot Bret, the man bursts out of the bathroom and shoots wildly at Vincent and Jules with a large revolver. The bullets strike all around and between them, missing them completely. Astonished, the two shoot the gang member dead; later Jules discusses how it was a miracle that they did not get shot, coming to the conclusion that he was "retiring" from his job as a hit-man for Marsellus.


Harvey Keitel played a crucial role in getting ''Reservoir Dogs'' made and introduced Bruce Willis to Tarantino. Bender and Tarantino went to see him at his house in Malibu, where they learned that he could recite practically the entire movie of ''Reservoir Dogs,'' a movie he loved. After a conversation, Tarantino and Willis took a walk on the beach, and upon their return, Bruce agreed to join the film.<ref name=":0" />
They take Marvin with them in the back seat of their car. During a conversation, Vincent asks Marvin's opinion and carelessly aims his gun towards his head. The gun accidentally goes off, making a huge bloody mess of Marvin's head in the car and on Vincent and Jules. Vincent's words after he shoots Marvin was, "Aww man I just shot Marvin in the face". Then the screen cuts to black and then comes back with Jules drinking coffee in Jimmy's (])house. They ask him can they leave the deceased Marvin in his garage. He originally objected, saying "Did you notice a sign on the front of my house that said dead nigger storage? DID YOU NOTICE A SIGN ON THE FRONT OF MY HOUSE THAT SAID DEAD NIGGER STORAGE?!? Do you know WHY you didn't see that sign? 'Cause it's not there, 'cause storing dead niggers ain't my fucking business, that's why!" Jimmy's wife Bonnie will be coming home soon from work, so they call Marsellus, who arranges for Winston Wolf (]), to help. After cleaning the car, hiding the body in the trunk, and disposing of their bloody clothes, Jules and Vincent have no choice but to wear "]" ]. Mr. Wolf takes the car to a junkyard.
Vincent and Jules decide to go out to breakfast.


Tim Roth, initially interested in the role meant for Willis, suggested Amanda Plummer as a co-star, insisting she should have a gun, a notion Tarantino later incorporated into the script.<ref name=":0" />
===The Diner (second part)===
]
The two men eat at a ] for breakfast. Jules continues on about his idea to retire. Vincent does not like the idea, and goes to the bathroom. A pair of young petty thieves, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, from the first scene, jump up with revolvers and scream obscenities. Pumpkin shouts "Everybody be cool this is a robbery!" Honey Bunny screams "Any one of you fucking pricks move, and I'll execute every last one of you motherfuckers!", which is slightly different from the same scene in the beginning of the movie, where she ends the sentence with "every motherfucking last one of you". This was done intentionally to show the difference between two different perspectives. They demand all of the patrons' wallets, money and valuables. Pumpkin demands that Jules hands over the case he picked up from Bret, but Jules grabs Pumpkin's wrist and pulls him towards the table (so he can't point his gun at Jules), whips his gun out, and holds him at gunpoint in a ]. Honeybunny jumps on a table and screams "You let him go! You let him go! Let go of him, I'm goin' to kill you, you'll fuckin die!" Jules convinces her to be quiet. Vincent emerges from the restroom with gun drawn and pointed at Honey Bunny/Yolanda; in this standoff, not everyone will die, because no one has a gun pointed at Vincent. Jules explains his ambivalence toward his life of crime, takes his wallet back from Pumpkin/Ringo (sans the cash inside because Jules "bought Ringo's life"), and lets the pair go free with all of the patrons' valuables.


=== Filming ===
Vincent suggests that they should leave now, they put their guns in their pants, and walk out of the diner.
] in ]'s '']'' &nbsp;... I said let's go for that whole look."{{r|n=AldoRay|r=Quoted in {{harvtxt|Dargis|1994a|p=10}}. Other sources have claimed that Butch was patterned after Ray's ''Nightfall'' role.<ref>{{harvtxt|Brooker|Brooker|1996|p=234}}</ref> Tarantino's one public statement on the topic, quoted in Polan,<ref>{{harvtxt|Polan|2000|p=23}}</ref> is clearly devoted to Butch's look and not his personality.}} His boxing robe, designed by ], exemplifies Tarantino's notion of costume as symbolic armor.{{sfn|Dargis|1994b|p=17}}]]


] commenced on September 20, 1993.{{sfn|Polan|2000|pp=69, 70}} The lead offscreen talent had all worked with Tarantino on ''Reservoir Dogs''&nbsp;– ] ], ] ], ] ], and ] ]. According to Tarantino, "e had $8&nbsp;million. I wanted it to look like a $20–25&nbsp;million movie. I wanted it to look like an epic. It's an epic in everything&nbsp;– in invention, in ambition, in length, in scope, in everything except the price tag."<ref name="T8">Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 8, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref> The film, he says, was shot "on ] film stock, which is the slowest stock they make. The reason we use it is that it creates an almost ] image, it's lustrous. It's the closest thing we have to 50s ]."{{sfn|Dargis|1994b|p=18}} The largest chunk of the budget&nbsp;– $150,000&nbsp;– went to creating the Jack Rabbit Slim's set.{{sfn|Polan|2000|p=69}} {{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=159}} It was built in a ] warehouse, where it was joined by several other sets, as well as the film's production offices.{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|pp=159–160}} The diner sequence was shot on location in ] at the Hawthorne Grill, known for its ].{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|loc=p. 158: The Hawthorne Grill was torn down not long after the ''Pulp Fiction'' shoot}} For the costumes, Tarantino took his inspiration from French director ], who believed that the clothes his characters wore were their symbolic suits of armor.{{sfn|Dargis|1994b|p=17}} Tarantino cast himself in a modest-sized role as he had in ''Reservoir Dogs''. One of his pop totems, ], a long-discontinued ] cereal, also returned from the earlier film.{{sfn|Hoffman|2005|p=46}} The shoot wrapped on November 30.{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=164}} 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.{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=170}}
The end credits roll.


===Event Spacing=== == Music ==
{{Main|Pulp Fiction (soundtrack){{!}}''Pulp Fiction'' (soundtrack)}}


No ] was composed for ''Pulp Fiction''; Quentin Tarantino instead used an eclectic assortment of ], ], ], and ] songs. ]'s rendition of "]" 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 ] music. It sounds like rock and roll ] music."{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=162}} Tarantino planned to use a ] song, "]" by ], during the film's rape scene, but ultimately discounted it.<ref name="RollingStoneNotorious" />
On the surface, it appears that Pulp Fiction takes place over the course of 2 or 3 consecutive days. However, it is not very likely that the events of The Gold Watch began on the night directly following Mia Wallace and Vincent/The Bonnie Situatuation. Butch makes mention of "the fix getting out" but had he only accepted the bribe the day before, there would have been little time for this to happen. It is quite possible that The Gold Watch happened weeks or even as long as a month after the first day.


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''.<ref>Enhanced Trivia Track, chs. 1, 2, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref> The ] was released along with the film in 1994. The album peaked on the ] chart at number 21.<ref>{{cite web |url={{AllMusic|class=album|id=r204558|pure_url=yes}}|title=''Pulp Fiction'': Charts & Awards/''Billboard'' Albums|publisher= AllMusic.com|access-date=2006-12-26}}</ref> The single, ]'s cover of the ] song "]", reached number 59.<ref>{{cite web |url={{AllMusic|class=album|id=r204558|pure_url=yes}}|title=''Pulp Fiction'': Charts & Awards/''Billboard'' Singles|publisher= AllMusic.com|access-date=2007-09-14}}</ref>
==Film analysis==


Estella Tincknell describes how the particular combination of well-known and obscure recordings helps establish the film as a "self-consciously 'cool' text. use of the mono-tracked, beat-heavy style of early 1960s U.S. 'underground' pop mixed with 'classic' ballads such as ]'s ']' is crucial to the film's postmodern knowingness." She contrasts the soundtrack with that of '']'', the highest-grossing film of 1994, which also relies on period pop recordings: "he version of 'the sixties' offered by ''Pulp Fiction''&nbsp;... 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&nbsp;– surfing, 'hanging'&nbsp;– that is resolutely apolitical." The soundtrack is central, she says, to the film's engagement with the "younger, cinematically knowledgeable spectator" it solicits.{{sfn|Tincknell|2006|p=139}}
===The mysterious briefcase===
]
The only indisputable observations about the stolen attaché case recovered by Jules and Vincent are that its latch lock combination is "]", the "]" as given in the Biblical ], and that the contents of the case either glow yellow or are highly reflective. The only acknowledgements of its contents include the captivated stare of Vincent, the character called "Ringo" and his reaction, "Is that what I think it is?", and his response (to Jules saying "Uh-huh"), "It's beautiful." Whenever asked, director Tarantino has replied that there is no explanation for the case's contents: it is simply a ]. Originally, the ''Pulp Fiction'' case was to contain diamonds (stolen in the film '']''), but this was seen as too mundane. For filming purposes, the briefcase contained an orange lightbulb with a battery. Despite Tarantino's explanation, many theories have been proposed for the contents of the briefcase. A popular explanation among fans is that it contained Marsellus' ].


== Release and reception ==
===Jules' Bible passage===
]
As explained by Jules in the final scene in the diner, he recites a passage from the ] &mdash; ] 25:17 &mdash; each time he kills someone. The passage reads 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 good will 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.''


=== Release and box office ===
In the last scene of the movie, Jules repeats the passage to Pumpkin (who he refers to as Ringo), but phrases it slightly differently.
''Pulp Fiction'' premiered in May 1994 at the ]. The Weinsteins "hit the beach like commandos," bringing the picture's entire cast over to France.{{sfn|Charyn|2006|p=96}} The film was unveiled at a midnight hour screening and caused a sensation.{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=174}}<ref name="Mas">{{cite news|last=Maslin|first=Janet|title=Pulp Fiction; Quentin Tarantino's Wild Ride On Life's Dangerous Road|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/23/movies/film-festival-review-pulp-fiction-quentin-tarantino-s-wild-ride-life-s-dangerous.html|work=]|date=1994-09-23|access-date=2007-09-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180515224056/https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/23/movies/film-festival-review-pulp-fiction-quentin-tarantino-s-wild-ride-life-s-dangerous.html|archive-date=May 15, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> It won the ], the festival's top prize, generating a further wave of publicity.<ref name="PdO">{{cite web |url=http://www.festival-cannes.com/index.php/en/archives/awards/1994 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013220900/http://www.festival-cannes.com/index.php/en/archives/awards/1994 |archive-date=2007-10-13|title= All the Awards—Festival 1994|publisher=Cannes Festival|access-date=2007-09-14}}</ref>


The first U.S. review of the film was published on May 23 in industry trade magazine '']''. ] called ''Pulp Fiction'' a "spectacularly entertaining piece of pop culture&nbsp;... a startling, massive success."<ref name="TM">{{cite magazine|last=McCarthy|first=Todd|authorlink=Todd McCarthy|title=''Pulp Fiction''|url=https://variety.com/1994/film/reviews/pulp-fiction-1200437049/|magazine=]|date=1994-05-23|access-date=2007-09-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171228172344/https://variety.com/1994/film/reviews/pulp-fiction-1200437049/|archive-date=December 28, 2017|url-status=live}}</ref> From Cannes forward, Tarantino was on the road continuously, promoting the film.{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=173}} Over the next few months it played in smaller festivals around Europe, building buzz: Nottingham, Munich, ], Locarno, ], and ].<ref>{{cite news|title=''Pulp Fiction'' |url=https://www.variety.com/profiles/Film/main/30051/Pulp+Fiction.html?dataSet=1&query=%22pulp+fiction%22+1994 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071012013656/http://variety.com/profiles/Film/main/30051/Pulp%2BFiction.html?dataSet=1&query=%22pulp%2Bfiction%22%2B1994 |archive-date=2007-10-12 |work=Variety |access-date=2007-09-20 |url-status=dead}}</ref> 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 ] state. It's like, all of a sudden, 'I gotta watch this&nbsp;... 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."<ref name="T24">Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 24, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref> In late September, it opened the ]. '']'' published its review the day of the opening. ] 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&nbsp;... 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."<ref name="Mas" />
''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 good will 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 <b>that I am</b> the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon <b>you</b>.''
{{external media| float = right| video1 = }}
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 ]; it went wide immediately, into 1,100 theaters."{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=189}} 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.{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=171}} ''Pulp Fiction'' was the ] its first weekend with a gross of $9,311,882, edging out a ] vehicle, '']'', which was in its second week and playing at more than twice as many theaters. The gross claimed by Miramax was disputed by others. ] initially reported an estimated gross of $8.9&nbsp;million for ''The Specialist'' with Bob Weinstein then reporting a gross for ''Pulp Fiction'' of $9.1&nbsp;million, claiming that the film was on another 100 screens that had previously been overlooked. Warners then updated their gross to $9.3&nbsp;million, claiming they had made a calculation error.<ref>{{cite magazine|magazine=]|page=1|last=Klady|first=Leonard|date=October 17, 1994|title=Shootout at the B.O. peak}}</ref>
Early Monday morning, Miramax reported a gross of $9.3&nbsp;million with Warners reporting $8.9&nbsp;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&nbsp;million for the weekend.<ref>{{cite magazine|magazine=]|page=1|last=Klady|first=Leonard|date=October 18, 1994|title='Pulp' claims B.O. title; competitors call it fiction}}</ref>


Against its budget of $8.5&nbsp;million and about $10&nbsp;million in marketing costs, ''Pulp Fiction'' grossed $107.93&nbsp;million at the U.S. box office, making it the first Miramax film to surpass $100&nbsp;million in the United States and Canada.<ref>{{cite magazine|magazine=]|title=Miramax in hit land|page=33|date=August 22, 1997}}</ref> Worldwide, it took in nearly $213&nbsp;million.{{efn|name=BoxOffice|{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=189}}{{sfn|Waxman|2005|p=78}}<ref name="Mojo"/> ''Box Office Mojo'' gives $106&nbsp;million in foreign grosses for a worldwide total of $213.9&nbsp;million; Biskind and Waxman apparently concur that $105M&nbsp;/ $212.9M are the correct figures.}} 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=1994&p=.htm|title=1994 Domestic Grosses|website=Box Office Mojo|access-date=2007-09-12|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717164659/http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?yr=1994&p=.htm|archive-date=July 17, 2011|url-status=live}}</ref> 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."{{sfn|Real|1996|p=259}} As '']'' puts it, "The movie was nothing less than a national cultural phenomenon."<ref>{{cite web|last=Rose |first=Andy |title=10 Years of MovieMaker, 10 Years of Indie Film Growth|url=http://www.moviemaker.com/articles/item/10_years_of_moviemaker_10_years_of_indie_film_2952/|work=MovieMaker|date=Winter 2004|access-date=2007-09-21|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071122005136/http://www.moviemaker.com/articles/item/10_years_of_moviemaker_10_years_of_indie_film_2952/|archive-date=2007-11-22}}</ref> 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.{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|pp=171, 13}}
{{wikisourcepar|Bible, King James, Ezekiel#Chapter 25|Ezekiel 25}}
This is, in fact, not an actual passage from the Bible, but a ] of several passages. Ezekiel 25:17 in the King James Version reads:
:''And I will execute great vengeance upon thee with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the LORD, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.''


