‘Pulp Fiction’ (Part 1) With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey
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The Rewatchables is brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find the big picture with Sean Fennessey. That's right. Who's on a high right now because the Bob Dylan, Chalamet trailer came out today. Is it a high? Is it a low? I'm not sure. I'm trying to figure it out. It's either. It's a gamut of emotions. CR is here. Chris Ryan. What's up, man? Fresh off getting exonerated, beating Tommy Molto in a trial. Oh, no. That was somebody else.

That's right. I defended myself. You can hear him on the watch. Yeah. Sometimes in the Philly special. Sometimes. Sometimes in the big picture. Yeah. My name is Bill Simmons. What does the rewatchables look like to you guys? What does it look like? Say what again? Pulp Fiction is next. Does this pod look a bitch?

Oh, I'm sorry. Did I break your concentration? Miramax Films asks the question, what do two hitmen, one girlfriend, a boxer, and a secret suitcase have in common? That's a good question. The answer, they're all part of the most electrifying film of the year. John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, and Bruce Willis. Die, you! You won't know the facts until you see the fiction. Pulp Fiction, rated R. Starts October 14th everywhere.

All right, we've been circling this one forever, and the 30th anniversary is coming up in October of one of the best movie experiences in the theater I've ever had in my life, a movie that I've seen a slew of times, a movie that changed a lot of shit. Sean, you credited this as the movie that officially sucked you in with Movies for Life in a profound way? It's the Big Bang. This is the Big Bang for me. What about you, CR? Same thing. Everybody's got their, like...

their everything goes technicolor moment with movies. And I think I've told this story before. My mom always used to say that when she and my dad went and saw Star Wars when it first came out, and when the spaceship flies over the audience in the first scene, that they were like, nothing. Movies are never going to be the same. How can you go back from this? And that's kind of how I felt when I saw Pulp. When Miserleu kicked in, I was just like, oh, well, this is all I'm interested in now. Also, the rare case of the hype thing

building for six seven eight months dating back to con and all the people in it be like oh man that looks like a good movie and we'll talk a lot about the movie machine that was starting to really go in place there in 94 95 but by the time it was about to come out and there was real anticipation almost like uh i don't know like a like an nba finals game one something like that

And part of me, I remember because I'm out of college at this point. I'm living in Boston. Part of me was like, it's not going to be, can't be this good. Come on. You'd already been let down by Twister. Yeah. I went on a Friday, Somerville Lowe's Theater.

And, uh, was it the Friday? Was it opening? Yeah. I mean, what was I going to do? I was just like barely working. I went to like a two o'clock Friday. Um, and it was just unbelievable. And I think the moment, the moment I remember in the theater that still holds to this day is the, uh, when she, when she finds the heroin in her coat and it's like, Oh no. Cause you just think the way it's being set up.

It's like, don't, don't, don't fuck Marcellus's wife. Don't come on. Don't. But you think you're just used to a certain type of movie that's going to move a certain way. And it's like, oh man, he's going to fuck Marcellus's wife. And she finds the heroin and you're like, oh no. And then all of a sudden she's overdosing. And then that next five minutes, and then it becomes, I've never seen a movie like this in my life. And that was it.

There were people fainting at the con screening in that scene, right? Or like, was it where in the New York premiere there's some story about they had to stop it for like 10 minutes? During the adrenaline shot. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was 12 when it came out. And so...

You know, it was the perfect time for me to see it because I was entering, like, real adolescence. So a movie like this, which has drugs and cool cars and drug dealers and violence and hit men and sexy women, like, all that stuff, obviously you're just interested in general, not realizing...

at the time that the movie itself was this like play on all of those tropes, you know, that it was kind of like trying to subvert or recontextualize what all those things even were. So that gives it an added layer of entry when you're a kid. And also I'd like just been come, I'd just come out of like G.I. Joe and He-Man and being interested in all that stuff. You know what I mean? So I just kind of got shotgunned into a version of adult stuff.

by way of this guy who had been deemed like the coolest filmmaker who'd come along in 25 years. And I was just completely ensorcelled by the whole universe. Like, I had seen True Romance before this movie, so I knew who Tarantino was. I think I had to wait to see Reservoir Dogs on video. I definitely didn't see that in a movie theater. And...

I bought every book. I read every article. I was on message boards. Like, I was so... Soundtrack on repeat that whole year. 1992 through 1997, that period, and all the movies that he made or produced or his friends made...

dominated my life. It was my favorite thing in the world. And this is like the big centerpiece at the middle of it. You know, it's like I remember, so I was 16. I was just starting senior year of high school when this came out. And my dad took me to, I guess, what would have been the Philly premiere of it or like a, maybe it was a critic screening, but it was like. Your dad, Desmond Ryan. Yeah. Esteemed movie critic. Once upon a time. For the Philly Enquirer. And like, I remember the sensation that I still get, even though I know the movies that he's

paying homage to slash ripping off slash cribbing stuff and recontextualizing it is that from the second Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer that scene starts and then it goes and freeze frame but the audio track keeps playing and then it goes into Dick Dale and then it goes into this convert and Jungle Boogie and then it goes into the conversation the double songs and the credits I was like

So far, we're about 10, 12 minutes in and I haven't... Every frame is something I've never seen before. Yeah. And you're like, how long can you sustain this? Where you're kind of like melting my mind with every single thing that happens. And even though now like knowing, oh, this was a trope or this is a Godard thing or this is from Bonnie and Clyde, like...

I'm still like, it just feels as fresh as it ever did. That's the weird thing is like, this is probably the movie I've watched the most in my life. I think it is for me too. I was thinking about that. It's probably the number one most rewatched. And in truly watchable fashion, like,

Completely out of order. Like sometimes it'll just be it's on. Sometimes I just want to watch one scene. Sometimes I just want to watch one section. So in a weird way, the nonlinear structure has now contributed to it being the perfect rewatchable because it doesn't kind of matter what order you watch it in. I wanted to ask you about that specifically just because you were a little bit older than us. I am? Just a little bit.

