In what scene does someone put a bullet into somebody’s head and make a joke about it?
In the PF scene where Vincent (accidentally) shoots Marvin, he doesn’t make a joke about it at all. He freaks out. I believe the exact line is “Oh, man, I just shot Marvin in the face.” The audience laughs at the suddeness of the scene and Travolta’s relatively underplayed reaction to it, but he doesn’t joke about it. He sees it as a problem.
Larry Mudd. Nice perspective on Pulp Fiction. Thanks for sharing.
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Diogenes. ** Wasn’t a head shot, but Jules’ execution of the guy on the couch while Brad was talking was clearly played for shock and laughs, as was Jules’ and Vincent’s killing of The Fourth Man.
It still wasn’t seen as funny by Jules or Vincent. The audience’s laughter is its own.
Mr. the Cynic. I concede the Fourth Man’s death wasn’t seen as funny by Jules or Vincent, but Jules was definitely cracking wise to Brad right after he killed the guy on the couch. Sarcasm isn’t just irony, it’s a deliberate form of humor.
Everyone keeps talking about how Tarantino’s dialogues are so natural and whatnot, am I the only one who finds them incredibly forced? Maybe it’s just the actors, but everytime I watch a Tarantino film - especially Pulp Fiction - I’m struck by how hard the dialogue is working to sound casual and hip. I find it lame.
That said, I don’t think Tarantino is a sick fuck. Just a tiresome fuck.
That wasn’t meant to be humorous, it was meant to be chilling.
I agree with a lot of what the Tarantino supporters have said on this thread, and they’ve done a better job than I could in mining the subject, esp. in *Pulp Fiction * (Larry Mudd, your post was genius-- can I copy it and send it to a few people? Give proper credit, of course). Here’s my quick and dirty explanation:
The people in Tarantino’s movies who commit horrifying acts of violence are regular people just like you and me. They eat at McDonald’s, they gossip, they do foolish things, they trust the wrong people, etc. Do you think a psychopath isn’t charming? Doesn’t have friends he jokes with? Do you think hitmen don’t give people foot massages? Don’t discuss the relative merits of eating pork? Sure they do. They live in the banal world just like you and me. I think that’s where the true horror lies-- in the mundanity of people who live on what we consider the fringes of society.
I think Tarantino, unlike Bruckheimer et al, is showing us the humanity of the people who commit acts of flagrant violence. Butch gets in a car accident, walks in on a sodomy, kills a stranger, and listens to his mortal enemy plan to torture the man who raped him… then goes back to the hotel to discuss whether or not Fabienne had blueberry pancakes. Because that’s how life is. You get stuck with a giant needle in your heart, then you tell a really bad joke about tomatoes. Because you can’t be horrified permanently, esp. if this is the nature of your life. It’s a coping mechanism.
While we’re on the subject, can I float an interpretation to the Tarantino people here? It’s about the whole Vincent Vega/Mia Wallace vignette. My theory is that, had Mia not OD’d on the heroin, she and Vincent would have had sex. The needle scene was a metaphor for the sex, and the conversation they have when he walks her back to her door (“If Marcellus should live his whole life and never find out about this…” “If he found out about this, he’d be as mad at me as he is at you…” “I doubt that.”) is the same convo they’d have had if they’d had sex. Thus, the graphic and violent nature of that scene alludes to emotional/moral nature of the sex they would have had if she hadn’t OD’d. In a way, they’re better of that she did. Thoughts? Criticisms?
I also always wondered how Mia would explain that huge bruise she’d have on her chest to Marcellus later…
I don’t see Tarantino as a “sick fuck”. I just can’t. Sure, he’s a man that can think of some pretty grotesque and horrific imagery, and get it into a movie in pretty much a suitable fashion… but who CAN’T think of terrible things?
I think some people might see Tarantino as wallowing in these darker notions while they, themselves, have managed to “repress” them, and don’t like having it in their face. Fair enough.
But the “sick fuck” accusation assumes that there’s nothing underlying the imagery. I guess if you got too repulsed by a scene to think about it, you might miss something. Or maybe it’s just not your cup of tea. Whatever the case, I feel that extreme imagery can be used to deliver a very strong punch, while the context and direction of the imagery actually delivers the message, with the combination being all the more impacting. The scene in which Butch meticulously picks his weapon, ultimately deciding on a samurai sword, would be totally different without the context… his fear/anger at Marcellus Wallace, coupled with his greater anger at almost being butt-raped by a bunch of hicks, makes his hard gaze at the sword a goddamned shitstorm of piss-offedness.
I think people that dismiss him as a “sick fuck” (or whatever kind of fuck) are doing a grand disservice to the man and his art.
Larry Mudd, there’s at least two things in your “Script” excerpts that never actually happened in the movie. Mia doesn’t “Crawl on all fours” to the bathroom, and the dialogue with Jimmy saying what T-shirts he has available never takes place. And if the T-shirt worn by Jules says “I’m with Stupid,” it can’t be read.