=== Critical response ===
This is actually a typically obscure ] to ''']''' / ''']''', a 1976 film starring ] (whom Tarantino has hailed as ''"the greatest actor to ever work in martial arts films"'' and has worked with in the making of '']''), which opens with a nearly identical misquote, likewise attributed to Ezekiel 25:17:
{{Rotten Tomatoes prose|{{RT data|score}}|{{RT data|average}}|{{RT data|count}}|Injecting its compendium of crime tales with the patois of everyday conversation, ''Pulp Fiction'' is a cinematic shot of adrenaline that cements writer-director Quentin Tarantino as an audacious purveyor of killer kino.|ref=yes|access-date={{RT data|access date}}}} On ], the film has a ] of 95 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.metacritic.com/movie/pulp-fiction|title=Pulp Fiction Reviews|publisher=]|work=]|access-date=December 29, 2006}}{{cbignore}}</ref> Audiences polled by ] gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.cinemascore.com|title=Find CinemaScore|format=Type "Pulp Fiction" in the search box|publisher=]|access-date=March 20, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180102130540/https://www.cinemascore.com/|archive-date=January 2, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref>


The response of major American film reviewers was widely favorable. ] 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, ] way that you want to rub noses in it&nbsp;– the noses of those zombie writers who take 'screenwriting' classes that teach them the formulas for 'hit films{{'"}}.<ref>{{cite news|last=Ebert|first=Roger|title=Pulp Fiction|url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/pulp-fiction-1994|work=RogerEbert.com|date=October 14, 1994|access-date=September 12, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130216033721/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19941014%2FREVIEWS%2F410140304%2F1023|archive-date=February 16, 2013|url-status=live}}</ref> ] of '']'' 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."<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Corliss|first=Richard|title=A Blast to the Heart|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981560-1,00.html|magazine=]|date=October 10, 1994|access-date=September 11, 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090402010106/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,981560-1,00.html|archive-date=April 2, 2009|url-status=dead}}</ref> In '']'', ] wrote, "The miracle of Quentin Tarantino's ''Pulp Fiction'' is how, being composed of secondhand, debased parts, it succeeds in gleaming like something new."<ref>{{cite news|last=Ansen |first=David |title=The Redemption of Pulp |work=] |date=October 9, 1994 |url=https://www.newsweek.com/redemption-pulp-189436 |access-date=May 21, 2023}}</ref> "You get intoxicated by it," wrote '']''{{'}}s ], "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."<ref name="OG" /> "There's a special kick that comes from watching something this thrillingly alive", wrote ] of '']''. "''Pulp Fiction'' is indisputably great."<ref>{{cite magazine|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/pulp-fiction-19941014|title=Pulp Fiction|last=Travers|first=Peter|date=October 14, 1994|magazine=Rolling Stone|access-date=March 10, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110415121356/http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/pulp-fiction-19941014|archive-date=April 15, 2011|url-status=live}}</ref>
:''The path of the righteous man and defender is beset on all sides by the iniquity 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 finder 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 lay my love upon them! (Ezekiel 25:17)''


The '']'' was one of the few major news outlets to publish a negative review on the film's opening weekend. ] 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."<ref>{{cite web |last=Turan |first=Kenneth |title=Quentin Tarantino's Gangster Rap |work=] |date=October 14, 1994 |access-date=April 10, 2018 |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-10-14-ca-50020-story.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180505050442/http://articles.latimes.com/1994-10-14/entertainment/ca-50020_1_pulp-fiction |archive-date=May 5, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> 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, ] of '']'' felt that "the way that has been so widely ravened up and drooled over verges on the disgusting. ''Pulp Fiction'' nourishes, abets, cultural slumming."<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Kauffman|first=Stanley|title=Shooting Up|magazine=]|date=November 14, 1994|access-date=April 10, 2018|url=https://newrepublic.com/article/61392/shooting|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180411025845/https://newrepublic.com/article/61392/shooting|archive-date=April 11, 2018|url-status=dead}}</ref> Responding to comparisons between Tarantino's film and the work of ] director ], especially his first, most famous feature, ] of the '']'' wrote, "The fact that ''Pulp Fiction'' is garnering more extravagant raves than '']'' ever did tells you plenty about which kind of cultural references are regarded as more fruitful&nbsp;– namely, the ones we already have and don't wish to expand."<ref name=Profusion/> Observing in the '']'' that "o film arrives with more advance hype", ] was unswayed: "titillation cures neither hollowness nor shallowness".<ref>{{cite news|last=Simon |first=John |title=''Pulp Fiction''|url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n22_v46/ai_15999907/pg_1|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071130072735/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n22_v46/ai_15999907/pg_1|url-status=dead|archive-date=November 30, 2007|work=]|date=November 21, 1994|access-date=October 8, 2010}}</ref>
==Music==
{{main|Pulp Fiction (soundtrack)}}


Debate about the film spread beyond the review pages, with its violence often being the theme. In '']'', 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".<ref>{{cite news |last=Britt |first=Donna |title=Let's Lose the Gory 'Gulp' Fiction |newspaper=] |date=October 25, 1994 |access-date=April 10, 2018 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1994/10/25/lets-lose-the-gory-gulp-fiction/dbe0b009-b042-46ad-b245-cc5ad0f4be01/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180615032351/https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1994/10/25/lets-lose-the-gory-gulp-fiction/dbe0b009-b042-46ad-b245-cc5ad0f4be01/ |archive-date=June 15, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> Some commentators took exception to the film's frequent use of the word "]" (mentioned 18 times). In the '']'', 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".<ref>{{cite web |last=Boyd |first=Todd |title=Tarantino's Mantra? |work=] |date=November 6, 1994 |access-date=April 10, 2018 |url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/1994/11/06/tarantinos-mantra/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180411025837/http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-11-06/entertainment/9411060361_1_n-word-hipness-true-romance |archive-date=April 11, 2018 |url-status=live }}</ref> In Britain, ], writing in '']'', set the tone for much subsequent criticism: "Tarantino represents the final triumph of ], which is to empty the artwork of all content, thus avoiding its capacity to do anything except helplessly represent our agonies&nbsp;... 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."<ref>Wood, James (November 12, 1994). '']''.</ref>
==Awards==
===Wins===
*] (]; stories by ] & Roger Avary)
*] from the ]


===Nominations=== === Awards season ===
Around the turn of the year, ''Pulp Fiction'' was named Best Picture by the ], ], ], ], ], Southeastern Film Critics Association, and ].{{efn|National Society of Film Critics,<ref name="NSFC" /> National Board of Review,<ref>{{cite web |title=1994 Award Winners |url=https://nationalboardofreview.org/award-years/1994/ |website=National Board of Review |access-date=24 May 2023}}</ref> Los Angeles Film Critics Society,<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-12-11-mn-7795-story.html |title='Pulp Fiction,' Tarantino Win L.A. Film Critics Awards |work=Los Angeles Times | date=December 11, 1994 |access-date=May 24, 2023}}</ref> Boston Society of Film Critics,<ref>{{cite web |title=Boston Society of Film Critics Awards 1994 |url=https://bostonfilmcritics.org/past-winners-1990s/ |website=bostonfilmcritics.org |date=July 27, 2018 |access-date=24 May 2023}}</ref> Society of Texas Film Critics,<ref>{{cite news |title=Texas film critics group doles out awards for the year's best in movies |url=http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=AASB&p_theme=aasb&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EAD96057255BCDF&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM |access-date=24 May 2023 |work=The Austin American-Statesman |date=1994-12-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121024041911/http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=AASB&p_theme=aasb&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EAD96057255BCDF&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM |archive-date=2012-10-24}}</ref> Kansas City Film Critics Circle<ref>{{cite web |title=1994 Awards |url=https://kcfcc.org/kcfcc-award-winners-1990-99/ |website=kcfcc.org |date=December 14, 2013 |access-date=24 May 2023}}</ref>}} Tarantino was named Best Director by all seven of those organizations as well as by the ]<ref>{{cite news |title=Critics Honor 'Pulp Fiction' And 'Quiz Show' |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/16/movies/critics-honor-pulp-fiction-and-quiz-show.html |access-date=24 May 2023 |work=The New York Times |date=1994-12-16}}</ref> and ].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://chicagofilmcritics.org/awards-blog/archives |title=The 7th Annual Chicago Film Critics Awards |website=chicagofilmcritics.org |date=January 2013 |access-date=2023-05-24}}</ref> The screenplay won several prizes, with various awarding bodies ascribing credit differently. At the ], Tarantino, named as sole recipient of the Best Screenplay honor, failed to mention Avary in his acceptance speech.{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=206}} In February 1995, the film received seven Oscar nominations&nbsp;– 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 ], presented on February 25, but none took home the honor.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.sagawards.org/1_award_nom |title=1st Annual SAG Awards Nominees |website=SAG Awards |access-date=2009-08-15 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081015185836/http://www.sagawards.org/1_award_nom |archive-date=October 15, 2008}}</ref> At the Academy Awards ceremony the following month, Tarantino and Avary were announced as joint winners of the ].<ref name="Awards">{{cite web|url= http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/ampas_awards/DisplayMain.jsp;jsessionid=F5E20EAF29DB9C3219EAAC6FE3B868C9.jicama?curTime=1167423497977|title= Academy Awards for Pulp Fiction|publisher= AMPAS|access-date= 2006-12-29|url-status=dead|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20131029194626/http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/ampas_awards/DisplayMain.jsp|archive-date= October 29, 2013|df= mdy-all}}</ref> The furor around the film was still going strong: much of the March issue of '']'' was devoted to its critical dissection.{{sfn|Charyn|2006|p=87}} ''Pulp Fiction'' garnered four honors at the ], held at the end of the month&nbsp;– ], ], ] (Jackson), and ] (Tarantino).<ref>{{cite news |last=Natale |first=Richard |title='Pulp Fiction' Wings It at Independent Spirit Awards |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-03-27-ca-47721-story.html |work=Los Angeles Times |date=1995-03-27 |access-date=2009-08-15 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110430111123/http://articles.latimes.com/1995-03-27/entertainment/ca-47721_1_independent-spirit-awards |archive-date=April 30, 2011 |url-status=live }}</ref> At the ] (BAFTA), Tarantino and Avary shared the ], and Jackson won for ].<ref name="BAFTA">{{cite web |url= http://www.bafta.org/site/webdav/site/myjahiasite/shared/import/Film_Winners_1990-1999.pdf |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070202074453/http://www.bafta.org/site/webdav/site/myjahiasite/shared/import/Film_Winners_1990-1999.pdf |archive-date= 2007-02-02|title=Film Winners 1990–1999|publisher= BAFTA|access-date=2006-12-29}}</ref> The film was nominated for the ] of the ].<ref>{{cite news|url=http://archives.lesoir.be/loulou-gaste_t-19950109-Z08Z7R.html|title="Exotica" à l'UCC|journal=]|date=January 9, 1995|page=9|access-date=October 27, 2012|language=fr|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130120104851/http://archives.lesoir.be/loulou-gaste_t-19950109-Z08Z7R.html|archive-date=January 20, 2013|url-status=dead}}</ref>
*] (])
*] (])
*] (])
*] (])
*] (])
*] (], producer)


