Pulp Fiction: Difference between revisions

A 1994 crime drama told in the [[Quentin Tarantino]] [[Signature Style|trademark]] [[Anachronic Order|nonlinear fashion.]] It covers three stories, all interconnected.

 

 

 

The third story which actually bookends the film is about a pair of robbers named Pumpkin and Honey Bunny (Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer) who spontaneously hold up a restaurant... a restaurant that Jules and Vincent are eating in.

Known for its rich, eclectic, pop-culture-laden dialogue, and mix of humor and over-the-top violence, ''Pulp Fiction'' is known as one of the best, most iconic films to come out of [[The Nineties]]. Also somewhat infamous for the controversy over proper writing credits. The Gold Watch chapter originated as an original script by [[Roger Avary]]. Tarantino bought the script with the intention of adapting it, as one would do a novel. In the final credits, Avary is given a "story by" listing.

 

 

Not to be confused with actual Pulp Fiction as a genre, which is found under [[Pulp Magazine]].

* [[Afro Asskicker]]: Jheri Curl flavor.

* [[Alliterative Name]]: Vincent Vega, continuing the legacy of [[Reservoir Dogs|Vic Vega]].

* [[All There in the Manual]]: According to the script, the briefcase contained diamonds. Tarantino felt this was too similar to the plot of ''[[Reservoir Dogs]]'', and left it ambiguous.

* [[Anachronic Order]]: Quentin Tarantino's trademark style of storytelling. Here's how the film would play in chronological order:

** Vincent & Jules are [[Villain Protagonist|Villain Protagonists]] or Type V, but Jules becomes Type III or arguably Type II near the end.

* [[The Aristocats]]: Eva Gabor's character inspired [[Uma Thurman]]'s dance.

* [[As Himself|As Herself]]: Kathy Griffin is cast as herself. She's the red-haired woman who witnesses the crash Butch and Marcellus are involved in.

* [[Asian Store Owner]]: The opening conversation includes a lament about how this trope has made knocking over convenience stores nearly impossible; as Pumpkin explains, the small business owners are all either Jewish or Asian, and either way the business has been in the family for "fifteen fucking generations," so naturally they're going to be rather defensive when some jerk with a gun comes in.

* [[Ass Shove]]: Captain Koons' "your father's watch" speech.

* [[The Atoner]]: While Butch claims not to care about killing his opponent, he mutters, "Sorry, Floyd," to the air when he hears the news. His compulsion to save Marsellus may be connected.

* [[Author Appeal]]: Mia goes barefoot in at least two of her scenes, and foot massages come up in conversation twice. Esmarelda drives her cab barefoot, as well. Tarantino's foot fetish is well known at this point.

* [[Badass]]: Jules, Butch, Marsellus Wallace, and even Mia in her own way.

* [[Bald Black Leader Guy]]: Marsellus Wallace, clearly. But [[Memetic Mutation|he doesn't look like a bitch.]]

* [[Berserk Button]]: Butch, when he realizes that Fabienne has not packed his father's wrist watch.

* [[Black Comedy]]

* [[Bowdlerise]]: The broadcast version of the film goes to ''extreme'' measures to eliminate the existence of the character of The Gimp.

* [[Bound and Gagged]]: Butch and Marsellus.

* [[Cavalier Consumption]]: While Jules and Vincent are putting on a hit. Man, Big Kahuna Burgers are ''tasty''.

* [[Cloudcuckoolander]]: Butch's wife has shades of this with the things she talks about.

** "Oh, you could ''blow''? Well, I'm a mushroom-cloud-layin' motherfucker, motherfucker!"

* [[Credits Gag]]:

** The manager is credited as "Coffee Shop" because when he's about to say "coffee shop manager" to Pumpkin he was cut off.

** Emil Sitka is "Hold Hands, You Love Birds!", his "line" in the Three Stooges short Lance was watching.

** The bartender's actual name in the script is English Bob (referenced by Jules in the diner scene). But his "My name is Paul and this is between y'all" line was so awesome that he's credited as "Paul" instead.

* [[Deconstructive Parody]]: of crime thrillers. Even feared crime lord Marcellus Wallace makes stupid mistakes.

* [[Dies Wide Open]]

* [[Driving a Desk]]: For no apparent reason Tarantino chose what looks like a 1940s black-and-white street background for the scene where Esmerelda drives Butch away from the fight.

* [[Drugs Are Bad]]: Only those [[Too Dumb to Live|stupid enough]] to {{spoiler|leave their submachine gun out in the open while going to the bathroom}} would ever dabble in heroin. Also, Mia nearly dies from an OD.

* [[Enemy Eats Your Lunch]]: "Mmm-mm. This ''is'' a tasty burger!"

* [[Enemy Mine]]: When Butch goes back to rescue Marsellus Wallace.

