At the Robert Burns Centre Film Theatre Film Club an extremely
privileged audience spent two and half hours in Quentin Tarantino’s ‘cool
universe’. A place that is hard and fast, funny, stylish and filled
deliberately with some clever references to other cinematic works. We were
watching a film that veers back and forth between humour and violence, a film
where your never sure if you should be laughing or cringing. Monday night’s big
screen showing of one of my own personal top three films of all time: Pulp Fiction (1994) is a film that
defined American cinema in the 90’s. A piece of cinematic work that is central
to its age, influencing many films that followed including our own British Film
industry. Would films like Trainspotting
(1996) or Lock,
Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) had been made without QT’s inspiration
and would our own British postmodern film noir been so proficient. But far more
importantly it influenced the financing of the America independent movie because
up until that point it was almost impossible to get finance for anything
outside of the Hollywood controlled film industry. It was because of this cross
over from what could have remained an independent cult classic to a mainstream
hit that really opened the door’s. Only one other filmmaker had received so
much acclaim so early on in his career and that was another boy wonder Orson
Wells. ‘Not since Citizen Kane has one
man appeared from relative obscurity to redefine the art of filmmaking[1]”
How did this 1994 American film noir directed by the young
and brash Knoxville Tennessee born Quentin Tarantino, a movie known for it
extensive and diverting dialogue, ironic mix of humour and violence, nonlinear
storyline and a host of cinematic and pop culture references, originally come
to fruition?
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| Honey Bunny and Pumpkin enjoy a quite cup of coffee. |
In 1992, after the breakthrough success of his debut film, Reservoir Dogs (1992), Tarantino went to Amsterdam to write a script for his next film.
Originally Reservoir Dogs seems to
have been part of the script idea for Pulp
Fiction but it had become a full story in its own right. Some of the ideas
that went into the script came from friend Roger Avary (who had been a
co-worker at the famous Video Archives
store where Tarantino had worked and allegedly honed his love of the movies).
Avary had written the segment that became Butch’s gold watch story, and he had
expanded it into a feature film script called Pandemonium Reigns, but Tarantino brought back the script and it
became a section of Pulp Fiction.
Once the script for the film was completed, Tarantino and
his producer friend, Lawrence Bender, took it to Jersey Films, which had
offered Tarantino close to a million dollars for a script. Tarantino and
Benders Company, A Band Apart, (named
after a Jean-Luc Godard film Bande a part
1964) had negotiated a deal with Jersey Films that involved an offer of initial
financing plus office facilities in exchange for partnership in the film and
permission to shop the script to a studio. Jersey took it to Columbia TriStar
Films who decided not to produce it: the rumour is that the studio heads were bothered
by the violence and scenes in which John Travolta character shoots up heroin. But
according to the Los Angeles Times, TriStar apparently got cold feet and
decided not to go forward with production because they feared it could be hard
to market. The studio’s rejection of Pulp
Fiction, an under $10 million movie, was explained away by a source at the
studio who explained that TriStar was currently looking to make and release
more higher profile, bigger-budgeted mainstream movies with ‘stars’ and at this
point had little interest in more offbeat fare, even if the financial risks were
lower.[2]
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| Mia Wallace and .... |
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| ........her husband Marsellus Wallace. |
Fortunately, another company Miramax, which had bought the
US distribution rights for Reservoir Dogs
and made lots of money from that experience, agreed to finance the new film. In
fact, it was the first movie that Miramax (which had recently become a Disney
subsidiary) financed in its entirety. Tarantino was given the same
scriptwriting fee that he had been promised at TriStar, and the film went in to
an eight-week shoot with a budget of $8.5 million. The largest part of which
went to building the Jack Rabbit Slim’s set (but some savings were made by
having the production offices at the same site so as to cut down on
transportation costs). Something else that also helped keep costs down was a
plan that Lawrence Bender devised in which all the main actors were paid the
same amount of money, rather than according to hierarchy of celebrity and
importance, which is normally the case.
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| Butch Coolide doing what Butch Coolidge does best! |
Incidentally some of the casting history is quite
intriguing. For example, there was evidently some thought of giving the role of
Vincent Vega (Travolta) to Michael Madsen, who played Vic Vega in Reservoir Dogs. There was also talk of
Daniel Day-Lewis playing the part. Similarly, there was some competition for
the character of co-hitman Jules Winnfield (Samuel L Jackson), with Laurence
Fishburne testing for the role. A number of actresses were also suggested for
the Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) character including Meg Ryan, Holly Hunter,
Brigitte Nielsen and Rosanna Arquette who became Lances wife in the film
(Vincent’s drug dealer). And a recurrent story has Pam Grier originally being
considered for the role of Lances wife. (Who would go on to appear in
Tarantino’s next feature film Jackie
Brown 1997)
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| Jack Rabbit Slim's famous twist competition. |
Production began on the 20th September 1993. In
May 1994, Pulp Fiction had its premier
at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Palme d’Ore, the Festivals top prize, from
a jury presided over by Clint Eastwood. This success encouraged Miramax to give
the film a big publicity push. Thereafter it was nominated for seven Oscars:
Best Picture, Director, Actor (Travolta), Supporting Actor (Jackson) Supporting
Actress (Thurman) Best Original Screenplay and Editing, it won Best Original
Screenplay. Eventually taking over $213 million at the box office, that did not
include DVD’s, published scripts and of course we must not forget the
soundtrack which plays an integral part of the narrative, with QT we don’t get
a composed film score instead we get an assortment of surf music, rock and
roll, soul and pop songs.
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| Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield looking cool. |
There was ambiguities over credits: at the Golden Globe
Awards, for example, only Tarantino was named as best screenwriter, but at the
Academy Awards, Tarantino and Avary shared the Oscar. The actual credits on the
film state ‘Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Story by Quentin Tarantino
and Roger Avary.”
To a certain extent the film is in fact politically correct.
There is no nudity and no violence directed against women. There’s interracial
friendship and cultural diversity, there are strong women and strong black men
with QT swimming against class stereotypes,[3]
although some critics took exception to the word nigger, which is something
that’s also coursing problems with his latest movie Django Unchained (2012).
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| Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield looking decidedly uncool covered in Marvin's brains! |
Following the screening of this intoxicating film a short
discussion took place, subjects included how Tarantino revitalised the career
of its leading man John Travolta, who went on to appear in many other award
winning films, the narrative structure which is presented out of sequence
forming, what some have referred to as a circular narrative and the films
success and its legacy to the cinema. I
got the feeling that this discussion could have gone on all night, with perhaps
a second screening late into the early hours, those were the days?
I would like to thank the RBC for programming this film. It
gave some of the younger members of the audience a chance to see this movie for
the first time and fans like myself, who have seen it many times, another
opportunity to see it as it should be shown: on a big screen with a decent
sound system.[4]
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