The February 2020 issue of '']'' lists ''Pulp Fiction'' alongside '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', '']'', and '']'' as "''The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars''".<ref name="The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars">{{cite news|title=The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars|url=https://www.vulture.com/article/best-oscar-best-picture-losers.html|date=February 10, 2020|work=]|publisher=]|access-date=2020-02-24|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200306121315/https://www.vulture.com/article/best-oscar-best-picture-losers.html|archive-date=March 6, 2020|url-status=dead}}</ref>
==See also==
*]


==References and footnotes== == Legacy and influence ==
''Pulp Fiction'' quickly came to be regarded as one of the most significant films of its era. In 1995, in a special edition of '']'' devoted to Tarantino, ] argued that the work posed a major challenge to the "ossification of American movies with their brutal formulas". In Siskel's view,
<references />


<blockquote>
==External links==
the violent intensity of ''Pulp Fiction'' calls to mind other violent watershed films that were considered classics in their time and still are. ]'s '']'' , ]'s '']'' , and ]'s '']'' . 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.<ref name="SE">"Pulp Faction: The Tarantino Generation", ''Siskel & Ebert'', ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref>
{{wikiquote|Pulp Fiction}}
</blockquote>
*{{imdb title|id=0110912|title=Pulp Fiction}}
*, from the ]
*]'s of ''Pulp Fiction''
*
*
* Pulp Fiction movie info


Ken Dancyger writes that its "imitative and innovative style"&nbsp;– like that of its predecessor, '']''&nbsp;– represents
{{Footer Movies Quentin Tarantino}}

<blockquote>
a new phenomenon, the movie whose style is created from the context of movie life rather than real life. The consequence is twofold&nbsp;– the presumption of deep knowledge on the part of the audience of those forms such as the ]s 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.{{sfn|Dancyger|2002|p=228}}
</blockquote>
], ] and ] at the ], for the film's 20th anniversary tribute.]]
In a widely covered speech on May 31, 1995, ], Senate Majority Leader and ] presidential candidate for the then-upcoming ] (as well as the party's vice presidential nominee in the ]), 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, instead citing two less-celebrated movies based on Tarantino screenplays, ]'s '']'' and ]'s '']''.<ref>{{cite news| last =Janofsky| first =Michael| title =Reviews by Weekend Moviegoers Are In. Dole Gets a Thumbs Down| url =https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/04/us/reviews-by-weekend-moviegoers-are-in-dole-gets-a-thumbs-down.html| work =The New York Times| date =1995-06-04| access-date =2007-10-08| archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20180602064611/https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/04/us/reviews-by-weekend-moviegoers-are-in-dole-gets-a-thumbs-down.html| archive-date =June 2, 2018| url-status =live}} {{cite magazine| last =Lacayo| first =Richard| title =Violent Reaction| url =http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983035-1,00.html| magazine =Time| date =1995-06-12| access-date =2007-10-08| archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20080422075503/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,983035-1,00.html| archive-date =April 22, 2008| url-status =dead}}</ref> In September 1996, Dole did accuse ''Pulp Fiction''&nbsp;– which he had not seen at the time&nbsp;– of promoting "the romance of heroin".<ref>{{cite web| last =Gorman| first =Steven J.| title =Dole Takes on Drug Issue: Clinton Faulted for 'Naked' Lack of Leadership| url =http://www.thefreelibrary.com/DOLE+TAKES+ON+DRUG+ISSUE+:+CLINTON+FAULTED+FOR+%60NAKED'+LACK+OF...-a083968058| work =Daily News| date =1996-08-19| access-date =2007-10-08| archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20080719202147/http://www.thefreelibrary.com/DOLE+TAKES+ON+DRUG+ISSUE+%3A+CLINTON+FAULTED+FOR+%60NAKED%27+LACK+OF...-a083968058| archive-date =July 19, 2008| url-status =live}}</ref>

Paula Rabinowitz expresses the general film industry opinion that ''Pulp Fiction'' "simultaneously resurrected John Travolta and film noir".{{sfn|Rabinowitz|2002|p=15}} In Peter Biskind's description, it created a "guys-with-guns frenzy".{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=258}} The film has also been labeled as a ]<ref name="washingtonpost.com" /> and a "]".{{sfn|Waxman|2005|p=64}}{{sfn|Silver|Ursini|2004|p=65}}{{sfn|Real|1996|p=122}} Critic ], however, argued against the classification of ''Pulp Fiction'' into the neo-noir genre: "The old-time ] 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."{{sfn|O'Brien|1994|p=90}} Similarly, ] calls it "more gangland ] than neo-noir",{{sfn|Christopher|2006|p=240}}{{sfn|Rubin|1999|pp=174–175}} and ] suggests that its "trippy fantasy landscape" characterizes it more definitively than any genre label.{{sfn|Hirsch|1997|p=359}} 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 ]'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 '']'' before offing their victim. Not since '']'' has one man appeared from relative obscurity to redefine the art of moviemaking."{{sfn|Dawson|1995a|p=207}} Among the first Hollywood films cited as its imitators were '']'' (1995), in which Tarantino acted,<ref name="SE" /> '']'' (1995),<ref>{{cite news|last=Rosenbaum |first=Jonathan |title=The World According to Harvey and Bob (''Smoke, The Glass Shield'') |work=Chicago Reader |date=June 16, 1995 |url=https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2023/03/the-world-according-to-harvey-and-bob/ |access-date=May 21, 2023}}</ref> and '']'' (1996).{{sfn|Hirsch|1997|p=360}} It "triggered a myriad of clones", writes Fiona Villella.<ref name="FV">{{cite web |last= Villella |first=Fiona A. | title = Circular Narratives: Highlights of Popular Cinema in the '90s | url =http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/3/circular.html#b2|work=Senses of Cinema |date=January 2000| access-date=2006-12-31 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20061126215319/http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/3/circular.html#b2 |archive-date = November 26, 2006}}</ref> Internationally, according to ], it "not only influenced a British brand of noir, but extended the noir vision virtually around the world".{{sfn|Desser|2003|p=519}} ''Pulp Fiction''{{'}}s effect on film form was still reverberating in 2007, when ] of '']'' credited it with initiating the ongoing cycle of disordered cinematic narratives.<ref name="Den">{{cite magazine|last=Denby|first=David|title=The New Disorder|url=https://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/03/05/070305crat_atlarge_denby|magazine=The New Yorker|date=2007-03-05|access-date=2007-09-20|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090404093026/http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2007/03/05/070305crat_atlarge_denby|archive-date=April 4, 2009|url-status=live}}</ref>

According to '']'', the trajectory of ''Pulp Fiction'' from Cannes launch to commercial smash "forever altered the game" of so-called ].<ref>{{cite news|last=Elley|first=Derek|title=Who Launched Whom?|url=https://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=features2006&content=jump&jump=story&dept=cannes&nav=FCannes&articleid=VR1117942945|work=Variety|date=2006-05-14|access-date=2007-09-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090402142636/http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=features2006&content=jump&jump=story&dept=cannes&nav=FCannes&articleid=VR1117942945|archive-date=April 2, 2009|url-status=dead}}</ref> It "cemented Miramax's place as the reigning indie superpower", writes Biskind.{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=189}} "''Pulp'' became the '']'' of independents, exploding expectations for what an indie film could do at the box office."{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p=195}} The film's large financial return on its small budget

<blockquote>
transform the industry's attitude toward the lowly indies&nbsp;... spawning a flock of me-too classics divisions&nbsp;... 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&nbsp;... 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&nbsp;... copy Miramax's marketing and distribution strategies.{{sfn|Biskind|2004|p= 193}}
</blockquote>

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&nbsp;– one of Hollywood's highest-paid performers&nbsp;– to appear in ''Pulp Fiction''.<ref>{{cite news|last=Koehler|first=Robert|title=For Art's Sake|url=https://variety.com/2001/film/awards/for-art-s-sake-2-1117794890/|work=Variety|date=2001-03-07|access-date=2007-09-21|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081012072032/http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117794890.html?categoryid=1037&cs=1&query=%22pulp+fiction%22+1994+tarantino|archive-date=October 12, 2008|url-status=live}}</ref> In 2024, on the film's 30th anniversary, the magazine wrote that the film "revived the career of John Travolta, minted a star in Samuel L. Jackson and spawned a still-thriving cottage industry of knockoffs and imitation films."<ref name=":0" />

It has been described as a "major cultural event", an "international phenomenon" that influenced television, music, literature, and advertising.<ref name="FV" /><ref>{{cite web |last=Samuels |first=Mark |title=''Pulp Fiction'' |url=http://www.totalfilm.com/features/specials/pulp_fiction |work=Total Film |date=2006-11-08 |access-date=2007-09-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071009170856/http://www.totalfilm.com/features/specials/pulp_fiction |archive-date=October 9, 2007 |url-status=dead}} For musical influence, see, e.g., {{cite magazine|last=Sarig|first=Roni|title=Fun Lovin' Criminals—''Come Find Yourself''|url=https://www.rollingstone.com/artists/funlovincriminals/albums/album/107552/review/5944992/come_find_yourself|magazine=Rolling Stone|year=1996|access-date=2007-10-08|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080621204015/http://www.rollingstone.com/artists/funlovincriminals/albums/album/107552/review/5944992/come_find_yourself|archive-date=2008-06-21}}</ref> Not long after its release, it was identified as a significant focus of attention within the growing community of Internet users.<ref>{{cite news|last=Butler |first=Robert W. |title=''Pulp Fiction'' Is a Cultural Phenomenon—And That's a Fact |work=] |date=March 17, 1996}}</ref> Adding ''Pulp Fiction'' to his roster of ] in 2001, Roger Ebert called it "the most influential film of the decade".<ref>{{cite news |last=Ebert |first=Roger |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-pulp-fiction-1994 |title=Great Movies: ''Pulp Fiction'' (1994) |date=2001-06-10 |access-date=2006-12-29 |work=Chicago Sun-Times |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130213235156/http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20010610%2FREVIEWS08%2F106100301%2F1023 |archive-date=February 13, 2013 |url-status=live }}</ref> Four years later, ''Time''{{'}}s Corliss wrote much the same: "(unquestionably) the most influential American movie of the 90s".<ref name="T100">{{cite magazine | title =All-Time 100 Movies: Pulp Fiction (1994) | url =http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/0,23220,pulp_fiction,00.html | magazine =Time | access-date =2007-05-15 | date =2005-02-12 | archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20070603155000/http://www.time.com/time/2005/100movies/0,23220,pulp_fiction,00.html | archive-date =June 3, 2007 | url-status =dead }}</ref>

Several scenes and images from the film achieved iconic status; in 2008, '']'' declared, "You'd be hard-pressed, by now, to name a moment from Quentin Tarantino's film that isn't iconic."<ref name=EWClassic/> Jules and Vincent's "Royale with Cheese" dialogue became famous.<ref>See, e.g., {{cite news|last=Wilson|first=Bee|title=The Joy and Horror of Junk Food|url=http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25348-2597639,00.html|work=Times Literary Supplement|date=2007-02-14|access-date=2007-10-11|location=London|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071121220459/http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25348-2597639,00.html|archive-date=November 21, 2007|url-status=dead}} {{cite news|last=Gates|first=Anita|title=Movies: Critic's Choice|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/tv/movies-critic-s-choice.html|work=The New York Times|date=2004-08-01|access-date=2007-10-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180602064545/https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/tv/movies-critic-s-choice.html|archive-date=June 2, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> It was referenced more than a decade and a half later in the Travolta vehicle '']''.<ref>{{cite web|last=Rea|first=Steven|title=Travolta, Rhys Meyers Pummel Paris|url=http://articles.philly.com/2010-02-05/entertainment/24955905_1_charlie-wax-secret-agent-man-pierre-morel|work=]|date=2010-02-05|access-date=2010-02-09|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160314104706/http://articles.philly.com/2010-02-05/entertainment/24955905_1_charlie-wax-secret-agent-man-pierre-morel|archive-date=March 14, 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref> The adrenalin shot to Mia Wallace's heart is on '']''{{'}}s list of "100 Greatest Movie Moments".{{sfn|Waxman|2005|loc=p. 72: Waxman misidentifies the list, which appeared in ''Premiere''{{'}}s March 2003 issue, as "100 Most Memorable Movie Scenes"}} The scene of Travolta and Thurman's characters dancing has been frequently homaged, most unambiguously in the 2005 film '']'', starring the same two actors.<ref>{{cite web|last=Laverick |first=Daniel |title=Selling a Movie in Two Minutes—The Modern Day Film Trailer|url=http://www.close-upfilm.com/features/Featuresarchive/sellingamovie.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071011212644/http://www.close-upfilm.com/features/Featuresarchive/sellingamovie.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=2007-10-11|website=Close-Up Film|access-date=2007-09-11}}</ref> 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, ] reported that "London transport workers have painted over an iconic mural by 'guerrilla artist' ]&nbsp;... The image depicted a scene from Quentin Tarantino's ''Pulp Fiction'', with Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta clutching bananas instead of guns."<ref>{{cite news|title=Iconic Banksy Image Painted Over|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6575345.stm|work=BBC News|date=2007-04-20|access-date=2007-09-11|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100106021340/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6575345.stm|archive-date=January 6, 2010|url-status=live}}</ref> Certain lines were adopted popularly as catchphrases, in particular Marsellus's threat, "I'm 'a get medieval on your ass."{{sfn|Dinshaw|1997|p=116}} 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 '']'', Jackson's character ], presumed dead, visits his own gravestone, on which, below Fury's name is inscribed "The path of the righteous man&nbsp;..." Ezekiel 25:17.<ref>{{cite news|title="Napalm" Speech Tops Movie Poll|url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3362603.stm|work=BBC News|date=2004-01-02|access-date=2007-09-19|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090708135503/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3362603.stm|archive-date=July 8, 2009|url-status=live}}</ref> In 2019, it was reported that ], ] to ] ], quoted Jules by telling Conservative MPs to "be cool like ]s" as political pressure built to request an extension to the date of ].<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.indy100.com/article/dominic-cummings-pulp-fiction-cool-like-fonzies-boris-johnson-brexit-9095526|title=Dominic Cummings: Boris Johnson's adviser 'quoted Pulp Fiction' by telling aides they need to be 'cool like Fonzies'|last=Duncan|first=Conrad|date=8 September 2019|work=]|access-date=9 September 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190909064808/https://www.indy100.com/article/dominic-cummings-pulp-fiction-cool-like-fonzies-boris-johnson-brexit-9095526|archive-date=September 9, 2019|url-status=dead}}</ref>