* [[Ensemble Cast]]

* [[Faux Affably Evil]]: Jules when he and Vincent show up at Brett's apartment. Jules comes in, acts civil and friendly, and even politely asks Brett if he can [[Enemy Eats Your Lunch|take a bite of his burger and a drink of his Sprite.]] Of course, throughout the entire discussion, everyone present knows that Jules and Vincent are hitmen who, at best, are here to recover the glowy thingy in the briefcase, and at worst, are here to kill them, so Jules' act of civil politeness just serves to ratchet up the tension, until Jules finally dispenses with the whole thing and breaks Brett's concentration by shooting his buddy.

** [[Evil Genius]]: Jules, the guy certainly knows his Bible verses.

* [[Foreshadowing]]: Jules on Marsellus Wallace, "Does he look like a bitch?" "No." "Then, why did you try to fuck him like a bitch?...You tried to fuck him. And Marcellus Wallace does not like to be fucked by anybody except Missus Wallace."

** Near the beginning of Butch's story when Esmerelda asks him what it feels like to kill a man, he can't answer because he didn't do it knowingly. By the end of Butch's story {{spoiler|and two corpses later}}, Butch could probably describe the feeling in detail.

* [[Freestate Amsterdam]]: [[Seinfeldian Conversation|Vincent tells us about this.]]

* [[Funny Background Event]]: By itself it's not particularly funny, but the classy party Winston Wolf is attending when he receives the summons to help Jules and Vincent becomes a lot funnier when you realize it's not even eight o'clock in the morning when it's taking place.

* [[Gorn]]

* [[Groin Attack]]: Marsellus puts a shotgun blast into the groin of his rapist.

* [[Heel Realization]]: The entire final part of the movie involves Jules' realization that he was, in fact, a tool used by wicked men. It's left unknown whether or not he helped Pumpkin and Honey Bunny have the same sort of realization as well.

* [[Hypocritical Humor]]: Whether it was intended for humor or not, in one scene, Jules tells Vincent to stop committing blasphemy by taking God's name in vain. Before and after that scene, however, Jules has no problem using the same language he scolded Vincent for, himself.

** During the opening scene, Pumpkin complains about how "[[Asian Store Owner|too many foreigners own liquor stores]]", which makes robbing them harder. Pumpkin is an Englishman in America -- a foreigner, in other words.

* [[Idiot Ball]]: The film is basically [[Stupid Crooks|Vincent]]'s [[Idiot Plot]].

* [[Idiot Hero]]: Vincent. Pretty much everything he says or does is a fuck up.

* [[Imagine Spot]]: Jules imagines Bonnie's potential reaction to coming home and finding "a couple of gangsters in her kitchen doin' a bunch of gangster shit."

* [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy]]: [[Played for Laughs]] when that one guy misses [[Those Two Bad Guys|Jules and Vincent]]. At point blank range. [[Epic Fail|Six times.]] Understandably enough, this causes Jules to suspect [[Divine Intervention]].

* [[In Medias Res]]: An extreme example, with the jumpy timeline of the film, that still manages to make a cohesive narrative.

* [[Insistent Terminology]]: "It's not a motorcycle, it's a chopper, baby."

* [[Ironic Echo]]: Butch telling Marcellus "That's pride fucking with you" while hitting him in the head.

* [[Karma Houdini]]: Pumpkin and Honey Bunny are made to give back the [[MacGuffin]] briefcase and Jules's wallet... but, other than that, they get to keep all the loot they've robbed, including the contents of the register, several of the other diners' wallets and a cell phone, and walk away entirely unharmed - while, admittedly, looking rather shook up. Of course, Jules has made it expressly clear that if it were any ''other'' day, he'd have just popped them both and finished his coffee, but he's making a conscious effort to change his ways.

** Jules probably realized that they would need enough money to live on for a few months to be able to resist the temptation of returning to a life of crime. He even gave them the money from his own wallet towards that end.

* [[Large Ham]]: Samuel L. Jackson at many points, such as the ending and of course the infamous "''Describe what Marsellus Wallace looks like!''" bit.

** [[Tropes Are Not Bad|And it works.]]

* [[MacGuffin]]: The briefcase. Also the watch, which spent many years [[Squick|up various asses]] in a Vietnamese prison camp.

* [[Magic Bullets]]: One of the major plot points involves the "bad bullets" version of this trope, where a man empties a high-caliber revolver at Jules and Vincent (at almost point blank range), but completely misses them. After killing him, Jules and Vincent examine the bullet holes in the wall, which the camera could not see until they stepped back, suggesting that the bullets should have passed through them. Lampshaded and arguably justified, as Jules points out that it couldn't possibly be anything but divine intervention and Vincent has no better rebuttal than any other [[Flat Earth Atheist]]. However, the commentary points out that some bullet holes were ''already'' in the wall when Vince and Jules went in.