I had no... I hadn't seen The Wild Bunch. I hadn't seen the Dard movies. I hadn't seen any of that stuff. And even if you hadn't seen it, because you were following along with it, did you...

Was any of that stuff on your mind? Because when I was watching it, I was like, this is the first movie that's ever been made. This is the first adult film that was ever made. And that can totally scramble your brain, you know? And then you have to like, I spent the last 30 years of my life like untangling every single thing in it. It's the roadmap though. Like, because you have all these like different things that you're kind of starting to become aware of when you're young. And then you get a piece of culture that's like, here is a compendium of everything that is fucking cool. Yeah. You know, like hitmen, surf music,

like, alt-country, you know, Godard, gangster movies, Westerns, Sergio Leone. Like, it all gets put into this one box and you can just sort of sort through it. But what if, like, were you aware of, like, what it was? Yeah, because Tarantino's older than me, so he's probably, like, 70. So his pop culture kind of background and baggage was just a generation older than mine. So...

the only stuff I had from, from the era that some of the stuff he's cribbing from is the Eastwood Westerns and like all those movies. But other than that, my, my kind of worldview with culture started around 75. Okay. So I would get like Fonzie correct the window, stuff like that. Like, Oh yeah. But for the most part, it felt really new to me too. You, you guys made me think of something though.

You like, as I've said in the past, like I saw 48 hours when I was 13 and it was like, that was it for me. Like it was like before and after when I saw that in the theater. And then I think there's another stage you hit with movies. Like you're going to get sucked in like 12, 13. We've always talked about whatever movie you love the most that year is usually going to be your favorite movie ever. But then there's another section like end of high school, freshman year college. When you start really understanding, um,

how movies are really made that you start thinking of it almost like sports. And that's what I really got into in college in the late eighties, early nineties. Then there's a third thing, which is exactly where I saw this movie when I was 24, 25, somewhere in there. When now it's like, you have a reservoir, you've, you've, you've seen a whole bunch of movies. Now you have stuff to compare things to.

And then something like this comes out and you're like, oh my God. Like you actually understand the gravity of what happened because you've seen enough movies to understand that it's different. This is so much different. Yeah. And I feel like those are the three stages of when you love movies. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. It does. And also whatever movies were between 1989 and 1994 and how different this is, I feel like is relevant to that too. Because you've just been spent that five-year period like watching everything. Literally watching everything. You know, it's like...

costume dramas and we're coming out of like the out of africa period and hollywood's trying to figure out how to you know live in this post die hard experience like and it's it's a little bit of in between time and this movie is a bit of a reset for in general what movies are going to be for the next decade i have a lot of thoughts about 1994 coming up but i'm going to read three quotes that i think are important and they're all written in the mid 90s peter biskin

Pulp became the Star Wars of independence, exploding expectations for what an indie film could do at the box office. So we'd take that. John Ronson, back when he was, I think, writing for The Independent, one of those places. Not since Citizen Kane has one man appeared from relative obscurity to redefine the art of moviemaking. So there's that. Then Ebert,

in early 1995 in the Tarantino generation, which was the first podcast ever. There was a special Siskel and Ebert episode, created podcast. Him and Pump Up the Volume are the two that created podcasting. And Ebert said about Tarantino, he represents a moment of time. The first director who's a rock and roll star

And I think those three things together are what drove a lot of the dialogue and excitement about this. He was also our rock and roll star. Well, indie films weren't supposed to do this. I wasn't really supposed to know anything about the director. Right. And then he came out of nowhere. Yeah.

And you add those three things together with the fact that the movie was as awesome as it was. And it really, it was a phenomenon. But whenever you hear people talking about like, why they love punk rock, right? It's because they feel like the people who are on stage could also be in the crowd. It's this kind of connection that they have to that person. And I think that that has a, there is an element to punk.

Quentin's stuff that feels very even though he's a genius and even though it's like I could never think of anything this perfect in my life.

He worked at a video store. Yeah, for like five years. We knew those guys. We would go into the video store and just you would go into the video store not only to pick up a movie but as a social experience to like go talk to the guys behind the counter and wander around for hours and stuff and keep picking things up and looking at the back and putting them down. But it wasn't just him because in the context of 94, Kevin Smith too. Sure. It's like, oh, he made this. He bought a camera and film looked like shit but it was really fun and people liked it.

And it was this moment, I think, where everybody was kind of like, could I do this? Robert Rodriguez, Spike. I don't know if that existed before in the same way. Like the previous generation, you had to like move to LA and you had to maybe go to film school or you had to work on movies and you had to like work your way up. And it felt like in 94, the fucking ceiling just came off. It's true. That's definitely how it felt and how it was narrativized. If you listen to Tarantino talk about it,

He's basically spent eight years in obscurity trying to get stuff made. And so that was a great story to tell in magazines about this guy who came out of nowhere to take over movies forever.

But that isn't really what happened. I mean, he tried to get this 60mm movie off the ground for years and years. He was shooting it on the weekends just like Kevin Smith shot Clerks, self-funding, trying to write his own ticket in that way. And it took a really long time. And it took him convincing people to give him money. Like, he talks about the story about getting, like, Richard Gladstein to give him money from Live Entertainment for Reservoir Dogs. Like, he worked really hard for a long time, dead broke, thinking he was going to fail.