''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.<ref name=EWClassic/> That same year, the ]'s "Ten Top Ten" poll ranked it number 7 all-time in the gangster film genre.<ref name="AFI10Top10">{{cite web | website = American Film Institute | title = AFI's 10 Top 10 | date = 2008-06-17 | url = http://www.afi.com/10top10/gangster.html | access-date = 2008-06-18 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130116145351/http://www.afi.com/10top10/gangster.html | archive-date = January 16, 2013 | url-status = live }}</ref> In 2007, it was voted 94th overall on the ] list.<ref name=AFI10>{{cite web|url=https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movies-10th-anniversary-edition/ |title=AFI's 100 Years ... 100 Movies—10th Anniversary Edition |website=American Film Institute |access-date=2007-09-20 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110716071157/http://connect.afi.com/site/PageServer?pagename=micro_100landing |archive-date=2011-07-16}}</ref> In 2005, it was named one of "]".<ref name="T100" /> As of September 2018, it is number 54 on Metacritic's list of all-time highest scores.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.metacritic.com/browse/movies/score/metascore/all/filtered|title=Best Movies of All Time|work=]|access-date=September 29, 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190102032945/https://www.metacritic.com/browse/movies/score/metascore/all/filtered|archive-date=January 2, 2019|url-status=live}}</ref> The film ranks very highly in popular surveys. A 2008 '']'' poll combining the opinions of readers, movie industry professionals, and critics named ''Pulp Fiction'' the ninth-best film of all time.<ref>{{cite web| title =The 500 Greatest Movies Of All Time| url =https://www.empireonline.com/500/94.asp| work =Empire| date =September 2008| access-date =2008-12-13| archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20131101010231/http://www.empireonline.com/500/94.asp| archive-date =November 1, 2013| url-status=dead}}</ref> In a 2006 readers' poll by the British magazine '']'', it ranked as the number three film in history.<ref>{{cite web |last=Mueller |first=Matt |title=''Total Film'' Presents The Top 100 Movies Of All Time |url=http://www.totalfilm.com/features/total_film_presents_the_top_100_movies_of_all_time |work=Total Film |date=2006-10-17 |access-date=2007-09-21 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080924181919/http://www.totalfilm.com/features/total_film_presents_the_top_100_movies_of_all_time |archive-date=September 24, 2008 |url-status=dead}}</ref> It was voted as the fourth-greatest film of all time in a nationwide poll for Britain's ] in 2001.<ref>{{cite news| title =''Star Wars'' Voted Best Film Ever| url =http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1676023.stm| work =BBC News| date =2001-11-26| access-date =2007-09-14| archive-url =https://web.archive.org/web/20090302155719/http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1676023.stm| archive-date =March 2, 2009| url-status =live}}</ref> In 2015, ''Pulp Fiction'' ranked 28th on ]'s "100 Greatest American Films" list, voted on by film critics from around the world.<ref>{{cite web|date=July 20, 2015|title=100 Greatest American Films|url=http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150720-the-100-greatest-american-films|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160916105535/http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150720-the-100-greatest-american-films|archive-date=September 16, 2016|access-date=July 21, 2015|work=BBC}}</ref>

== Critical analysis ==
Tarantino has stated that he originally planned "to do a '']'' movie", referring to the magazine largely responsible for popularizing ] detective fiction. "t kind of went somewhere else".{{sfn|O'Brien|1994|p=90}} 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 ] ]&nbsp;... Both dealt heavily in the realm of improbable coincidences and cruel cosmic jokes, a realm that ''Pulp Fiction'' makes its own."{{sfn|O'Brien|1994|pp=90, 91}} 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''.{{sfn|O'Brien|1994|p=91}} Philip French describes the film's narrative as a "circular movement or ] of a kind ] and ] would admire".<ref>{{cite news|last=French|first=Philip|title=''Pulp Fiction''|url=https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2006/mar/26/1|work=The Observer|date=2006-03-26|access-date=2008-12-28|location=London|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160817181404/https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2006/mar/26/1|archive-date=August 17, 2016|url-status=live}}</ref> James Mottram regards crime novelist ], 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.{{sfn|Mottram|2006|p=228, 77}}

Film scholar/historian ] sees the "flourishes, the apparent witty banality of the dialogue, the goofy fracturing of temporality a patina over a ]. The pastiche&nbsp;... is essentially of two films that Tarantino can't seem to get out of his mind: '']'' ], who loved ''Pulp Fiction'' and the way the film was told<ref name="Scorsese">{{cite episode| title = Martin Scorsese's Best Films of the '90s| series=Roger Ebert & the Movies| series-link=At the Movies (1986 TV program)| credits=] (guest host), ] (host)| airdate=2000-02-26| season=1| number=26}}</ref>] and '']'' ]]."{{sfn|Kolker|2000|p=249}} He contrasts ''Pulp Fiction'' with postmodern Hollywood predecessors '']'' (1991; starring Willis) and '']'' (1993; starring ]) that "took the joke too far&nbsp;... simply mocked or suggested that they were smarter than the audience" and flopped.{{sfn|Kolker|2000|p=281}} 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 ]", an acknowledged hero of Tarantino's.<ref name="TM" /> To Martin Rubin, the "expansive, brightly colored widescreen visuals" evoke comedy directors such as ] and ].{{sfn|Rubin|1999|p=174}}

The movie's host of ] allusions, ranging from the famous image of ]'s skirt flying up over a subway grating to Jules addressing a soon-to-be victim as "]" because of his haircut,{{sfn|Tarantino|1994|pp=24, 27}}{{sfn|Conard|2006|p=108}} have led many critics to discuss it within the framework of ]. Describing the film in 2005 as Tarantino's "postmodern masterpiece&nbsp;... to date", David Walker writes that it "is marked by its playful reverence for the 1950s&nbsp;... and its constantly teasing and often deferential references to other films". He characterizes its convoluted narrative technique as "postmodern tricksiness".{{sfn|Walker|2005|p=315}} 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 ]".{{sfn|Hirsch|1997|pp=360, 340}} O'Brien, dismissing attempts to associate the movie with ], argues that "''Pulp Fiction'' is more a guided tour of an infernal theme park decorated with cultural detritus, ] and ], fragments of ] and ] and '']'', music out of a twenty-four-hour oldies station for which all the decades since the fifties exist simultaneously."{{sfn|O'Brien|1994|p=90}} 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 ] convention of the vampire's stake. On this model, the referencing of previous aesthetic forms and styles moves beyond&nbsp;... empty pastiche, sustaining an 'inventive and affirmative' mode of postmodernism."{{sfn|Constable|2004|p=54}}

Mark T. Conard asks, "hat is the film ''about''?" and answers, "American ]."{{sfn|Conard|2006|p=125}} 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."{{sfn|Hirsch|1997|p=360}} Richard Alleva argues that "''Pulp Fiction'' has about as much to do with actual criminality or violence as '']'' with the realities of seventeenth-century France or '']'' 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 ]matic".<ref>{{cite news|last=Alleva |first=Richard |title=''Pulp Fiction'' |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_n20_v121/ai_15879432/pg_1 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071130072640/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1252/is_n20_v121/ai_15879432/pg_1 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2007-11-30 |work=Commonweal |date=1994-11-18 |access-date=2007-10-08 }}</ref> 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&nbsp;... ''Pulp Fiction'' unmasks the macho myth by making it laughable and deheroicizes the power trip glorified by standard Hollywood violence."<ref name="Stone">{{cite web|last=Stone|first=Alan|title=''Pulp Fiction''|url=https://bostonreview.net/BR20.2/stone.html|work=Boston Review|date=April–May 1995|access-date=2007-09-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070621100941/http://bostonreview.net/BR20.2/stone.html|archive-date=June 21, 2007|url-status=dead}}</ref> Stone reads the film as "]. There is no nudity and no violence directed against women&nbsp;... celebrates interracial friendship and cultural diversity; there are strong women and strong black men, and the director swims against the current of class stereotype."<ref name="Stone" />

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."{{sfn|Kolker|2000|p=281}} 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."{{sfn|Kolker|2000|pp=249, 250}} According to Kolker:

<blockquote>
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&nbsp;– by the mock intensity of the action, the prowling, confronting, perverse, confined, and airless nastiness of the world Tarantino creates.{{sfn|Kolker|2000|p=250}}
</blockquote>

] 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&nbsp;... he facile consumption of shocking images and hallucinatory delight."{{sfn|Giroux|1996|p=77}}

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 ],<ref>{{cite conference |title=Violence and Transcendence in Pulp Fiction and Flannery O'Connor |last1=Demory |first1=Pamela H. |author-link2= |date=1995 |book-title=The Image of Violence in Literature, the Media, and Society: Selected Papers 1995 Conference of the Society for Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery |pages=187–194 |editor-first1=Will |editor-last1=Wright |editor-first2=Steven |editor-last2=Kaplan |location=Pueblo, CO |conference=Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery}}</ref> 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&nbsp;– all the violence, degradation, death, crime, amoral behavior&nbsp;– grace is still possible; there might still be a God who doesn't judge us on merits."<ref>{{cite book|title=Flannery O'Connor: An Annotated Reference Guide to Criticism |editor-first1=R. Neil |editor-last1=Scott |location=Milledgeville, Georgia |publisher=Timberlane Books |year=2002 |page=185 |isbn=978-0971542808}}</ref>

=== Homage as essence ===
==== Cinema ====
''Pulp Fiction'' is full of ] to other movies. "Tarantino's characters", writes ], "inhabit a world where the entire landscape is composed of Hollywood product. Tarantino is a cinematic kleptomaniac&nbsp;– he literally can't help himself."{{sfn|Groth|1997|p=189}} Two scenes in particular have prompted discussion of the film's highly ] 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 '']'' (1977); Tarantino, however, credits a scene in the ] film '']'' (1964) with the inspiration. According to the filmmaker;

<blockquote>
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."...&nbsp;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.<ref name="T9">Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 9, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref>
</blockquote>

] argues that, beyond "all the better", Travolta's presence is essential to the power of the scene, and of the film:

<blockquote>
Travolta's entire career becomes "]", 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&nbsp;... Tony Manero an angel sitting on Vince's shoulder&nbsp;... actual dance may be closer to the choreography of ]'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&nbsp;...{{sfn|Charyn|2006|p=106}}
</blockquote>

Estella Tincknell notes that while the "diner setting seems to be a simulacrum of a 'fifties' restaurant&nbsp;... 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.'' ...&nbsp;The 'past' thus becomes a more general 'pastness' in which the stylistic signifiers of various decades are loaded in to a single moment."{{sfn|Tincknell|2006|p=140}} 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 ] and in doing so makes it possible for the film to inhabit an affective space that goes beyond stylistic allusion."{{sfn|Tincknell|2006|p=140}}

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 '']'' (1960).{{sfn|Dawson|1995a| p=178}}{{sfn|Polan|2000|p=19}} Marsellus and Butch are soon held captive by Maynard and Zed, "two sadistic honkies straight out of '']''" (1972), directed by ].<ref name="Stone" /> Zed shares a name with ]'s character in Boorman's follow-up, the science-fiction film '']'' (1974). When Butch decides to rescue Marsellus, in Glyn White's words, "he finds a trove of items with film-hero resonances".{{sfn|White|2002|p=342}} Critics have identified these weapons with a range of possible allusions:
* Hammer&nbsp;– '']'' (1978){{sfn|Fulwood|2003|p=22}}
* Baseball bat&nbsp;– '']'' (1973);{{sfn|White|2002|p=342}} '']'' (1987){{sfn|Fulwood|2003|p=22}}
* Chainsaw&nbsp;– '']'' (1974);{{sfn|White|2002|p=342}}{{sfn|Fulwood|2003|p=22}} '']'' (1987){{sfn|White|2002|p=342}}
* ] (samurai sword)&nbsp;– many, including '']'' (1954);{{sfn|White|2002|p=342}}{{sfn|Fulwood|2003|p=22}} '']'' (1975);{{sfn|White|2002|p=342}} '']'' (1980){{sfn|Fulwood|2003|p=22}}

At the conclusion of the scene, a portentous line of Marsellus's echoes one from the crime drama '']'' (1973), directed by another of Tarantino's heroes, ]; the name of the character who speaks it there is Maynard.{{sfn|Groth|1997|pp=188–9}}{{sfn|Dinshaw|1997|p=186}}{{sfn|Mottram|2006|pp=75–76}}<ref>For Tarantino's admiration of Siegel, see {{harvtxt|Dawson|1995a|loc=p. 142}}</ref>