Here’s a picture, Rick: http://fusionanomaly.net/pulpfictionjulesvincentsantacruz.jpg
It doesn’t even look like Jules shirt has ANY writing on it at all.
However, I think Mr. Mudd’s point was that, since those were in the original script (ie - Tarantino’s original idea), it indicates what kind of imagery Tarantino was aiming at. The fact that it got cut probably has to do with various other issues… maybe QT thought that the “I’m With Stupid” was too much derision for Vincent on Jules’ part?
I think a lot of you are missing the point… in Tarantino movies (well, up to Kill Bill at least), you watch people as violent things are done, you watch the effect of violent actions, but you don’t often see the violence itself.
Such is the case with Marvin. You see Marvin talk, then the camera cuts to Travolta yapping away, a quick cut to the car which is suddenly bathed in blood on the inside (this is what you would’ve seen had you been following behind Jules), and then back to Travolta and Jules. Not once do we see Marvin’s body or blown-away head, not once do we see a bullet enter Marvin, but we see the effects of Marvin’s death and that’s what shocks us. Sort of like Psycho - you saw the knife, you saw the blood, you saw Janet Leigh, but not once did you see the knife in Janet Leigh.
The ear-cutting scene is another - you see the knife, you see the policeman, you see the crazed bad guy, you see the ear, but you don’t see the bad guy put the knife to the policemen’s ear and cut it off… the camera skews away and the audience is left listening to the act, supplying an image Tarantino knew he couldn’t beat. And, for the record, the policeman didn’t die during the ear scene, but I don’t remember who it was that shot him down (wasn’t it Chris Penn?)
You don’t really see Zed and Marcellus in PF, you just hear it and see the effects on people… what you do see is a long, long walk to the door, with Bruce Willis (and what was that about Willis being in mindless action flicks? Die Hard is the genre-defining movie, thank you very much) and his hand approaching the door. As the door opens, there’s one quick shot of Zed, off the center of screen, just enough to make you say “Did I just see that?”
Kill Bill is Tarantino facing up to the violence… and finding it so hard to do that he had to make it into a comic book - a gloriously rich and inventive comic, but one just the same. It is the one that compares to the Arnie and Sly films of yore, the movie as comic book, the indestructable hero(ine) cutting their way up the Hierarchy of Villains.
The thing that people don’t like is the tone. I can understand people who don’t like Tarantino movies… he’s a comedian and his oeuvre is the hyper-real gangster flick, a combination not commonly seen in cinema.
Look, my friend, this is where you and I disagree.
The “path of the righteous man” speech is meant to be exclusively chilling. All the other verbal acrobatics was Jules deliberately fucking with Brad before killing him – and the reason he does that (and Vincent goes along with it) is because they find it funny. You can’t tell me that a guy who quips, “Excuse me… did I break your concentration?” right after he smokes a guy on the couch isn’t amusing himself. Same with the “Say ‘what’ again! I double dare you!” etc.
Personally, I don’t see why it can’t be both.
personally I don’t know why any one would consider tarentino a sick fuck, his films are pure genious… what about a clockwork orange, is Kubric a sick fuck becasue in that film Alex and his gang beat up an old man and rape his wife without concequence… or the horses head in the godfather… all these films have these sceence in them to evoke a certain feeling… Tarentino is like kevin smith, if you can’t get past the questionable or offencisve material you’ll never see what theyre really trying to say… (Plus, from what I hear the japaniese version of kill bill volume1 was even bloodier, I don’t know how but aparently it is)
People keep saying that Jules shoots the kid on the couch, but he doesn’t.
He just discharges a single bullet in the couch between the kid’s legs.
ugh… you’ve got this all wrong, dod you even see the end of the film?.. the point of this speech was at the time mabye to be chilling, but the point of his whole speech comes to bring him to an apifany in his life at the end of the film… the “path of the rightous man” speech is more then just a chilling exerbt form the bible…
Back off. I’m getting a little pissed here.
Again, I don’t see why the speech can’t serve more than one purpose. At one point in the film it’s just some cold-blooded shit he’s saying right before he pops a cap in someone. In the last frames of the movie it helps him to arrive at what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity. Chilling clarity, by the way … after he dissects the speech a couple of times, his final, inexorable conclusion was that he, Jules, epitomized the tyranny of evil men.
Maybe you need to re-watch the end of the film, buck-o.
You seem to be mixing up Marsellius Wallace and the rapist Zed and Jules Winnifred and the guy on the couch. Oh, and a self-correction from two posts back: it’s Brett, not Brad.
It was in reply to the
remarks.
He doesn’t smoke the guy, he just shoots into the couch.
Watcvh it again. He shoots into the man on the couch. Dude got smoked—Jules and Vince’s task was to retrieve the briefcase AND kill the guys who took it, excluding Marvin, who was the snitch who turned them in.
vinryk. You realize in your version of events Jules deliberately leaves a witness alive.