And so there's this tension in the storytelling where you're like, wow, you could do it too. But you also have to eat shit for a decade and maybe not succeed. By the way, I completely identify it because like when I went to ESPN in 2001, I had the calm and then it was like, oh yeah, you were at the forefront of when the internet and sport. And I was like, yeah, I ate shit from 93 to 2001 and I was on my own and nobody read anything I did. When you read the stuff about how long it took him to get

even to get meetings with people, you know, and you're just like, this guy's just going to work. And the video started talking to Roger Avery being like, oh man, I had this meeting two days ago with so-and-so. Oh, all right. I got to go to work because there's two people at the counter. And this is Pulp Fiction for, you know, the embryonic stages for seven years. Yeah. And even one of the cool things about what he did was even though he was

grinding to get into the industry for that long of amount of time, he had his own artistic POV that he was unwilling to go away from. Like he wasn't going to go right...

speed three and maybe he would have if they had offered him but if he did do a revision on its pat yeah but if you know it's like if they offered him grab some money yeah but if they offered him like he was always just gonna be this is what I do and if you guys don't like it you don't have to give me any money and that's how he basically got the director gig

on Reservoir Dogs is he was like, I'm not selling the script unless I get attached as the director. Yeah, as I recall, I think he was pretty strategic about it, but the intention was always what you just said because he did ultimately sell True Romance to, you know, Tony Scott and let Tony Scott make it and he wanted him to make it after they had met at some party. So,

You know, Natural Born Killers, that's a very complicated story about how much that movie was changed and how frustrated he was with what Oliver Stone did to it. Good secret feud. Fun Google for the listeners out there. Oliver Stone versus Tarantino. That heated. But all of that is happening in this 18-month window after the success of Reservoir Dogs at Sundance. And his intention is always to be the writer-director. Like, that is the thing he really wants to be doing. I like thinking about...

whether or not Quentin could have happened at any other time. Like, whether or not this could have happened at any other time in movie history. And there's a lot of things that contribute to that. But I wonder whether or not one of the reasons why this is the perfect rewatchable, but also why we are so obsessed with him, but it's so much of our kind of generation of growing up, is that he is the end product of movies being available in people's homes to watch over and over and over again. Like, he is the end product of

of movies becoming not just like, I'm going to the theater to see a movie this weekend, but it is my obsession. I am obsessed with this movie. I have thought about this movie because I've watched it 15, 20 times, and now I have theories about this movie, and now I have an idea about how I would subvert this kind of movie if I was watching it. And yeah, tons of people made films, and they commented on other films, and tons of people became obsessed with The Big Sleep and made movies that sort of played around with detective movies

But Tarantino's working at this video store. All he does all day is talk about movies. All he does all day is think about movies. He just watches movies all the time. When Harvey Keitel met him and he was like, do you know drug dealers? Do you know bank robbers? He's like, no, I just watch movies. You know, it's like this idea that, but this is only like five years old. Like mid 80s is when there's video stores basically, right? But wouldn't you,

Yeah, but then you got to go into the three-channel era in the 70s. Sure. And then the four local channels. But you're not in control of that. Yeah, you're just when movies come up, you're like, I love this movie. And then that moves to cable in the early 80s, which I'm sure was a big impact. I was just going to say, this is also a guy who has watched more television than anybody I've ever met. Yeah. And who also was in movie theaters nonstop from the age of seven through.

25. Yeah, he's working in porn theaters when he's 16. So it is that for sure. And there is that energy. You can feel that energy of a guy telling you like, have you seen this movie? Have you seen this movie? Have you seen this movie? But also, that also doesn't really exist while I watch the movie. Like while I watch the movie, like I'm looking at the Quentin Tarantino wiki and it's just like an entire resource of every reference made in this movie. And there's hundreds just in Pulp Fiction.

And some of them you pick up on when you're watching and some of them you don't. But I don't feel that that's the point of the movie when I'm watching it. The point of the movie is the story and the ride of the movie. No, because it's authentic to him. And he's able to like transmogrify it in a way that a lot of directors can't. Like I talked about this with that movie Maxine that came out earlier this summer, which like I like the movie, but the movie is a series of reference points. And if you know the reference points, it's a better movie experience. And if you don't, the movie might be a bit of a head scratcher to you. Yeah. And if you don't get the reference points in Pulp Fiction, it doesn't matter. Yeah.

No, I mean, I'll talk about it later, but I watched with my son and he's not going to get Fonzie jokes and stuff like that, but he was riveted the whole time. I was thinking about like some of the great directors we've had in the last 50 years there. One of the reasons they succeeded was this is something they wanted to do, like from the get go, like Spielberg.

You know, he's the moment he had a camera. We were we were off PTA grows up in the valley and it's just like he decides what was he 16? This is what I'm doing and he's just studying it and trying to figure out what his style is and I don't think it's a lot different than writing where when you're a young writer and you're trying to figure out where your style is you're just grabbing from eight nine ten people and you're like, oh I like this I'll take this. Oh, I like when that person did this and eventually whatever that

is becomes your style. And I think Tarantino is the best version of that because he probably saw the most movies. He loved movies the most.

And just he had this data bank in his head of like, I love this. I love in that and mostly obscure movies or movies that weren't like major. It wasn't like he's like, I love the scene in Jaws, even though there is a thing that's kind of crips from Jaws. He does both, right? Yeah. Like he does super pop obvious things. And then also he does things that are the most obscure martial arts film that you've never seen. When the internet came really in the 2000s and

And you learn more about this. We were like, oh, I didn't realize that was from this and that, but you know, he just, he was this huge data bank, but also incredibly creative. Yeah. And, um, and was able to like see this piece of turf that only he could see.

And he was like, there's a type of movie like this that doesn't exist right now. And I think I can do it. There's dialogue pieces to it. Why can't bad guys kind of talk like normal people? Why can't I swerve this way? Why can't I make people think, oh, this is a part about a boxer? No, actually, we're going this way. And it's just the strategy he put into this movie was so smart. Well, the whole...