David Bell argues that far from going against the "current of class stereotype", this scene, like ''Deliverance'', "mobilize a certain construction of poor white country folk&nbsp;– and particularly their sexualization&nbsp;... 'rustic sexual expression often takes the form of homosexual rape' in American movies."{{sfn|Bell|2000|p=87}} 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''&nbsp;... The nineties film reduces seventies competition, horror, and taboo into an entertainingly subtle adrenaline play&nbsp;– a fiction, a pulp fiction."{{sfn|Miller|1999|p=76}} 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."{{sfn|Giroux|1996|p=78}} 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 life.'"{{sfn|Groth|1997|p=188}} ("'']'' 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!"<ref>{{cite magazine|last=Wild |first=David |title=Quentin Tarantino: The Madman of Movie Mayhem |magazine=] |date=November 3, 1994 |page=110 |url=https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/quentin-tarantino-the-madman-of-movie-mayhem-186995/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220716045218/https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/quentin-tarantino-the-madman-of-movie-mayhem-186995/ |archive-date=July 16, 2022 |access-date=May 21, 2023}}</ref>)

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."{{sfn|Fulwood|2003|p=22}} White asserts that "the katana he finally, and significantly, selects identifies him with&nbsp;... ]able heroes."{{sfn|White|2002|p=342}} 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 ] and thus connects Butch with a more meaningful approach to life.{{sfn|Conard|2006|pp=125, 133}}

The ] '']'' is also shown with Fabienne characterizing it as "A motorcycle movie, I'm not sure the name."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.filmsite.org/pulp4.htmls|title=Pulp Fiction (1994, part 4 of 5)|website=filmsite.org}}{{Dead link|date=December 2021 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes}}</ref>

==== 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:

<blockquote>
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: ''], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ], ]'', and last but not least, Mia's fictional pilot, ''Fox Force Five''.{{sfn|Miklitsch|2006|loc=pp. 15, 16: Note that while the Three Stooges did have an original TV series that ran briefly in the mid-1960s, they were most familiar from their cinematic ] that were ] to television}}
</blockquote>

"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."{{sfn|Miklitsch|2006|p=16}} 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 '']''."<ref name=Profusion/>

Sharon Willis focuses on the way a television show ('']'') 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 '']'' (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 ] in search of rehabilitation&nbsp;... he gray light of the television presiding over the scene seems to inscribe the ghostly paternal gaze."{{sfn|Willis |1997|p=195}} 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."{{sfn|Miklitsch|2006|p=16}} 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."{{sfn|Kolker|2000|p=250}}

=== Notable motifs ===

==== The mysterious 666 briefcase ====
{{multiple image
| align = right
| direction = vertical
| width = 200
| image1 = PulpFictionCase.jpg
| caption1 =Vincent "stares&nbsp;... transfixed" into the glowing case, as specified in Tarantino's screenplay.{{sfn|Tarantino|1994|p=28}}

| image2 = KissMeDeadlyPandora.jpg
| caption2 = Vincent's demeanor reinforces the allusion to the scene in '']'' (1955) in which Lily Carver, a.k.a. Gabrielle (]), gazes into the glowing case.{{sfn|Gallafent|2006|p=46}}}}

The combination of the mysterious suitcase lock is 666, the "]". Tarantino has said there is no explanation for its contents&nbsp;– it is simply a ], a pure ]. 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.<ref>{{cite web|title=What's In the Briefcase?|url=http://www.snopes.com/movies/films/pulp.htm|website=Snopes.com|date=2007-08-17|access-date=2007-09-13|archive-date=May 18, 2018|archive-url=https://archive.today/20180518145158/https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/whats-in-the-briefcase/|url-status=live}}</ref> In a 2007 video interview with fellow director and friend ], 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 '']'' (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.<ref name="Myspace">{{cite web|title=Rodriguez and Tarantino: Artist On Artist|url=http://creative.myspace.com/groups/_mh/aoa/pages/qtarantino_rrodriguez/qtarantino_rrodriguez.html|website=MySpace.com|date=April 6, 2007|access-date=2007-09-13|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130120090140/http://creative.myspace.com/groups/_mh/aoa/pages/qtarantino_rrodriguez/qtarantino_rrodriguez.html|archive-date=January 20, 2013|url-status=live}}</ref>

Despite Tarantino's statements, many solutions to what one scholar calls this "unexplained postmodern puzzle" have been proposed.{{sfn|Real|1996|p=259}} A strong similarity has often been observed with ]'s 1955 ] '']'', which features a glowing briefcase housing an atomic explosive.{{sfn|Groth|1997|p=188}}{{sfn|Polan|2000|p=20}}<ref>{{cite web|title=What's in the Briefcase in ''Pulp Fiction''?|url=http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpulpfiction.html|website=The Straight Dope|date=2000-05-31|access-date=2007-09-18|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081120192104/http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpulpfiction.html|archive-date=November 20, 2008|url-status=dead}}</ref> In their review of ]'s 1984 film '']'' 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.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/wheelsonfilm/2753942/Wheels-On-Film-Repo-Man.html|title=Wheels on Film: Repo Man|date=Aug 16, 2008|first1=Nick |last1=Cowen|first2=Hari |last2=Patience|newspaper=The Daily Telegraph|access-date=2012-07-14|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180813111607/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/wheelsonfilm/2753942/Wheels-On-Film-Repo-Man.html|archive-date=August 13, 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> In scholar Paul Gormley's view, this connection with ''Kiss Me Deadly'', and a similar one with '']'' (1981), makes it possible to read the eerie glow as symbolic of violence itself.{{sfn|Gormley|2005|p=164}} The idea that the briefcase contains Marsellus's soul gained popular currency in the mid-1990s. Analyzing the notion, ] dismissed it as "nothing more than a widely distributed urban legend given false credibility by the mystique of the Net".{{sfn|Ebert|1997|p=188}}

==== Jules' Bible passage ====
Jules ritually recites what he describes as a biblical passage, ] 25:17, before he executes someone. The passage is heard three times&nbsp;– 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:

<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

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."

{{listen|filename=End of Ezekiel.ogg|title="And I will strike down&nbsp;..."| description= Conclusion of the "Ezekiel 25:17" monologue and Brett's murder}}

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.{{sfn|Reinhartz|2003|p=108}} The text of Ezekiel 25 preceding verse 17 indicates that God's wrath is retribution for the hostility of the ]. In the ] from which Jules's speech is adapted, Ezekiel 25:17 reads in its entirety:

<blockquote>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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bartleby.com/108/26/25.html|title=The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel, 25|work=The Holy Bible: King James Version|via=Bartleby|access-date=2007-09-13|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100131052531/http://www.bartleby.com/108/26/25.html|archive-date=January 31, 2010|url-status=live}}</ref></blockquote>

Tarantino's primary inspiration for the speech was the work of Japanese ] star ]. Its text and its identification as Ezekiel 25:17 derive from an almost identical creed that appears at the beginning of the Chiba movie '']'' (''The Bodyguard''; 1976), where it is both shown as a scrolling text and read by an offscreen narrator.{{sfn|Thomas|2003|loc=pp. 61–62: Thomas notes that instead of "the Lord", this version reads "...&nbsp;and they shall know that I am Chiba the Bodyguard&nbsp;..."}}{{sfn|Conard|2006|loc=p. 134: Conard claims that the text originates from the film ''Bodigaado Kiba'' (''Bodyguard Kiba'' or ''The Bodyguard''; 1973) and that the end phrase there is "And you will know my name is Chiba the Bodyguard&nbsp;..."}}

The version seen at the beginning of ''The Bodyguard'' (1976) is as follows:

<blockquote>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!</blockquote>

In the 1980s television series ''Kage no Gundan'' ('']''), Chiba's character would lecture the villain-of-the-week about how the world must be rid of evil before killing him.<ref>Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 4, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref> A killer delivers a similar biblical rant in '']'', the hardback but pulp-style novel Vincent is shown with in two scenes.<ref name="T25">Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 25, ''Pulp Fiction'' DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).</ref>

Two critics who have analyzed the role of the speech find different ties between Jules's transformation and the issue of ]. Gormley argues that unlike the film's other major characters&nbsp;– Marsellus aside&nbsp;– Jules is:

<blockquote>
linked to a "thing" beyond postmodern simulation&nbsp;... his 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&nbsp;..." In his conversion, Jules is shown to be cognizant of a place beyond this simulation, which, in this case, the film constructs as God.{{sfn|Gormley|2005|p=167}}
</blockquote>

] 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&nbsp;... In the second&nbsp;... he appears to be a different sort of man altogether&nbsp;... n true postmodern fashion, reflects on the meaning of his speech and provides several different ways that it might pertain to his current situation."{{sfn|Reinhartz|2003|pp=106, 107}} 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.{{sfn|Conard|2006|p=130}} Rosenbaum finds much less in Jules's revelation: "he 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."<ref name=Profusion>{{cite news |last=Rosenbaum |first=Jonathan |title=Allusion Profusion (''Ed Wood, Pulp Fiction'') |url=https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2022/06/allusion-profusion/ |work=] |date=October 21, 1994 |access-date=May 20, 2023 |archive-date=May 21, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230521051042/https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2022/06/allusion-profusion/ |url-status=dead }} Note that the avowed inspiration is actually a TV show, ''Kung Fu''.</ref>

==== 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.<ref>{{cite web |last1=White |first1=Mike |last2=Thompson |first2=Mike |name-list-style=amp |work=Cashiers du Cinemart |title=Tarantino in a Can? |url=http://www.impossiblefunky.com/archives/issue_2/2_toilet.asp?IshNum=2&Headline=Tarantino%20In%20The%20Can |date=Spring 1995 |access-date=2006-12-31 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120211214336/http://www.impossiblefunky.com/archives/issue_2/2_toilet.asp?IshNum=2&Headline=Tarantino%20In%20The%20Can |archive-date=2012-02-11}}</ref> At Jack Rabbit Slim's, Mia goes to "powder her nose"&nbsp;– literally; she ] 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&nbsp;– vigorously, after having given Butch "oral pleasure." As Jules and Vincent confront Brett and two of his pals, a fourth man is hiding in the bathroom&nbsp;– 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.<ref name="Den" /> When the diner holdup turns into a standoff, "Honey Bunny" whines, "I gotta go pee!"{{sfn|Fraiman|2003|p=15}}

As described by Peter and Will Brooker, "In three significant moments Vincent retires to the bathroom returns to an utterly changed world where death is threatened."{{sfn|Brooker|Brooker|1996|p=239}} 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&nbsp;... we see the contemporary world as utterly contingent, transformed, disastrously, in the instant you are not looking."{{sfn|Brooker|Brooker|1996|p=239}} 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":

<blockquote>
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&nbsp;– pulp, women, shit&nbsp;– 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.{{sfn|Fraiman|2003|loc=p. 14: Fraiman's identification of the submachine gun as a ] matches the description in the screenplay: Tarantino (1994), p. 96. Visual evidence suggests that a different gun was actually used in the film, possibly a ] or similar model}}
</blockquote>

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."{{sfn|Willis|1997|p=195}} Despite that, argues Fraiman, "''Pulp Fiction'' demonstrates&nbsp;... that even an open pulpophile like Tarantino may continue to feel anxious and emasculated by his preferences."{{sfn|Fraiman|2003|p=15}}

== Accolades ==
{{Main|List of accolades received by Pulp Fiction{{!}}List of accolades received by ''Pulp Fiction''}}
''Pulp Fiction'' won eight major awards from a total of twenty-six nominations, including a ] win at the ].<ref name="PdO" /><ref name="Awards" /><ref name="BAFTA" /><ref name="GGA">{{cite web|url= http://www.hfpa.org/browse/film/24792|title= Awards Search/''Pulp Fiction''|publisher= Hollywood Foreign Press Association|access-date= 2007-09-12|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070807063318/http://www1.hfpa.org/browse/film/24792|archive-date= August 7, 2007|url-status= dead}}</ref><ref name="NSFC">{{cite news|last=Maslin|first=Janet|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/04/movies/pulp-fiction-gets-top-prize-from-national-film-critics.html|title="Pulp Fiction" Gets Top Prize From National Film Critics|work=The New York Times|date=1995-01-04|access-date=2007-09-27|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170709114845/http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/04/movies/pulp-fiction-gets-top-prize-from-national-film-critics.html|archive-date=July 9, 2017|url-status=live}}</ref> Also, in the balloting by the ], ] was the runner-up in both the ] and the ] categories.<ref name="NSFC" />

