Y’know, one of my English/Film Studies teachers hated Pulp Fiction, specifically because of this scene- she thought it was offensive to homsexuals and portrayed them in a stereotypical manner as rapists. I was, to say the least, a little suprised at this, and it made me uneasy about watching PF for a little while.
As for the Wolf, I always think that he’s just there to be the voice of reason while everyone else is going batshit crazy. He comes in, tells the gangsters what to do in a calm and measured voice, and they do what they would have freaked out over doing if they were told it over the phone. Mind you, I do fing the presence of Tarantino in that scene as might jarring.
What about all the movies that have straight men raping women? Do they sterotype all straight men as rapists?
Tarantino’s one of my favorite directors, but I’ll admit I had to tell myself to shut up with the nitpicking when no cops showed up at the shop within 10 minutes. Many many people had to have seen Butch and Marcellus going down the side street, and just following the blood trail it would have been easy to know where they went. In, uh, real life, the place would have been quickly surrounded by SWAT teams, and Zed and whatshisname would have known it and thrown them out or just gotten out of there, or…but it’s Tarantino. I’m willing to go along for the ride, always.
And the black suits and skinny ties DID look cool, and Tarantino IS cool. The coolest.
I don’t recall anything about Vincent, “Dean Martin”, or “the Wolf” (and I’ve seen the movie!), but is it possible that Vincent works at Jackrabbit Slim’s, where he plays “Dean Martin”, just like you’ve got Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Russell, Mamie Van Doren (presumably), Buddy Holly, Ed Sullivan, et al.?
To some extent, that’sike saying, “What was in the briefcase?” A lot of things are suggested without being defined. I hadn’t considered that it would be a wake. It makes sense, but I thought that he was just with some people who know how to drink for a few hours and still keep their clothes on.
It’s simply that the Wolf is so cool that he hangs out with people who have swingin’ cocktail parties at 8:30 in the morning. Presumably these are people rich enough to not have real jobs, and if they’re hanging with the Wolf, their money probably comes from crime. And crime doesn’t work a nine-to-five schedule.
I’m telling you people, looking for some sense of realism is really barking up the wrong tree. It’s a fantasy.
INT. HOTEL SUITE – MORNING The CAMERA looks through the bedroom doorway of a hotel suite into the main area. We SEE a crap game being played on a fancy crap table by GAMBLERS in tuxedos and LUCKY LADIES in fancy evening gowns. The CAMERA PANS to the right revealing: Sitting on a bed, phone in hand with his back to us, the tuxedo-clad WINSTON WOLF aka “THE WOLF”. http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Pulp-Fiction.html
I always assumed The Gimp was semi-retarded/insane and that he was chained up more for the protection of others (like a crazy pit bull) than as a guy who’s being held against his will. God I love that movie.
Amen. When I first saw that movie I knew nothing of Tarantino but what he looked like, and I thought it weirdly brave of him to cast himself as such an obviously awful character and deliver a nervous-seeming amateurish performance to make the character seem even more awful. In retrospect, I suspect QT actually thinks that Jimmy is the epitome of whiteboy cool for being able to say the n-word to Samuel L. Jackson over and over. Wotta maroon.
Looking back at the OP (and why the heck not?), I would say that the kidnapping part is much less “realistic” than the gimp part. This people I’ve met who are into this stuff are generally pussycats, and I’m guessing that right now that there are a lot more people willingly donning rubber masks and ball gags than are kidnap victims being held in somebody’s play dungeon. But perhaps I’m sheltered.
I juts wanted to point out that the only authoritative reference for what’s in the movie is the movie. Even if it says it in the script, if it’s not on film, it’s not in the film. Maybe the people in the background were shooting craps. But it has to be in the film, not in any other materials.
Ted Turner once asserted that Michael Curtiz wanted to shoot Casablanca in color, but was unable to. I don’t know if it’s true, but it doesn’t matter. Casablanca in color would be an outrage. A film is what’s on film, and nothing more, or less.
Add me to the “Tarantino is great, but needs to stay out of his own movies” group. When I first saw Pulp Fiction, I thought it was so obvious the reason he played Jimmy out of all the other charactes in the film, was so he could portray someone he wishes he were in real life- a psuedo-bad ass with a hot black wife who is so bad he “goes off” on hitmen to their faces, and even uses the word “nigger” in front of the black one repeatedly. Sorta like Woody Allen getting to screw young hot chicks like Elizabeth Berkely in all of his films- living out fantasies, I tells ya.