Jules and Vincent plot is basically... I've read him talk about this in like Film Common or something right when the movie came out where it's like Jules and Vincent is the first 10 minutes of an action movie from the 80s or 90s. Hitmen kick in the door, take the case, shoot the guys, and then this credits roll and then it's the next thing is everybody reacting to that and the chase for Jules and Vincent or Jules and Vincent doing whatever. He's like, fuck all that. I want to say what happens the second they walk out the door.

what happens to their morning, what happens if something goes wrong, how would you get, you know, and everything is what would happen, what would happen, what would happen.

999 people out of 1,000, that's a bad movie. There's a reason why all the action movies go to the credits and then it's a big chase to find Jules and Vincent. It's not like, hey, did Jules and Vincent get food? Did Jules and Vincent fuck somebody up in the back of their car and then have to wash it down? And who would help them? How would they find that? Yeah, how do you clean up a body after you shot the guy's head off? He was interested in that. His, like...

quintessential LA-ness and his rooted in like the specificity of the valley and of like the surrounding areas of LA that like he's just like, I am going to draw like all this authenticity out of like this lightly fictionalized, stylized version of LA makes it so that you're just like, I feel like I am in a fantasy world even though it's fucking Toluca Lake. It's so smart the way he did it. Yeah, I was thinking about it last night. So it's a movie that's set in the 90s

feels like the 70s looks like the 50s is timeless like that's a very difficult thing to pull off yeah we have an unanswerable questions what year exactly is this movie and there's like four options yeah it's so strange i mean i think that part of the purpose like part of the strategy of the movie is that it is meant to break your expectation especially the linear structure was the biggest thing like watching with my son last night he was just like there was a couple times he was like

what's going on? Is this just a bunch of scenes? I'm like, just hold tight. It's funny because as many times as I've seen it, I still will get a little confused once in a while. I'll be like, so wait, when, just in the chronology of things because you get so caught up in the individual stories and you, like, I'm just tracing, I have a whole thing about Vincent and the character of Vincent, like what Vincent goes through in the movie.

It's a lot and it's over a very short period of time. Figuring out which day is Wednesday and which day is Thursday. It's also like people are doing nighttime shit in the morning. So it's like you're always you're always a little bit on the edge of your seat with this movie, even if what's on screen isn't a tense thing because you're like, wait, why are they eating burgers at 730 in the morning? Is it 730? Like you're always asking yourself like what's going on and it just makes you so engaged that

you're never like, yeah, I know they're going to, they're going to do this. And then that happens. You're always like, wait a second. What? But that's, that's a huge point. So I had the, I had two quotes here. One is from Cisco and the first podcast ever in 1995.

the most influential movies in Hollywood history are always the surprises. And he said, Psycho, Bonnie and Clyde, A Clockwork Orange, the ones, basically disruptors, which is a big thing when you talk about tech, talk about sports, anybody that the people we remember are the ones that are like, what about this? And they just flip it. Tarantino said, what if we took some walks? Yeah. Tarantino said in 1992, uh,

In the 80s, the studios could predict what worked and what didn't. And that's what the 80s were. One movie you'd already seen after another, which is true. Suddenly that's not working anymore. When the audience is fed up with the standard stuff and crying out for something different is when exciting things happen in Hollywood. It made me almost think like where we are in 2024.

It's very similar. I mean, he has talked about this recently, just that we're in an era that feels closer to the 80s movie-wise. Yeah, without the cocaine, so it's even less fun. We don't have Don Simpson. Don Simpson, whatever. Is this the best rags-to-riches director story ever for you? I was trying to think of, is there...

A better out of nowhere than this. Spike Lee is a really good one. And Spike is really influential on Quentin. And they have like kind of an interesting history over time where they've kind of gotten into it over the years. But early on, they were kind of paired because similarly Spike is like, you know, his father's a musician, but he's not like, doesn't have huge access to power. And he does actually make his black and white independent movie, the movie that Quentin didn't get to make. She's got to have it. And she's got to have it.

is also really, along with like Sex, Lies, and Videotape and Slacker and a couple of other movies, they set up the watershed moment that leads to dogs in Pulp Fiction. And I think Spike is a good one. And you know, you mentioned Orson Welles too. And then, so you think about Orson Welles and Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino and Alfred Hitchcock too upsetting expectations with, you know, Psycho. What do those movies have in common?

Those are directors who put themselves in their own movies who are incredible at marketing and telling their own story publicly. And so like, that's what I had in this rags to riches thing. And I had spike down there.

I do feel like Spike is super important to this Tarantino arc because Spike's the first guy who sells himself as a character. His story became part of the movies. And I just don't feel like that was... Like Spielberg wasn't like, oh, this guy did Duel and Jaws and now he's on five talk shows and now he's doing a Nike commercial. Like he was just...

In the 80s, something shifted. I think Spike, him doing the Michael Jordan commercials was a huge deal. He's just so far ahead of it. Him being on posters with Michael Jordan and he felt like a celebrity as a director. He created an alter ego. He did. It was like a way to kind of offload the like...

branding forward-facing stuff was to put it on Mars Blackman and then it's like he can be he can be like one of the great filmmakers of my lifetime in the background almost but like he can do all the like iconoclastic kind of like forward-facing stuff and start shit and talk about disrupting I wouldn't underestimate Woody Allen too just because like regardless of whatever you think about Woody Allen right now

The way that he injected his sensibility into movie culture, and you could never take it out after that. Like, the incredible influence. And obviously, he also starred in many of his own movies. Yeah. He, like, also reset the feeling of what a movie could be. Where, like, when you look at Annie Hall, like, there's a lot of rule-breaking going on in that movie. Where, like, what you expect is supposed to happen. Or the way that you'd see, like, a split screen where two characters were talking to their therapist. Or there's some complicated things that are happening there. You can feel even the influence of that.