'''] Lists'''
* ]&nbsp;– {{Numero|95}}<ref>{{cite web |title=AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies |url=https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movies/ |website=AFI |access-date=21 May 2023}}</ref>
* ]&nbsp;– Nominated<ref>{{cite web |title=AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs Nominees |url=https://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/laughs500.pdf |website=AFI |access-date=21 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110313150538/https://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/laughs500.pdf |archive-date=March 13, 2011}}</ref>
* ]&nbsp;– {{Numero|53}}<ref>{{cite web |title=AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills |url=https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-thrills/ |website=AFI |access-date=21 May 2023}}</ref>
* ]:<ref>{{cite web |title=AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains Nominees |url=https://prdaficalmjediwestussa.blob.core.windows.net/images/2019/08/handv400.pdf |website=AFI |access-date=21 May 2023}}</ref>
** Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield&nbsp;– Nominated Villains
* ]:<ref>{{cite web |title=AFI's 100 Years...100 Quotes Nominees |url=http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/quotes400.pdf |website=AFI |access-date=21 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110313150620/http://www.afi.com/Docs/100Years/quotes400.pdf |archive-date=March 13, 2011}}</ref>
** "Bring out the Gimp" – Nominated Quote
** "They call it a Royale with Cheese" – Nominated Quote
* ]&nbsp;– {{Numero|94}}<ref name=AFI10/>
* ]&nbsp;– {{Numero|7}} gangster film<ref name="AFI10Top10"/>

== NFT dispute ==
In November 2021, Miramax filed a lawsuit against Tarantino who released seven ]s 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.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Diaz|first=Johnny|date=2021-11-17|title=Miramax Sues Quentin Tarantino Over Planned 'Pulp Fiction' NFTs|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/business/miramax-tarantino-nft-pulp-fiction.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20211228/https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/17/business/miramax-tarantino-nft-pulp-fiction.html |archive-date=2021-12-28 |url-access=limited|access-date=2021-11-17|issn=0362-4331}}{{cbignore}}</ref> However, Tarantino disputed the lawsuit and claimed he had rights to the film script in written form.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Quentin Tarantino sued over 'Pulp Fiction' NFT plan|url=https://news.yahoo.com/quentin-tarantino-sued-over-pulp-214715919.html|access-date=2021-11-17|date=2021-11-17|website=news.yahoo.com|language=en-US|archive-date=November 17, 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211117221449/https://news.yahoo.com/quentin-tarantino-sued-over-pulp-214715919.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> 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."<ref>{{cite news |last=Maddaus |first=Gene |title=Quentin Tarantino Settles With Miramax Over 'Pulp Fiction' NFT Auction |url=https://variety.com/2022/film/news/quentin-tarantino-miramax-pulp-fiction-nft-settlement-1235365550/ |work=Variety |date=9 September 2022}}</ref>

== See also ==
{{Portal|Film|United States|1990s}}
* ]
* ]
* ]
* '']''
* '']''
* ]

{{clear}}

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}

== Bibliography ==
{{refbegin|30em}}
* {{cite book|last=Bailey |first=Jason |year=2013 |title=Pulp Fiction: The Complete Story of Quentin Tarantino's Masterpiece |publisher=Voyageur Press |isbn=978-0-7603-4479-8}}
* {{cite book|last1=Barker |first1=Martin |last2=Austin |first2=Thomas |year=2000 |title=From Antz to Titanic: Reinventing Film Analysis |publisher=Pluto Press |isbn=0-7453-1579-8}}
* {{cite book|last=Bart |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Bart |year=2000 |title=The Gross: The Hits, the Flops—The Summer That Ate Hollywood |location=New York |publisher=St. Martin's |isbn=0-312-25391-5}}
* {{cite book|last=Bell |first=David |year=2000 |chapter=Eroticizing the Rural |title=De-Centering Sexualities: Politics and Representations Beyond the Metropolis |editor-first1=David |editor-last1=Shuttleton |editor-first2=Diane |editor-last2=Watt |editor-first3=Richard |editor-last3=Phillips |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-19466-0}}
* {{cite book|last=Biskind |first=Peter |author-link=Peter Biskind |year=2004 |title=Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film |location=New York |publisher=Simon & Schuster |url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780965931571 |isbn=0-684-86259-X}}
* {{cite book|last1=Brooker |first1=Peter |first2=Will |last2=Brooker |year=1996 |chapter=Pulpmodernism: Tarantino's Affirmative Action |title=Film Theory: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies |editor-first1=Philip |editor-last1=Simpson |editor-first2=Andrew |editor-last2=Utterson |editor-first3=Karen J. |editor-last3=Shepherdson |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-25971-1}}
* {{cite book|last=Charyn |first=Jerome |year=2006 |title=Raised by Wolves: The Turbulent Art and Times of Quentin Tarantino |location=New York |publisher=Thunder's Mouth Press |isbn=1-56025-858-6}}
* {{cite book|last=Christopher |first=Nicholas |year=2006 |title=Somewhere in the Night: Film Noir and the American City |location=Emeryville, Calif. |publisher=Shoemaker & Hoard |isbn=1-59376-097-3}}
* {{cite book|last=Conard |first=Mark T. |year=2006 |chapter=Symbolism, Meaning, and Nihilism in ''Pulp Fiction'' |title=The Philosophy of Film Noir |location=Lexington |publisher=University Press of Kentucky |isbn=0-8131-2377-1}}
* {{cite book|last=Constable |first=Catherine |year=2004 |chapter=Postmodernism and Film |title=The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism |editor-first1=Steven |editor-last1=Connor |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-64840-8}}
* {{cite book|last=Dancyger |first=Ken |year=2002 |title=The Technique of Film and Video Editing: History, Theory, and Practice |edition=3rd |location=New York |publisher=Focal Press |isbn=0-240-80420-1}}
* {{cite magazine|last=Dargis |first=Manohla |author-link=Manohla Dargis |title=Pulp Instincts |magazine=] |pages=6–11 |volume=4 |number=5 |date=1994a |url=https://archive.org/details/Sight_and_Sound_1994_05_BFI_GB/page/n7/mode/2up}} collected in {{cite book|title=Quentin Tarantino: Interviews |editor-first1=Gerald |editor-last1=Peary |location=Jackson |publisher=University Press of Mississippi |year=1998 |isbn=1-57806-051-6}}
* {{cite magazine|last=Dargis |first=Manohla |title=Quentin Tarantino on ''Pulp Fiction'' |magazine=Sight and Sound |volume=4 |number=11 |date=1994b}}
* {{cite journal|last1=Davis |first1=Todd F. |last2=Womack |first2=Kenneth |author-link2=Kenneth Womack |year=1998 |title=Shepherding the Weak: The Ethics of Redemption in Quentin Tarantino's ''Pulp Fiction'' |journal=Literature/Film Quarterly |volume=26 |number=1}}
* {{cite book|last=Dawson |first=Jeff |year=1995a |title=Quentin Tarantino: The Cinema of Cool |location=New York and London |publisher=Applause |isbn=1-55783-227-7}}
* {{cite book|last=Desser |first=David |year=2003 |chapter=Global Noir: Genre Film in the Age of Transnationalism |title=Film Genre Reader III |editor-first1=Barry Keith |editor-last1=Grant |location=Austin |publisher=University of Texas Press |isbn=0-292-70185-3}}
* {{Cite book|last=Dinshaw |first=Carolyn |year=1997 |chapter=Getting Medieval: ''Pulp Fiction'', Gawain, Foucault |title=The Book and the Body |editor-first1=Dolores Warwick |editor-last1=Frese |editor-first2=Katherine O'Brien |editor-last2=O'Keeffe |location=Notre Dame |publisher=University of Notre Dame Press |isbn=0-268-00700-4}}
* {{cite book|last=Ebert |first=Roger |author-link=Roger Ebert |year=1997 |title=Questions for the Movie Answer Man |location=Kansas City, Mo. |publisher=Andrews McMeel |isbn=0-8362-2894-4}}
* {{cite book|last=Fraiman |first=Susan |year=2003 |title=Cool Men and the Second Sex |location=New York |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=0-231-12962-9}}
* {{cite book|last=Fulwood |first=Neil |year=2003 |title=One Hundred Violent Films that Changed Cinema |location=London and New York |publisher=Batsford/Sterling |isbn=0-7134-8819-0}}
* {{cite book|last=Gallafent |first=Edward |year=2006 |title=Quentin Tarantino |location=London |publisher=Pearson Longman |isbn=0-582-47304-7}}
* {{cite book|last=Giroux |first=Henry A. |year=1996 |title=Fugitive Cultures: Race, Violence, and Youth |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-91577-5}}
* {{cite book|last=Gormley |first=Paul |year=2005 |title=The New-Brutality Film: Race and Affect in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema |location=Bristol, UK, and Portland, Ore. |publisher=Intellect |isbn=1-84150-119-0}}
* {{cite book|last=Groth |first=Gary |year=1997 |chapter=A Dream of Perfect Reception: The Movies of Quentin Tarantino |title=Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from The Baffler |editor-first1=Thomas |editor-last1=Frank |editor-first2=Matt |editor-last2=Weiland |location=New York |publisher=W.W. Norton |isbn=0-393-31673-4}}
* {{cite book|last=Hirsch |first=Foster |contribution=Afterword |year=1997 |title=Crime Movies |edition=revised |editor-first1=Carlos |editor-last1=Clarens |location=Cambridge, Mass. |publisher=Da Capo |isbn=0-306-80768-8}}
* {{cite book|last=Hoffman |first=David |year=2005 |title=The Breakfast Cereal Gourmet |location=Kansas City, Mo. |publisher=Andrews McMeel |isbn=0-7407-5029-1}}
* {{cite book|last=King |first=Geoff |year=2002 |title=Film Comedy |location=London |publisher=Wallflower Press |isbn=1-903364-35-3}}
* {{cite book|last=Kolker |first=Robert |year=2000 |title=A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg, Altman |location=New York |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=0-19-512350-6}}
* {{cite book|last=Miklitsch |first=Robert |title=Roll Over Adorno: Critical Theory, Popular Culture, Audiovisual Media |year=2006 |publisher=SUNY Press |isbn=978-0791467343 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oCprHBiGYoMC&pg=PA15}}
* {{cite book|last=Miller |first=Stephen Paul |year=1999 |title=The Seventies Now: Culture As Surveillance |location=Durham, N.C |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=0-8223-2166-1}}
* {{cite book|last=Mottram |first=James |year=2006 |title=The Sundance Kids: How the Mavericks Took Back Hollywood |location=New York |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=0-571-22267-6}}
* {{cite book|last=O'Brien |first=Geoffrey |year=1994 |chapter=Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fantastic |title=Castaways of the Image Planet: Movies, Show Business, Public Spectacle |location=Washington, D.C. |publisher=Counterpoint |isbn=1-58243-190-6}}
* {{cite book|last=Parker |first=Philip |year=2002 |title=The Art and Science of Screenwriting |edition=2nd |location=Bristol, UK |publisher=Intellect |isbn=1-84150-065-8}}
* {{cite book|last=Polan |first=Dana |year=2000 |title=Pulp Fiction |location=London |publisher=BFI |isbn=0-85170-808-0}}
* {{cite book|last=Rabinowitz |first=Paula |year=2002 |title=Black & White & Noir: America's Pulp Modernism |location=New York |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=0-231-11480-X}}
* {{cite book|last=Real |first=Michael R. |year=1996 |title=Exploring Media Culture: A Guide |location=Thousand Oaks, Calif., London, and New Delhi |publisher=Sage |isbn=0-8039-5877-3}}
* {{cite book|last=Reinhartz |first=Adele |year=2003 |title=Scripture on the Silver Screen |location=Louisville |publisher=Westminster John Knox Press |isbn=0-664-22359-1}}
* {{cite book|last=Rubin |first=Martin |year=1999 |title=Thrillers |location=Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-58839-1}}
* {{cite book|last1=Silver |first1=Alain |first2=James |last2=Ursini |year=2004 |title=Film Noir |location=Cologne |publisher=Taschen |isbn=3-8228-2261-2}}
* {{cite book|last=Tarantino |first=Quentin |author-link=Quentin Tarantino |year=1994 |title=Pulp Fiction: A Screenplay |location=New York |publisher=Hyperion/Miramax |isbn=0-7868-8104-6}}
* {{cite book|last=Thomas |first=Brian |year=2003 |title=VideoHound's Dragon: Asian Action & Cult Flicks |location=Canton, Mich. |publisher=Visible Ink Press |isbn=1-57859-141-4}}
* {{cite book|last=Tincknell |first=Estella |year=2006 |chapter=The Soundtrack Movie, Nostalgia and Consumption |title=Film's Musical Moments |editor-first1=Ian |editor-last1=Conrich |editor-first2=Estella |editor-last2=Tincknell |location=Edinburgh |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=0-7486-2344-2}}
* {{cite book|last=Walker |first=David |year=2005 |chapter=Tarantino, Quentin |title=The Routledge Companion to Postmodernism' |edition=2nd |editor-first=Stuart |editor-last=Sim |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-33358-X}}
* {{cite book|last=Waxman |first=Sharon |author-link=Sharon Waxman |year=2005 |title=Rebels on the Backlot: Six Maverick Directors and How They Conquered the Hollywood Studio System |location=New York |publisher=HarperCollins |url=https://archive.org/details/rebelsonbacklots00waxm |isbn=0-06-054017-6}}
* {{cite book|last=White |first=Glyn |year=2002 |chapter=Quentin Tarantino |title=Fifty Contemporary Filmmakers |editor-first1=Yvonne |editor-last1=Tasker |location=London and New York |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-18973-X}}
* {{cite book|last=Willis |first=Sharon |year=1997 |title=High Contrast: Race and Gender in Contemporary Hollywood Film |location=Durham, N.C. |publisher=Duke University Press |isbn=0-8223-2041-X}}

{{refend}}

== External links ==
{{Wikiquote|Pulp Fiction}}
{{Commons category|Pulp Fiction}}
* by ] at ]
* {{Official website}}
* {{AFI film|55207}}
* {{IMDb title|0110912}}
* {{mojo title|pulpfiction}}
* {{Metacritic film}}
* {{Rotten Tomatoes|id=pulp_fiction}}
*
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{{Quentin Tarantino}}
{{Roger Avary}}
{{Navboxes
|title = ]
|list =
{{Blue Ribbon Award for Best Foreign Film}}
{{Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film}}
{{Palme d'Or}}
{{Dallas–Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Film}}
{{David di Donatello Best Foreign Film}}
{{Independent Spirit Award for Best Film}}
{{Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Film}}
{{MTV Movie Award for Best Movie}}
{{National Board of Review Award for Best Film}}
{{National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Film}}
{{Saturn Award for Best Action or Adventure Film}}
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Latest revision as of 04:27, 22 December 2024

1994 crime film by Quentin Tarantino This article is about the film. For other uses, see Pulp fiction.

