"Do they speak English in What?" - Pulp Fiction, 30 years old today (10/14/1994 - 10/14/2024)

Cafe Society
1

One of many great lines I could have used for the title, Pulp Fiction is the film… for me and, I assume, for a lot of us… where there was a “before” and “after” in how one saw and approached movies.

So much has been said, so much will be said, that I’ll just kick this off with my favorite viewings:

October 14th, 1994. Knoxville, TN was the then-home to Regal Cinemas so they had a nice art house cinema where my new wife and I saw this on opening night. What an experience, my God.

Sometime in the following weeks. Still in Knoxville, this was my drag-my-friends-kicking-and-screaming phase of my fandom, where I saw it three more times, each with a different friend who hasn’t seen it before.

December 6th, 2012, saw it in the theaters the last time, a special one-day only release of Pulp Fiction, timed to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Reservoir Dogs.

Sometime in 2023. Inna had only seen this movie in Russian, transcribed by ex-Soviet censors, and she wanted to watch it again to see what she missed.

The finest movie of my generation, even if QT may qualify as a late Boomer with his 1963 birth date.

And now, little man, I give the thread to you… have at it, motherfuckers.

2

I like this movie!
My ex and I used to go, what? And the rejoinder would always be…
Jackson made this movie.

3

I loved this the first time I saw it. Then I watched it maybe 20 years later and still loved parts of it, but hated others…QT did not age well for me, with his bad acting, delight in using the n-word, and puerile excitement over gimpery. Still, there are great parts, and I understand why people love it.

4

Flock of Seagulls here doesn’t seem to understand.

5

The shocked disbelief over a milkshake costing five dollars hasn’t aged well.

6

Pulp Fiction was the follow up to Reservoir Dogs that didn’t fail. His attempt to mature with Jackie Brown disappointed the fan base who’d have preferred more of the same. Kill Bill I &II delivered on that and kept with the 1970’s action homage. Personally it’s where he lost me, until Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

In the meantime, the “Tarantinoesque” knock-offs littered the 90’s heavily, with neo-Spillane scripts that often involved a stray suitcase full of cash or drugs in a Mohave motel, the young protagonists who happen upon it at their peril, Cartel killers, a white LA/Las Vegas fixer, and a corrupt erstwhile legitimate businessman. Corman McCarthy must have watched a few of these straight-to-videos and thought “I could really do something with this.”

7

Honestly, for me it was using Travolta, who really isnt that good. Willis and Jackson were very good however.

What does that mean?

8

Hehe, I went and saw it on opening weekend, too. I had seen Reservoir Dogs, and was its target audience. Any time I could get someone to agree to go and see it with me, I took them.

Though, that was probably mostly due to my continuing Dick Dale addiction. The only thing wrong with the opening scene and credits is that it tunes out to “Jungle Boogie” before we get to hear all of “Misirlou”.

Still, watching this scene still literally makes my nipples hard in anticipation 30 years later.

Awful words? These people rob and kill folks for a living.

9

Went to see this with a friend opening weekend. I remember prior to its release we were cautious since the trailer had looked so good but we were coming off a string of other movies we got burned on that had good trailers but the movies ended up being crap. After we left the theatre he asked “Well, What’d ya think?” with a straight face. I gushed “That was totally my kind of movie! Oh my god, that was so great.” He broke into laughter and was giddy with how awesome he also thought it was.
We immediately started making plans to see it again trying to figure out what other friends of ours we could get to go.

10

I saw it in the theater twice in 1994. It’s the only movie I saw twice in the theater during it’s original run. I had already seen True Romance and Reservoir Dogs but I didn’t know Tarantino was involved with either one. I went to see Pulp Fiction because the trailer looked interesting. On my second trip to see the movie, it was a week night, the theater was mostly empty, and a coup in their early 30s sat in front of my friend and I. As we waited for the lights to dim, a couple walked down the aisle with their little 4 or 5 year old daugther in tow. Upon seeing this, the lady sitting in front of us turned and asked, “This is Pulp Fiction, right?” I nodded, looked past her at the trio, and simply shrugged.

I haven’t seen every Tarantino movie, but I’ve liked every one I’ve seen. I liked Jackie Brown too. What I like about Tarantino movies is that I never know what’s going to happen.

11

There’s a great line that I don’t think gets enough attention.

“Garçon, coffee!”

scabpicker posted the opening scene with Pumpkin and Honey Bunny. Then the movie jumps to Jules and Vincent, Then Butch’s conversation with Marcellus, then Vincent with Lance, then with Mia, etc. It jumps around so much that I pretty much forgot all about the couple in the opening scene. It’s not like I was waiting for them to show up again.

