When he got the call The Wolf was apparently at some kind of party or gathering at what appears to be a private residence. People are drinking and some form of gambling. But it’s 8:30 in the morning.
Was there some kind of symbolism to this or just more quirkiness fromTarantino?
They’re playing craps in a hotel room, he’s in the back bedroom.
As for why, I think Tarentino was just trying to make The Wolf seem like a cool/James Bond guy. He’s in a fancy hotel room, with a private craps table/dealer, wearing a fancy tux, surrounded by other people dressed to the nines and sipping champagne at 8:30 in the morning.
I was kind of thinking that but sometimes he plants Easter eggs that take a while to figure out. It took me 3 times to figure out the movie itself.
The bedroom indeed looks like a hotel room but not an overly fancy one. Check out that hideous couch). But what is behind the croupier with the plant and some kind of covered bowl/urn on top of it?
Just looks, to me, like some kind of table/hutch setup or a curio cabinet. Something like this.
Also, here’s what the script says for that scene:
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”. We also see The Wolf has a small notepad that he jots details in.
I’ve always assumed it was a high-class brothel where there’s partying 24/7, and Winston had been going all night.
It’s obvious he’s at a weird high-stakes, formal, way-after-hours, probably illegal, temporary casino. What isn’t obvious is why the Wolf is there. Is he on the clock, or is this just what he does during his time off?
My theory is that all the gangland messes generally occur overnight, and Wolf is “on call” in the early morning (especially weekends) so he arranges his social life accordingly. And yes. It’s true that as late as the 1990s, you could get to someplace “30 minutes away” in LA in ten minutes on a Saturday or Sunday morning.
Doesn’t the big poker game in “The Cincinnati Kid” take place over multiple days at odd hours as well?
Also, setting up craps tables in hotel rooms, whether legally or illegally, does happen
Sen. John McCain was known to be an avid craps player. He was known to ask to ask casinos to have games set up in private rooms. And many (most?) major cities will have illicit games in hotel rooms as well.
As for the time, could be an early game or could be a game that ran into the next morning. I would think the latter would be more likely (marathon 12 hour gambling sessions are hardly unusual) but it’s a Tarantino movie so maybe he wrote in an early bird crowd of well dressed degenerate gamblers?
Mr. Wolf is just supposed to be supernaturally cool. Why is he doing cool things at 8:30 AM? Because he’s the Wolf. He appears from his cool existence, solves problems, and vanishes. He sure as hell doesn’t give you a lift. Move outta the sticks, fellas.
Weird mis-remembering on my part, I could have sworn that when he pulls up and stops in frame (0:50 in the posted clip), the license plate read THE WOLF.
Is the plate number an easter egg?
I did a bit of poking around on the internet, apparently I’m not alone. There’s a lot of folks who remember it as THE WOLF or MRWOLF. People are convinced this is a Mandela Effect and say it doesn’t make sense to be the way it is today. But I’m sure I’m just remembering wrong.
According the IMDB trivia on Pulp Fiction:
The Wolf’s license plate number, “3ABM581,” is an anagram. If you treat digits as letters, like in passwords (“3” as “E,” “5” as “S,” “8” as two “O’s,” and “1” as “L”), then you have “EABMSOOL,” an anagram for “Esma Lobo,” which is an abbreviation for Butch Coolidge’s taxi driver’s name, Esmarelda Villalobos.
Which seems a stretch…
3(letter)(letter)(letter)(number)(number)(number) was the stock California plate format in 1994.
Thanks, but the part that seemed a stretch was the Esma Lobo anagram, could be though.