Pulp Fiction
A pulp-magazine themed poster shows with a woman in a bedroom lying on her stomach in a bed holding a cigarette. Her left hands lays over a novel that reads "Pulp Fiction" on it. An ash tray, pack of cigarettes, and a pistol is laid down near her. The top tagline reads "WINNER - BEST PICTURE - 1994 CANNES FILM FESTIVAL". A sticker below the title reads "10¢".Theatrical release poster
Directed byQuentin Tarantino
Written byQuentin Tarantino
Story by
Produced byLawrence Bender
Starring
CinematographyAndrzej Sekuła
Edited bySally Menke
Production
companies
Distributed byMiramax Films
Release dates
  • May 21, 1994 (1994-05-21) (Cannes)
  • October 14, 1994 (1994-10-14) (United States)
Running time154 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$8–8.5 million
Box office$213.9 million

Pulp Fiction is a 1994 American independent crime film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino from a story he conceived with Roger Avary. It tells four intertwining tales of crime and violence in Los Angeles, California. The film stars John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, Tim Roth, Ving Rhames, and Uma Thurman. The title refers to the pulp magazines and hardboiled 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 (1993). Its plot occurs out of chronological order. The film is also self-referential from its opening moments, beginning with a title card 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 combination of humor and strong violence. TriStar Pictures reportedly turned down the script as "too demented". Miramax Films co-chairman Harvey Weinstein was enthralled, however, and the film became the first that Miramax Films fully financed.

Pulp Fiction won the Palme d'Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and was a major critical and commercial success. It was nominated for seven awards at the 67th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won Best Original Screenplay; Travolta, Jackson, and Thurman were nominated for Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress respectively. As a result of the film's success, Travolta's career was reinvigorated. The film's development, marketing, distribution, and profitability had a sweeping effect on independent cinema.

Pulp Fiction is widely regarded as Tarantino's magnum opus, with particular praise for its screenwriting. The self-reflexivity, unconventional structure, and extensive homage and pastiche have led critics to describe it as a touchstone of postmodern film. 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 high acclaim. In 2008, Entertainment Weekly named it the best film since 1983 and it has appeared on many critics' lists of the greatest films ever made. In 2013, Pulp Fiction was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress 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 partner in crime.

The film begins with a diner robbery staged by a couple, then begins to shift from one story line to another before returning to the diner for the conclusion. There are seven narrative sequences; the three primary story lines are preceded by intertitles:

  1. "Prologue – The Diner" (i)
  2. "Prelude to 'Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife'"
  3. "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife"
  4. "Prelude to 'The Gold Watch'" (a – flashback, b – present)
  5. "The Gold Watch"
  6. "The Bonnie Situation"
  7. "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

A pair of thieves, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny, reminisce on their past robbery attempts as they eat breakfast in a diner. Pumpkin proposes they rob the diner at that moment because he believes the patrons and employees will be unprepared to stop them. Honey Bunny agrees.

Two hitmen, Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega, arrive at an apartment to retrieve a briefcase for their boss, influential local gangster Marsellus Wallace, from a business partner, Brett, and his friends. After Vincent checks the contents of the briefcase, Jules shoots one of Brett's friends. Jules rebukes Brett over his attempt to double-cross Marsellus and recites a passage from the Bible, before he and Vincent kill Brett.

"Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife"

Jules and Vincent give the briefcase to Marsellus, who bribes boxer Butch Coolidge to take a dive in his upcoming match. Vincent purchases heroin from his drug dealer, Lance. He shoots up and drives to meet Marsellus's wife, Mia Wallace, having agreed to escort her while Marsellus is out of town for the night. They eat at a 1950s-themed restaurant and participate in a twist contest, then return home. While Vincent is in the bathroom, Mia finds his heroin, mistakes it for cocaine, and snorts it, resulting in an overdose. Vincent rushes her to Lance's house, where Lance helps revive her by injecting adrenaline into her heart. Vincent takes Mia home, and they agree never to tell Marsellus about the incident.

"The Gold Watch"

Butch double-crosses Marsellus by winning the bout, but he accidentally kills his opponent in the process. He plans to flee with his girlfriend, Fabienne, but discovers she has forgotten to pack an heirloom: a gold watch which belonged to Butch's father. 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. Marsellus chases him into a pawnshop. Maynard, the shop owner, 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. Butch breaks free and is about to escape, but 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 tells Butch that they are even, and instructs him to tell no one about the incident and depart Los Angeles forever. Butch picks up Fabienne on Zed's chopper and they drive away.

"The Bonnie Situation"

In the apartment, after Jules and Vincent kill Brett, another man bursts out of the bathroom and fires at them. Every shot misses and they shoot him dead. Jules says that their survival was a miracle, which Vincent disputes, believing the man was just a lousy shot. While driving away with another one of Brett's friends, Marvin (who was actually a plant from Marsellus's organization), Vincent accidentally shoots him in the head after Jules drives over an unidentified inconsistency in the roadbed, covering Vincent, Jules, and the car interior in blood. They hide the car at the home of Jules's old friend and former business partner Jimmie, who demands they deal with the problem before his wife Bonnie comes home. Marsellus sends a cleaner, Winston Wolfe, who directs Jules and Vincent to hide the body in the trunk, clean the car, dispose of their bloody clothes and take the car to a junkyard.

At the diner from the film's prologue, Jules tells Vincent that he plans to retire from his life of crime, convinced that their survival at the apartment was divine intervention. While Vincent is in the bathroom, Pumpkin and Honey Bunny hold up the restaurant and demand Marsellus's briefcase. Pumpkin initially holds Jules at gunpoint, but Jules soon overpowers Pumpkin 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.

Cast

Jules' partner-in-crime, working for Marsellus Wallace. Tarantino cast Travolta in Pulp Fiction because Michael Madsen, who had played Vic Vega in Reservoir Dogs (1992), chose to appear in Kevin Costner's Wyatt Earp instead. Madsen has since expressed regret over his decision. Harvey Weinstein pushed for Daniel Day-Lewis 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 nomination for Best Actor revitalized his career. Vincent is the brother of Vic Vega, also known as Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs, and in 2004, Tarantino discussed an idea for a movie starring Travolta and Madsen as the "Vega Brothers"; the concept remains unrealized.
Vincent's partner in crime, working for Marsellus Wallace. Jackson's first audition was overshadowed by Paul Calderón; 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, but Tarantino's PA mistakenly bought a Jheri curled wig. Tarantino was enraged but Jackson persuaded him to keep it since the hairstyle had gained popularity through the rap group N.W.A. Film critic Owen Gleiberman took it as a "tacit comic statement about the ghettoization of 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, 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.
Wallace's wife and an aspiring actress. Miramax favored Holly Hunter or Meg Ryan for the role of Mia. Alfre Woodard and Meg Tilly 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, Thurman chose not to do any big-budget films until Batman & Robin (1997) three years later.
A "cleaner" 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." Keitel had played a similarly employed character in Point of No Return (1993).
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 preferred Johnny Depp or Christian Slater. Early in development, Tarantino had contemplated casting Roth as Vincent and Gary Oldman as Jules, rewriting the characters as "two English guys".
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."
Butch's girlfriend. Tarantino met de Medeiros, a Portuguese actress, while traveling with Reservoir Dogs around the European film festival circuit.
A crime boss and employer of Jules and Vincent. Before Rhames was cast, the part of Wallace was initially offered to Max Julien and Sid Haig, 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 (1996), Con Air (1997) and Out of Sight (1998).
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 (1993).
Lance's wife. Pam Grier 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. Ellen DeGeneres also read for the part of Jody. Rosanna's sister Alexis (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.
A USAF veteran of the Vietnam War who delivers a young Butch his father's coveted gold watch. During Koons' monologue, which is interspersed with colorful descriptions of the Viet Cong, he mentions a soldier called "Winocki". Joe Winocki (John Garfield) is a character in the 1943 film Air Force directed by Howard Hawks, 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.
An aging boxer on the run from Marsellus after 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, 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 in Nightfall and his demeanor based on Ralph Meeker's portrayal of Mike Hammer in Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly. Chandler Lindauer plays a young Butch.

Bronagh Gallagher plays Jody's friend Trudi who does little but smoke a bong 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 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 portrays Brett, who has a briefcase requested by Marsellus. Whaley met Tarantino while he was filming Reservoir Dogs at a lab in Sundance Institute. 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 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 portrays Esmarelda 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, Peter Greene and Stephen Hibbert play Maynard, Zed and the gimp. According to The Daily Beast, these "three psycho hillbillies" that rape Marsellus in Maynard's shop's basement allude to the film Deliverance. Steve Buscemi makes a cameo appearance as a waiter at Jack Rabbit Slim's, dressed as Buddy Holly. Buscemi, who had appeared in Reservoir Dogs, was originally considered for the role of Jimmie but was unable to commit. Kathy Griffin appears as herself. Michael Gilden and Joseph Pilato also appear at Jack Rabbit Slim's as waiter Phillip Morris Page and a Dean Martin impersonator, respectively. Emil Sitka made a cameo via archival footage from the Three Stooges short Brideless Groom (1947), Karen Maruyama appears as "Gawker #1" after Butch's car accident, and Julia Sweeney portrays Raquel, the daughter of the owner of the junkyard in which Marvin's body is disposed of. Producer Lawrence Bender 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 impersonator. Susan Griffiths appears alongside Hoban as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator.

Production

Writing

Director and co-writer, Quentin Tarantino

The roots of Pulp Fiction can be traced back to the late 1980s, when Tarantino and Roger Avary worked together at Video Archives, a video store in Southern California. Avary recalls that their initial concept was to create three short films with three different filmmakers—himself, Tarantino, and a friend, Adam Rifkin. Avary wrote the first element of what would become the film's screenplay in the fall of 1990, titled "Pandemonium Reigns," which eventually expanded into a feature-length screenplay. While Tarantino's short film similarly evolved into a full script, Rifkin never completed his contribution, leaving Pulp Fiction initially uncertain. The initial inspiration was the three-part horror anthology film Black Sabbath (1963), by Italian filmmaker Mario Bava. The Tarantino–Avary project was provisionally titled "Black Mask", after the seminal hardboiled crime fiction magazine. Tarantino's script was produced as Reservoir Dogs, 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 as Mike Hammer in Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly . 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. 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 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, 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. 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, 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, 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 list of films in pre-production at TriStar. In June, however, the studio put the script into turnaround. According to a studio executive, TriStar chief Mike Medavoy 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—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 Films, the formerly independent studio that had recently been acquired by Disney. Harvey Weinstein—co-chairman of Miramax Films, along with his brother Bob—was instantly enthralled by the script and the company picked it up. Michael Shamberg, the executive producer, reflected on the bidding process, saying, "Only Harvey placed a bid. Harvey believed he was engaged in a bidding war, but he wasn't. Even now, whenever I see Bob Shaye, he expresses regret for turning down Pulp Fiction. Quentin initially wanted to collaborate with Mike Medavoy, given Medavoy's history with the great Orion films. Ironically, when the opportunity arose, Mike deemed the script too violent." Pulp Fiction, the first Miramax Films project to get a green light after the Disney acquisition, was budgeted at $8.5 million, and at the end $500,000 was returned, bringing the final budget to $8 million. According to Bender, a lower budget meant that the producers could maintain more control over the movie itself. It became the first movie that Miramax Films 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. Though he had recently appeared in several big-budget flops, he was still a major overseas draw. On the strength of his name, Miramax Films garnered $11 million for the film's worldwide rights, virtually ensuring its profitability.

Casting

Danny DeVito, one of the film's producers, recalls that Weinstein suggested casting Daniel Day-Lewis, who had just won an Academy Award for My Left Foot. DeVito responded by stating that Tarantino wanted John Travolta and reminded Weinstein that he had final cut and cast approval. He reflects, "I think he called me every name in the book, but of course, Quentin got what he wanted, and he was absolutely right, and the rest is history."

Bender noted that during the casting process, while Samuel L. Jackson's initial audition was impressive, another candidate later delivered a performance that "blew them away." This prompted Bender to inform Jackson's agent that they might need to consider the other actor. The agent firmly insisted, "No, no, no, you can’t do that. Sam will come back." Initially hesitant to ask him for another audition, Bender discovered that Jackson believed he was simply reading for the role, not auditioning, and his subsequent return resulted in an outstanding performance.