I don't know if Woody Allen was rags to riches per se, but it's a very similar situation. That whole like sixties comedy background. It's a spike one spike had the, even though he was like out of nowhere, but he also had the conventional, you know, he went to film school. He checked out it like, it makes sense. The Tarantino thing, working in a video store for five years and basically being the annoying guy who's like, I have this script. Like these guys don't make it.

What? 99,999 out of 100,000 times? But it was a particular time in American culture where you can see the same thing happening with alternative music, where it was just like, I don't know, man. Like, this dude who was down the bar for me last month is now on Letterman. You know? Like, that's crazy. Well, you have... I remember in the moment, like, reading about it, and we're going to talk later about just the whole culture that was in place at this point, but this was the first one where I was like...

Is this guy a real person? It almost felt made up. He was a plant? He was an industry plant? This guy's name is Quentin Tarantino? That's his name?

And he's in the movie and it's the guy who was, I know, I remembered Reservoir Dogs. I didn't sit in the theater. I rented it. But it was like, oh yeah, that guy? And now he's going to be our next savior for movies? His name's Quentin Tarantino. He worked at a video store for five years. To me and Sean, we were like, yes. Yeah, I was like, great name. I'm into it. But then you think back to

The momentum of Reservoir Dogs, which, and we did the Reservoir Dogs pod, I don't know, four or five years ago, but that blockbuster really helped that one. Blockbuster and cable. And so that's pushing momentum toward him. Khan wins. There's a Travolta comeback and we're at the point, and we're going to talk about Travolta later, but there's a, everyone loved Travolta. And it was like, oh man, he might've re-energized Travolta. Bruce Willis is in it. You have the self-promoter hot director,

with a great story that could be told in 19 magazine features. Also, incredible talk. Then you have the start of Miramax. Yeah, an incredible talker interview. He can go on talk shows. He can go on Charlie Rose for an hour. It'd be interesting. We have the start of Miramax. We have indies, which basically, from Sex, Lies, and Videotapes, Sundance on, now that's becoming a story. And you have Travolta. Honestly, it was like a cultural tsunami.

It felt like the biggest thing in the world when it was coming out. Shawshank comes out the same day. It's like, it's over here. Yeah. Tim Robbins, Morgan Freeman, like a big movie. And it just got blown out of the water. Yeah. So, um, I think I had seen pulp like two or three times in the movie theater by the time I saw Shawshank. Yeah, it's true. I was like, I don't have time for this shit. I have to go see. I definitely saw Shawshank maybe three weeks later only because my dad was like, you got to see. I did not see Shawshank in theaters. Um,

But I think the biggest thing about all this is this ties into this generation X mid nineties where there was a lot of like people at parties and

who just felt like they could do, oh, I could do that. I could be the lead singer of the band. I could be, I could have written Generation X, the Douglas Coppola book. I could have written that. Oh, I could have made that movie. And there was a lot of that. And Tarantino became the guy who actually emerged and he was the, oh, I could do that. And it was like the best version ever of it because he could do it. You know what's so funny about that too? And I recognize that and you can tell even just like reading about these times that there was this sense of like any

Anyone can have it and there was also a lot of bitterness about that too like a cynical kind of quality We didn't have the internet yet So we had way more time to just be mad about stuff but being in the generation behind I had the I mean I'm in the position I'm in in my life right now because I really grew up to like venerate these people Yeah, my attitude was not like I want to be Quentin Tarantino because that is an impossibility to me So like maybe I took the wrong lesson from this, you know, we're like the lesson could have been for aspiring young filmmakers and

try it. Like he did it. Maybe you could do it too. Spike Lee did it. Maybe you could do it too. But in my head, I could never get out of my own head this like, this guy's seen every fucking movie and he knows how to draw reference to it without beating you over the head with it. Like I'm still, I still haven't seen all the movies that are referenced in Pulp Fiction. And I do this for a living. So there was something kind of like titanic, like overwhelming.

about what the accomplishment felt like to me as a young person that was inspiring, but maybe not in the way that it would have been for people who were more embittered at the time who were around his age. The thing is, I took similarly, like, inspiration from this whole experience of the early 90s, obviously, and it was definitely more that, like,

There was just like basically one thing I was good at. And I was like, I guess I'm just going to do that. And I know that I might not get paid for it ever. It's just like, I'm ready to shoot. I know it's right. And it was just like, I'm just going to do this. And I don't know how to get successful at it. And I may not ever be successful at it. But, you know, I worked in record stores when I first started writing. Like, I think that like there was an element to it where you were just like,

It wasn't like bet on yourself, but it was just like, actually, it was a rejection of a lot of like what you were seeing on screens or what you were listening to or what you were reading. You were like, I want to write the thing that I would read. You know, I want to make a movie that I want to see that none of these other motherfuckers are making. Like,

I want to go into a dark room and see my shit up on the screen. But there was also a lot less awareness back then of what other people thought of stuff, which we've talked about in other pods. Just talking to Van about this. Yeah. Like there's some movie, like I love the sleep with me, the top gun scene that Tarantino's in when he talks about how they're actually gay. Mm-hmm.

And I didn't know if anybody else had even seen that. I like, nobody saw that movie. And so if any other person was like, oh, it's like that turn. I'd be like, you saw that? Yeah. But you know, 10 years later, the internet, you kind of know what people have seen and consumed. That's why I went to the internet for this. Cause you know, when I was 12,

I don't think I had a single friend who saw this movie or wanted to talk to me about it. When I was like 14, 15, 16, you know, Jackie Brown's coming out. He's really famous. He's won an Oscar. Like, it's a little different. And then when Kill Bill came out, it was totally different. It was like... Yeah. This is a blockbuster filmmaker. This is a huge movie. But I, like, kind of retreated into myself with this stuff. I was like, this is my hobby. This is the thing that I care about that's mine and it's kind of a secret. And...