* [[Meaningful Background Event]]: In the first scene, when Pumpkin and Honey Bunny are discussing the merits of robbing liquor stores or restaurants, Vincent can be briefly seen heading for the bathroom.

* [[Memento MacGuffin]]: Butch's watch.

* [[Mood Whiplash]]: Captain Koons' speech to young Butch starts off seriously, but then takes an abrupt turn for the absurd halfway through.

** Yet, somehow, the drama is not completely lost, and Butch's obsession with keeping the watch safe seems completely justified. A lot of the credit for this goes to [[Christopher Walken]], who is possibly the only actor in the world who could deliver the second half of that speech seriously.

* [[Mugging the Monster]]: Two robbers try to hold up a professional hitman. Unusually, the conflict gets resolved more or less peacefully because of benevolence on the hitman's part.

* [[Nobody Poops]]: Averted. Vince goes to the bathroom three times, and during each visit [[Incredibly Lame Pun|shit goes down]].

* [[Noodle Implements]]: Marsellus Wallace tells Butch that he's going to call several of his men to "go to work" on his rapist Zed with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch, then proceeds to tell Zed that he's going to "get medieval on his ass." Since Zed had already been shot in the groin, one can only imagine what else of his is going to be pinched and burned.

** The blowtorch is for burning off his finger and toetips, so he can't be printed. The pliers are for pulling out teeth, so he can't be tracked via dental records. In other words, Marcellus wants him to die and never have it be known what happened. There are other uses for those pliers, but explaining will fall ''even further'' into squick territory.

* [[Outlaw Couple]]: "Pumpkin" and "Honey Bunny".

* [[The Precious Precious Car]]: Vincent's Malibu. Also, Winston "The Wolf" Wolf's Acura NSX:

* [[The Public Domain Channel]]: Lance watches the [[Three Stooges]] short "The Brideless Groom".

* [[Random Events Plot]]

* [[Retired Badass]] / [[Retired Monster]]: Jules presumably becomes one after the movie finishes.

* [[Scary Black Man]]: Jules and Marsellus.

* [[Seinfeldian Conversation]]: So much!

* [[Share the Male Pain]]: Take a good long look at Butch after Zed gets blasted by the shotgun. Butch spends all but a couple seconds in the next few minutes of conversation covering his crotch.

** It's not quite clear what he is actually doing with his hands - one could also assume that he is resting his hands on the hilt of the katana.

* [[Shown Their Work]]: Jules refers to his gun as "Mr. Nine Millimeter" to Ringo during the diner standoff; while the guns Jules uses appears to be a .45 caliber 1911 pistol, it's represented by 9mm Star Model B clones. The only way to identify them at all is by the external extractor, a tiny strip of metal on the right side of the slide.

* [[Sickening Sweethearts]]: Pumpkin and Honey Bunny.

* [[Signs of Disrepair]]: As Butch looks for weapons, one sign in the shop reads Kill___ _Ed.

* [[Spiritual Sequel|Spiritual Spinoff]]: [[Word of God]] admits that ''[[Kill Bill]]'' is somewhat based on the "Fox Force Five" pilot that Mia Wallace describes.

* [[Take Our Word for It]]: The audience never sees what Marsellus Wallace sent Vincent and Jules to retrieve, but, going by the glow that radiates from the briefcase containing it, and the reactions of all the characters who see it, we're to believe it's pretty fantastic. Tarantino originally intended it to be the loot from ''[[Reservoir Dogs]],'' but changed it to an unseen light, and has stated that it's "whatever you want."

* [[Those Two Bad Guys]]: Jules and Vincent.

* [[Throwing the Fight]]: Butch is supposed to take a dive. He does not. Things get out of control from there.

* [[To the Pain]]: Marsellus is about to "get medieval on your ass".

* [[Tragic Keepsake]]: Why Butch is so protective of his father's watch.

* [[Treasure Chest Cavity]]: [[Christopher Walken]]'s characters keeps a watch in his rectum for the son of the former owner.

* [[Trunk Shot]]

* [[Villain Protagonist]]: Jules and Vincent.

** Pretty much the entire cast when you think of it, a possible exception being Butch, who puts [[Honor Before Reason]] to save Marcellus.

* [[Vitriolic Best Buds]]: Jules and Vincent, again.

** "I DON'T REMEMBER ASKING YOU A GODDAMN THING!"

* [[You Look Familiar]]: According to [[Word of God]], this is set in the same universe as [[Reservoir Dogs]]. Several actors ([[Harvey Keitel]], [[Tim Roth]], Tarantino himself) return.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Roger Ebert Great Movies List]]

[[Category:Notable Quotables]]

[[Category:Anthology Film]]

[[Category:Films of the 1990s]]

[[Category:Film]]