Harvey Keitel played a crucial role in getting Reservoir Dogs made and introduced Bruce Willis to Tarantino. Bender and Tarantino went to see him at his house in Malibu, where they learned that he could recite practically the entire movie of Reservoir Dogs, a movie he loved. After a conversation, Tarantino and Willis took a walk on the beach, and upon their return, Bruce agreed to join the film.

Tim Roth, initially interested in the role meant for Willis, suggested Amanda Plummer as a co-star, insisting she should have a gun, a notion Tarantino later incorporated into the script.

Filming

Willis evoked one 1950s actor in particular for Tarantino: "Aldo Ray in Jacques Tourneur's Nightfall  ... I said let's go for that whole look." His boxing robe, designed by Betsy Heimann, exemplifies Tarantino's notion of costume as symbolic armor.

Principal photography commenced on September 20, 1993. The lead offscreen talent had all worked with Tarantino on Reservoir Dogs – cinematographer Andrzej Sekuła, film editor Sally Menke, production designer David Wasco, and costume designer Betsy Heimann. According to Tarantino, "e 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." 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." The largest chunk of the budget – $150,000 – went to creating the Jack Rabbit Slim's set. It was built in a Culver City 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 at the Hawthorne Grill, known for its Googie architecture. 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. 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. 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

Main article: Pulp Fiction (soundtrack)

No film score was composed for Pulp Fiction; Quentin Tarantino instead used 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." Tarantino planned to use a power pop song, "My Sharona" by The Knack, 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 was released along with the film in 1994. The album peaked on the Billboard 200 chart at number 21. The single, Urge Overkill's cover of the Neil Diamond song "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon", 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. 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 knowingness." She contrasts the soundtrack with that of Forrest Gump, the highest-grossing film of 1994, which also relies on period pop recordings: "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.

Release and reception

Release and box office

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 to France. The film was unveiled at a midnight hour screening and caused a sensation. It won the Palme d'Or, 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. Todd McCarthy 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, Locarno, Norway, and San Sebastián. 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 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." In late September, it opened the New York Film Festival. 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 ... 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."

External videos
video icon Charlie Rose interview with Quentin Tarantino on Pulp Fiction, October 14, 1994

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." 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 vehicle, The Specialist, 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. 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 Miramax film to surpass $100 million in the United States and Canada. 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 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 the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 183 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.3/10. The website's consensus reads: "Injecting its compendium of crime tales with the patois of everyday conversation, Pulp Fiction is a cinematic shot of adrenaline that cements writer-director Quentin Tarantino as an audacious purveyor of killer kino." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 95 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore 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 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 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 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." 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." "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." "There's a special kick that comes from watching something this thrillingly alive", wrote Peter Travers of Rolling Stone. "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 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 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 "o film arrives with more advance hype", 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, 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 – Best Feature, Best Director, Male Lead (Jackson), and 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 Best Supporting Actor. The film was nominated for the Grand Prix of the Belgian Film Critics Association.

The February 2020 issue of New York Magazine lists Pulp Fiction alongside Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, Dr. Strangelove, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Conversation, Nashville, Taxi Driver, The Elephant Man, In the Bedroom, There Will Be Blood, and Roma as "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars".

Legacy and influence

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 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. Hitchcock's Psycho , Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde , and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange . 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.

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.

John Travolta, Uma Thurman and Quentin Tarantino at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, for the film's 20th anniversary tribute.

In a widely covered speech on May 31, 1995, Bob Dole, Senate Majority Leader and Republican presidential candidate for the then-upcoming 1996 presidential election (as well as the party's vice presidential nominee in the 1976 presidential election), 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, instead citing two less-celebrated movies based on Tarantino screenplays, Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers and Tony Scott's True Romance. In September 1996, Dole did accuse Pulp Fiction – which he had not seen at the time – 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 "neo-noir". Critic Geoffrey O'Brien, however, argued against the classification of Pulp Fiction into the neo-noir genre: "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." Similarly, Nicholas Christopher calls it "more gangland 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 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.

According to Variety, 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 the industry's attitude toward the lowly indies ... spawning a flock of me-too classics divisions ... 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 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. In 2024, on the film's 30th anniversary, the magazine wrote that the film "revived the career of John Travolta, minted a star in Samuel L. Jackson and spawned a still-thriving cottage industry of knockoffs and imitation films."

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 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. The adrenalin shot to Mia Wallace's heart is on 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 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 political adviser to 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 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 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. In 2015, Pulp Fiction ranked 28th on BBC's "100 Greatest American Films" list, voted on by film critics from around the world.

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. "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 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 Resnais and 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 Kolker sees the "flourishes, the apparent witty banality of the dialogue, the goofy fracturing of temporality a patina over a pastiche. The pastiche ... is essentially of two films that Tarantino can't seem to get out of his mind: Mean Streets and The Killing ." 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 pop culture allusions, ranging from the famous image of Marilyn Monroe's skirt flying up over a subway grating to Jules addressing a soon-to-be victim as "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 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 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 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, "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 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 "politically correct. There is no nudity and no violence directed against women ... 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 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 ... 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 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 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 (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.

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 an angel sitting on Vince's shoulder ... 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 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). Marsellus and Butch are soon held captive by Maynard and Zed, "two sadistic honkies straight out of Deliverance" (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:

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 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 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 moral code and thus connects Butch with a more meaningful approach to life.

The 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, The Three Stooges, The Flintstones, I Spy, Green Acres, 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 ... he 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

Vincent "stares ... transfixed" into the glowing case, as specified in Tarantino's screenplay.Vincent's demeanor reinforces the allusion to the scene in Kiss Me Deadly (1955) in which Lily Carver, a.k.a. Gabrielle (Gaby Rodgers), gazes into the glowing case.

The combination of the mysterious suitcase lock is 666, the "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 (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's 1955 film noir Kiss Me Deadly, which features a glowing briefcase housing an atomic explosive. In their review of Alex Cox's 1984 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 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, 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."

"And I will strike down ..." Conclusion of the "Ezekiel 25:17" monologue and Brett's murder
Problems playing this file? See media help.

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 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), 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, the hardback but pulp-style novel Vincent is shown with in two scenes.

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 ... his 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 ... n true postmodern fashion, 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: "he 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."

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 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 – vigorously, after having given Butch "oral pleasure." 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 holdup 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 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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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

Main article: List of accolades received by Pulp Fiction

Pulp Fiction won eight major awards from a total of twenty-six nominations, including a Best Original Screenplay win at the 67th Academy Awards. Also, in the balloting by the National Society of Film Critics, Samuel L. Jackson was the runner-up in both the Best Actor and the Best Supporting Actor categories.

American Film Institute Lists

NFT dispute

In November 2021, Miramax filed a lawsuit against Tarantino who released seven 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

Notes

  1. ^ In Waxman (2005, p. 67), Biskind (2004, p. 170), Polan (2000, p. 69), Dawson (1995a, pp. 147–148)
  2. Walken's speech to the young Butch has been described as a "bravura performance of patriotic zeal and scatological fetishism worthy of a Kubrickian anti-hero".
  3. Box Office Mojo gives $106 million in foreign grosses for a worldwide total of $213.9 million; Biskind and Waxman apparently concur that $105M / $212.9M are the correct figures.
  4. National Society of Film Critics, National Board of Review, Los Angeles Film Critics Society, Boston Society of Film Critics, Society of Texas Film Critics, Kansas City Film Critics Circle

References

  1. "Pulp Fiction". British Board of Film Classification. Archived from the original on May 10, 2015. Retrieved November 11, 2012.
  2. ^ "Pulp Fiction (1994)". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on April 30, 2011. Retrieved May 13, 2012.
  3. ^ See, e.g., King (2002), pp. 185–7; Kempley, Rita (October 14, 1994). "Pulp Fiction (R)". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on July 9, 2017. Retrieved September 19, 2007.; LaSalle, Mike (September 15, 1995). "Pulp Grabs You Like a Novel". San Francisco Chronicle. Archived from the original on January 12, 2012. Retrieved September 20, 2007.
  4. "101 Greatest Screenplays". Writers Guild of America, West. Archived from the original on March 6, 2013. Retrieved November 29, 2015.
  5. ^ "The New Classics: Movies". Entertainment Weekly. June 18, 2007. Archived from the original on August 28, 2008. Retrieved September 29, 2013.
  6. O'Sullivan, Michael (December 18, 2013). "Library of Congress announces 2013 National Film Registry selections". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 18, 2013. Retrieved December 18, 2013.
  7. "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on October 31, 2016. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  8. "Cinema with the Right Stuff Marks 2013 National Film Registry". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on June 4, 2020. Retrieved May 8, 2020.
  9. ^ "Pulp Fiction: The Facts" (1993 location interview), Pulp Fiction DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).
  10. Parker 2002, p. 23.
  11. Dancyger 2002, p. 235.
  12. Villella, Fiona A. (January 2000). "Circular Narratives: Highlights of Popular Cinema in the '90s". Senses of Cinema. Archived from the original on December 31, 2006. Retrieved December 31, 2006.
  13. Bhattacharya, Sanjiv (April 18, 2004). "Mr Blonde's Ambition". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on July 9, 2008. Retrieved December 27, 2006.
  14. Charyn 2006, p. 68.
  15. For $100,000, see e.g., Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 3, Pulp Fiction DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment). For USD$140,000, see e.g., Wills, Dominic. "John Travolta Biography". Tiscali. Archived from the original on January 4, 2007. Retrieved December 27, 2006. Note again that all the main actors were paid identical weekly salaries. It appears that these figures cited for Travolta do not include his participation, if any, in the film's profits.
  16. Haddon, Cole (August 7, 2008). "Michael Madsen Talks Hell Ride, Inglorious Bastards, and Sin City 2". Film.com. Archived from the original on October 23, 2008. Retrieved November 18, 2008.
  17. Dawson 1995, p. 154.
  18. Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 5, Pulp Fiction DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).
  19. Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 3, Pulp Fiction DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).
  20. "Samuel L. Jackson's 'Pulp Fiction' Jheri Curl Wig Was a Happy Accident". Yahoo. January 6, 2016. Archived from the original on February 17, 2022. Retrieved February 17, 2022.
  21. ^ Gleiberman, Owen (October 10, 1994). "Pulp Fiction (1994)". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on October 15, 2007. Retrieved September 20, 2007.
  22. "Laurence Fishburne Turned Down Samuel L. Jackson's Role in 'Pulp Fiction'". The Ringer. Archived from the original on August 20, 2020. Retrieved August 21, 2020.
  23. Jung, E. Alex (August 19, 2020). "Laurence Fishburne Knows Who He Is". Vulture. Archived from the original on August 21, 2020. Retrieved August 21, 2020.
  24. ^ Biskind 2004, p. 170.
  25. ^ Dawson 1995a, p. 155.
  26. Wills, Dominic. "Uma Thurman Biography". Tiscali. Archived from the original on May 7, 2007. Retrieved December 29, 2006.
  27. Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 23, Pulp Fiction DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).
  28. McCarthy, Todd (March 19, 1993). "Point of No Return". Variety. Retrieved June 4, 2024.
  29. Charyn 2006, p. 73.
  30. Bailey 2013, p. 84.
  31. Dawson, Jeff (December 1995). "Hit Man". Premiere (UK). Tim-Roth.com. Archived from the original on January 20, 2013. Retrieved April 11, 2012.
  32. ^ Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 14, Pulp Fiction DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment).
  33. Seal, Mark (February 13, 2013). "Cinema Tarantino: The Making of Pulp Fiction". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on January 15, 2019. Retrieved July 9, 2020.
  34. "Sid Haig Interview! Episode: 40". Archived from the original on November 20, 2008. Retrieved July 20, 2008.
  35. Brennan, Sandra. "Ving Rhames Biography". AllMovie. Archived from the original on April 13, 2012. Retrieved April 11, 2012.
  36. "Cobain Turned Down 'Pulp Fiction' Role". Hollywood.com. September 20, 2006. Archived from the original on June 4, 2012. Retrieved September 16, 2007.
  37. Roberts, Chris (August 1999). "Gary Oldman: A sheep in wolf's clothing". Uncut (27). IPC Media. wouldn't have been last Tarantino collaboration, had TriStar execs gotten their way ... Oldman was the preferred choice for .
  38. ^ "50 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Pulp Fiction". ShortList. October 28, 2013. Archived from the original on November 5, 2013. Retrieved August 26, 2014.
  39. Enhanced Trivia Track, ch. 6, Pulp Fiction DVD (Buena Vista Home Entertainment). See also Rabin, Nathan (June 25, 2003). "Interviews: Pam Grier". The A.V. Club. The Onion. Archived from the original on October 2, 2007. Retrieved September 20, 2007.
  40. Dawson 1995a, p. 189.
  41. Howley, K. (2004). "Breaking, Making, and Killing Time in Pulp Fiction". Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies: 10.
  42. ^ France, Lisa (October 14, 2014). "'Pulp Fiction': 20 fun facts as the film turns 20". CNN. Archived from the original on July 29, 2018. Retrieved August 14, 2018.
  43. "Quentin Tarantino on All-American Girl (February 22, 1995)". Chronological Snobbery. November 26, 2007. Archived from the original on March 12, 2016. Retrieved March 11, 2016.
  44. Bart 2000, p. 85.
  45. Polan 2000, p. 69: Willis's deal for a percentage of the box office gross was presumably on top of a base weekly salary that was identical to the other main actors, per Polan.
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