It takes, like... I mean, I've told stories before about, like, meeting Chris in New York and how, like, huge that was for me because he was like, yeah, I, too, would like to talk to you about Gladiator. You know? I am also obsessed with Gladiator and, like, watching the Raptors. You know what I mean? Like, I didn't have a ton of people in my life, in my adult life, even. You have to, like, accumulate those people and find them who get your references. And he was... Like, his movies...

were a version they were like a guidebook and also like a pat on the back they're like try it check it out look at all this cool stuff yeah i had joe house with barbecue basketball and movies um we're gonna take a break and then we got a lot more to hit here this episode is supported by state farm think about your first reaction after you have an accident what do you do you scream oh no or man why did this happen on the flip side

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All right. We talked about the first podcast ever, Siskel and Ebert, the Tarantino generation. Some of the quotes from this, it's only 16 minutes. I would encourage people to watch it. It's also included on the Blu-ray of Pulp Fiction if you want to watch it. Even Martin Scorsese and Francis Coppola had warmup periods. That's a quote. You'd have to go back to Orson Welles, dot, dot, dot. On this show, we'll be asking, is there a danger here? Too much too soon.

They're already worried about what's going to happen with Tarantino because he's out there having a good time. Concern trolling. That's something we find in a lot of podcasting. Siskel throws Hitchcock out there. Siskel says, like David Mamet in the American theater a decade ago, like something has shifted. This new voice has come in. That's like the chainsaw and the hot tub. And then Siskel has two quotes that I thought were great. Sorry, Raj. Siskel, I felt like Siskel kind of won the first podcast ever. He cooked him.

Roger and I have been witness to the ossification of American movies with their brittle formulas. Pulp fiction is a refreshing mind breaker. Great job, Jean. And then...

Audience are saying they'd rather spend time with these creeps than with the boring straight people that occupy most American films. See, that's the Cisco and Ebert morality that creeps into a lot of those episodes. That's the one thing with them where I'm like, they're creeps. We love these characters, you know? Did this start the anti-hero stuff? Because I think it probably goes back to The Godfather, but you think like this movie comes out in 94, we get Tony Soprano.

We get Stone Cold Steve Austin. We get Vic Mackey. We get Schillinger and Beecher. All that stuff comes in the late 90s, and I wonder, like, did Jules and Vincent kind of start this? I mean, this is probably the most influential movie or storytelling that came out of, like, that decade. I had that question written down. But I think that people can take lots of different lessons from it, and honestly, like, one of the really...

mind bending things about watching it this time for the pod is I took totally different things from this movie this time around than I did when I was 16 and I did when I was 25 and I did when I was 32 you're like Fabian good character I see it this time

I, you know, and I, so yeah, I think that it definitely had something to do with audiences being open to watching their hero, quote unquote, not do very heroic things. I think, I definitely don't think it invented anything. I think it's a riff on it for sure, but it definitely paved the way for

the like total picture of Tony Soprano. You know, the idea that you would see him in non-gangster moments. Well, and also how funny The Sopranos was. Yeah, yeah. That's how Van and I always talk about it. That might have been the funniest HBO show even though it was the meanest and the most violent and in a lot of ways the worst. I think that's important to this too because the reputation that this movie has is as like a culture shifting classic. But it's a comedy. Like,

Like, it's clearly just a comedy. It's an action comedy or a gangster comedy or whatever, but it's meant to be super funny. Is that the one with the shit on her face? It's one of the best lines of the 90s. All right. Things Pulp Fiction created, popularized, or revived. Quentin Tarantino. Just covered him. Crackling dialogue for action movies. Mm-hmm.

We had Shane Black. We had 48 Hours. Yeah. He's dipping in the stuff that worked, but he's like, why don't more people do this? And just goes full scale. You're right. He ramps it up. Yeah, he ramps it up. John Travolta, we'll get to him. That was a reviving. New R action thrillers. Mm-hmm.

This, we're in the golden era right here. Well, yeah. This is where Last Seduction and just all this shit came out. I think dogs actually weirdly like, maybe started it. Is the gasoline, maybe this turns the engine over kind of thing. So that's a popular as Sam Jackson. We'll talk about him later, but he had never led a movie like this. Uma Thurman, who was in Johnny B. Goode with Anthony Muggahall, Robert Downey Jr. and was in Dangerous Liaisons. And everybody liked her and she had a next big thing.

Kind of stretched there. And then it happened. And then this movie, I think, boom. Had a lot of thoughts. The Uma QT combo creates that. We go back to the wall with that one a few times. Khan as a way to break culture, right?

I don't remember it happening. I always felt like it was this artsy-fartsy film festival in France. And this was the first time I remember. Yeah, him flipping the bird as he's walking up on stage to get the Pandora's. I don't remember ever caring who won that film festival before. But when knowing about this, it was like, oh shit, that movie with all those people in it and the guy from Reservoir Dogs and now it's going to be a thing and Miramax. I do think it helps with the narrative. I also think it's...

that the person who gave him the Pomodoro was the head of the jury that year was Clint Eastwood. Yeah. You know, it's not always an American actor or director that's in that spot. You know, it's usually not a lot of them, you know, not a ton of American films have won the Pomodoro. He tells Tarantino, one word of advice, just, just go to 430 and then call it quits. One or two takes max. He loved it. He loved this movie. Um,

GIMPS, I think definitely. Revitalized? Created and popularized. Oh, I think GIMPS were around. GIMPS were around? Okay, popularized. GIMPS were a problem? There's some GIMPS in the background of Cruising. Bing Rames? Yeah. Definitely. Mixtape movie soundtracks? This and Dazed, yeah. Well, Dazed is more of a one-genre thing, but yeah. Can I make a point about that?