Then we get to the end of the movie. We know what kind of men Jules and Vincent are. We know what kind of a day they’ve had, and we know the epiphany that Jules is coming to terms with. And then we hear “garçon, coffee!”, and the whole opening scene comes back. It’s a brilliant “oh, shit” moment. You know that something very, very bad is about to happen, but not right away. There’s still a moment of calm before the storm, talking about walking the Earth, and then everything goes to hell.

I’ve never heard anyone else cite that moment as the key to the film, but I think it is.

12

I admit I’m afraid to rewatch it. I like it when it was new, but since I’ve seen a lot of QT movies, and hated about half. I fear all the things I hate about him are in the movie, but with no basis for comparison at the time, I just let them go as quirks. Now they’ll be right in my face.

Except for Tarentino’s obsession with, as they say, the N-word. That bothered me then. My opinion was, QT really wished he had been born black.

Zed’s dead, baby.

13

MrsFtG and I saw in the theater. We both loved it.

“Okay, gentlemen. You both been to county before, I’m sure Here it comes.”

14

Ringo and Honey Bunny? I always had the feeling that they didn’t kill actually. The focus on intimidating the diners makes me think their guns were empty, especially since they both nearly pee themselves when faced with real badasses.

15

“Say ‘what’ again, motherfucker!” The implied menace is palpable throughout Jules’ diatribe, as we already know what a sociopath the guy is.

16

Nah, I’m meaning the general cast of characters when I refer to the killing, not Ringo and Honey Bunny specifically.

17

It always bugged me that Jules got his wallet back, but all the other customers had theirs stolen. It doesn’t seem fair.

I guess they should have brought their own guns if they wanted them back.

18

The second “Miserlou” kicked in I turned to my date and said “We are in for a ride. Hang on!”

One of the most quotable movies of the last half-century. Poor Marvin.

19

I didn’t know anything about the flick and admit the first 3 times I saw it was frustrated by it until I understood WTF was going on.

I still want Quentin Tarantino to direct an episode of Sesame Street with Samuel Jackson playing Gordon:

“I want this Mother Fucking Grouch off my mother fucking street right mother fucking now!”

“Say ‘cookie’ again. Say cookie again you blue google eyed mother fucker! I dare you! I double dare you!”

20

It came out in my last year of uni. I’d seen Dogs a couple of times at the rep theatre in downtown Montreal, and had consumed a lot of press about QT so I was well-prepped for True Romance. Natural Born Killers (original story by, but you couldn’t ultimately see much of his DNA in it by the end) dropped late the next summer, and blew my mind. Strangely, I didn’t see Pulp on opening weekend, which for a super-hyped flick is rare for me. I had recently been dropped like a bad habit and was emotionally out of sorts, and went to see Wes Craven’s New Nightmare that weekend instead.

I caught up with Pulp Fiction later that week, in a theatre that was packed to the rafters. It was one of those rare occasions where an audience just surfs along on a wave of excitement and hilarity at something genuinely new and crazy. I think we forget just how low Travolta’s star had sunk by that point (well, maybe not, as he works in the utter dregs of streaming shit these days) so many were agog at that. Scene after scene went off like a bomb. There were two young Chinese women sitting next to me, and when Christopher Walken’s monologue hit the part about how Butch’s dad “wasn’t going to let some s**** get his greasy yellow hands on [the watch].” they were howling with laughter to the point of nearly falling out of their seats, which is a strange memory I’ll always carry.

I wound up seeing it a bunch more times on the big screen (and as it moved into the rep houses, much smaller screens), going with friends who’d missed it. The movie seemed to play for a long time: I went with some buddies over Christmas break, and three months along it was still packing them in. A year later I’d moved to L.A. for film school and saw it at the New Beverly, a theatre that QT now owns.

Yeah, as cited above, it led to a lot of imitators. In the immediate aftermath we got stuff like Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead and Love & a .45, and a few years on the trickle would continue with 3 Days in the Valley. They were ultimately easy to ignore.

Oddly, I rank it pretty low among Tarantino’s films. My faves of his are Inglourious Basterds, Jackie Brown and Kill Bill Vol. 2. Really disliked his westerns…techincally skilled but repulsive storytelling.

I was a movie nerd twentysomething when Pulp Fiction hit, and maybe what I remember most of the phenomenon was the “director as rock star” which really hadn’t happened before. I wants him go on the Tonight Show, get parodied on SNL, cameo in sitcoms, and every film project he did, no matter how shitty (Destiny Turns on the Radio, Six Rooms) got attention.

Thirty years. Jeez.