Yeah. We have a whole movie soundtracks section coming up later. It's not quite about soundtracks, but it's representative of like the blenderization of the movie in general, which is like, I don't know that it introduced this, but hip hop sampling, Beastie Boys, Beck's Odelay, David Foster Wallace novels, um,

you know, meta, like postmodern fiction. Like all of this stuff is all happening. Yeah. In 1993 to 1997. Blurring like the ironic, non-ironic. Yeah. You know, like O'Neill Diamond's actually cool. Like, you know, for five, a long time people were like, that's the corniest shit ever. And just like smashing all the stuff you like together.

You know, like Beastie Boys rapping about Rod Carew, you know, and you're like, oh. Yeah, that became the 90s. That's like when I started doing my column, I was like, well, I'm just putting all the things I like in it because I've seen other people do it. I mean, you're another example of that, exactly. Sports and movies, why not? And this is the perfect movie for that. But nobody was thinking that way, I don't think, completely until this movie. It felt natural. It just felt like a generation of kids raised on TV and music, and they were just like, I'll take the music I like over here and the music I like over here. And the soundtrack does that too is the reason I bring it up. Miramax.

unequivocal before and after with Miramax. This was the one that I think made it Miramax, this movie. Definitely. TriStar Pictures turned it down because it was too demented. Harvey jumped on it, read it on a script on an airplane. This is also ostensibly a Disney movie. First film they fully financed. Things Pulp Fiction officially cemented. Bruce Willis. God, I needed this one.

This is coming at a diehard, diehard too. And then like some. It's like the Hudson Hawk era. Hudson Hawk, the bonfire of the vanities. Yeah. Mortal thoughts. It was like, are you just a diehard guy or is there more here? You get the impression that he knew and that's why you did this. Yeah. Sean, you're going to hate this. The Oscars. It revived a lot. Like it cemented the Oscars. I think it was the best Oscars ever. David Letterman hosting. Pulp Fiction, Shawshank, Gump.

Tarantino. Great argument. Do you have one in your mind that you think of as the best? We've never had a better one.

I'd have to think about that. People cared the most. That's a hard one. The audience was the biggest. I mean, I haven't seen every Oscars. We're actually arguing about this stuff in a row. We weren't arguing about this shit in 1982. I don't understand how the Oscars in which Forrest Gump beats Pulp Fiction and Shawshank Redemption is the best Oscars ever. That's insane. Most famous one. Made him the maddest. Yeah. On that scale, I guess. It started the whole... What the Oscars became...

which before that it was like oh man he should have won but you weren't mad about it this is like we're heading toward the internet we have way more movie awareness and in 1994 me knowing nothing i'm like i can't believe sam jackson didn't win this makes me so mad this was like to me like almost like an nba mvp going the wrong the wrong way that was the first time i remember feeling that way about movies

I was never like, oh man, I can't believe Hopkins won. Like, I just didn't care. Is Forrest Gump like Westbrook? Is it Derrick Rose? What is it? But we all like Forrest Gump. I do, but, you know, relatively speaking... I still don't know who should have won Best Movie. I think Shawshank was a great movie. I don't know. It's tough. It's not tough for me. I think it's Pulp Fiction. Yeah, it probably is. Shawshank's really good. I like Forrest Gump. I would have Forrest Gump third. I really like Shawshank. I think Shawshank's really great. Pulp Fiction is a

generation-defining, culture-moving movie. It is the reason the Oscars exist, is to recognize in the moment what a movie like that is. I agree. It's why I complain about it all the time. The intention is to identify Pulp Fiction as a movie that matters. More cementing. The culture of independent movies, I think, officially rounded in a shape for

From this point. It was a five-year. It also becomes now like a thing to make money on. Yeah, it was a five-year crawl. It's to sort of gesture towards it being like cool indie, but actually have it be, how can we sell this to you? Yeah, one of the misnomers of this movie is that it's not an independent movie.

It had an $8.5 million budget. Tarantino was paid $900,000 to write and direct it. It got Bruce Willis and it got Harvey Keitel and Travolta and Walken as a cameo and Uma Thurman. These were all real stars. Clerks was an independent movie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was like, my buddy's going to play Dante. It more resembles what you often see as independent movies now, where you're like, a movie made by Focus for $8 million, but it has Russell Crowe in it. You're like, that's not really an independent movie.

It cemented the Walkin' Sans, which had been brewing for a couple years there. True Romance helped. The SNL guest hosting stuff was great. And then this movie, and we're off. And we're also off with the Keitel Sans. That is like... I would say that that had actually fully happened by then, between Reservoir Dogs and the piano. I feel like the piano was the thing. The piano, but then this was the cherry on the sundae, because Winston Wolfe became...

You know, we'll talk about him later too. Tarantino did talk a lot about how part of what helped with all of this stuff is that the piano made Keitel famous overseas because that movie was huge in Europe. And so because it was so popular in Europe, that helped. It was another domino that fell in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction's favor. You know why? Because he fucking dropped some gonad on it. Fucking broke it out. Yeah, not the first time. Generation X.

Cemented Generation X? As a card-carrying member and first ballot. Do you think of this as a very representative piece of Generation X culture? That's not the point. We needed this one. We did, yeah. It was a lot of Generation X movies that

We love, but they didn't totally hit. Like, Singles, Reality Bites, Slacker, you kind of bottle rocket all these movies that... Like, I love that movie, but this one was like, oh, this came out of our world from somebody who understands us and blew it up. It's the movie that is referenced by the 60-year-old Time magazine columnist when referring to the generation beneath them. Yes. And then the Tarantino era was the last...

I was going to say the one other thing, kind of piggybacking off what Sean said about the pastiche nature of art at that time, is...

This movie really introduces this almost like nonlinear nostalgia, which you see very much in like swingers a couple years later. But like 50s diners, but 70s kung fu movies and blaxploitation movies, but 80s like this. Jungle Boogie. Yeah. It's like I think that the idea that in the same way that you're like you can have surf music and funk music and spinoffs

spaghetti western soundtrack next to each other, you could also kind of be like, it's 50s this way, but it's early 60s this way, and then it's 80s this way. Yeah, and turning kitsch into cool. Like, John Travolta doing the Batman dance in a 50s diner, and that being the coolest scene of the year. I was like, how did that happen? It's crazy. Like, it's inexplicable that that works. And it works. Biggest movie TV inspirations for Tarantino. Yeah.

I made a list. So the things that inspired him. That influenced this movie in some way. Okay. Deliverance, the male rape out of nowhere. No doubt. Assault on Precinct 13, our guy Carpenter doubling back to help your enemy. Jean-Luc Godard, a random out of nowhere dance scene. The Deer Hunter, Christopher Walken, just wearing a military uniform. Psycho, Marcellus crosses the street and sees Butch.

The bodyguard, Sonny Chiba, Ezekiel 2517. Blowout, John Travolta, Tarantino's favorite Travolta performance and the one that made him say, I still believe, I'm holding my stock. Tarantino had a beach condo on Travolta Island when the thing had been hit by a tsunami and a hurricane. The story that he tells, that Travolta tells about their first meeting is amazing.

You want to do that now? The Hollywood apartment. I have a trouble with this, but. Okay, we'll wait. Breathless with Richard Gere, a huge Tarantino. He loves that movie. By the way, my mom's single favorite movie, if you want to know how weird my mom is. Speaking of pastiche, that's a kind of a movie of pastiche too. Rio Bravo, male friendship. 48 hours, banter between two guys doing stuff that's not normal. Shaft, Jules. Bad motherfucker. Kung Fu, Jules.

um, the power of the 1950s and the influence on the people that came after that's the diner television, speed racer, clutch cargo, Brady bunch, partridge family, Avengers, three stooges, Flintstones, green acres. I spy Kung Fu and happy days. And then, uh, the big thing he said was he, these things that he liked, he wanted to flip, uh,

Turn it into which goes back to deliverance thing where it's like oh I think this is happening and all of a sudden we're very right and he said if you're hip to movies you're watching the boxing movie body and soul and Suddenly the characters turn a corner and they're in the middle of deliverance and you're like what how did I get into liverance? I was in body and soul what's going on here and

That's how his brain works. It's really smart. I mean, there's a few more of those. It's worth mentioning Black Sabbath, which is like the horror movie anthology that he was inspired by to put the three stories together. Yeah, there's a reference to it. What else would you put in there, though, then? Sam Peckinpah. Yeah. Wild Bunch. Like, the energy in the first five minutes of the movie where you're like, whoa! And the freeze frame, like, that's just the direct lift of William Holden in the final freeze frame in Wild Bunch. I think...

I mean, the production company A Band Apart is named after the French title Band of Outsiders, but it's A Band Apart. And so like a lot of Godard's cool and the feel of that, of those films and also the ingenuity of those films, I think translates over. Yeah. Corman, exploitation movies, like biker movies are all over this movie, you know, like the chopper and easy rider movies.

It's a huge one. Cassavetes. I mean, he's talked about Cassavetes being influential on like the Jules Vincent talking and talking and talking. And why can't they just walk over there and keep talking instead of knocking on the door? It's like that kind of like, why can't we just, what are these fucking rules? Like if they're not made to be broken, like why do we have like, why three act structure and why this and why that? And kiss me deadly with the briefcase. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So I want to dive into late 94, early 95, because I feel like this is part of the mythology of the movie. Cause it's the, it's basically the exact point when becoming obsessed with a movie or basically anything kind of changes. Cause you have, and I wasn't even on the internet till 96, but you have the early stages of message boards and movie internet culture, which you can see in the first podcast ever with Cisco Niebert, they show websites. Yeah. And it's like, look at this Terrence. Cool. Like,

up by this point? I don't think so. I think it's a little early. There's some filmography stuff. I wish I had known about this. Man, I just didn't have one person tell me this existed. I was all over it. You could go on and just be like, what is everything Tarantino's done? I've said this before, but I used to download like 12 second clips from Reservoir Dogs because like I couldn't get my hands on it. So I would just download like little moments of guys saying lines of dialogue in quick time format and just keep them and they would take up all the hard drive space on my mom's computer. I just had a book my dad gave me

by this writer David Thompson. It was called a biographical dictionary of film. And so it would be like, you know, Coppola. And then at the bottom of the Coppola biography entry, which is like just like a small Wikipedia entry, would be his filmography. And I would just kind of go through with pencil and be like, okay, got to see that, saw that, see that. You know, like it was, that was the way you would have to find out about this stuff. There's long form movie journalism everywhere.

It's probably at a peak here because you have Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, you have Premiere doing it every month. You have Rolling Stone still throwing a fastball. Is Movie Line going? You have Movie Line. You have New York Magazine. You have The Last Day as a Playboy. And I think Tarantino in 94 might have had a feature in every one of them. Yeah. It's just like there was this whole circuit that you did, and I read all that shit. Cisco and Ebert are in their primes. Goldman's books are a thing at this point. Plus, he's got the New York Magazine column.

Generation X, we just had a lot of spare time. A lot of things to do. Like playing entire NHL 94 seasons on Sega. We had jobs that didn't maybe require all of our attention. Just a lot of killing time or just like, eh. You also have the children in the 70s who have now grown up on movies and Pauline Kael books and have studied stuff and there's ways to just rent movies over and over again. That's like a seven-year tale plus cable TV.

And you also have the colleges and film schools blowing up. Like I took two movie classes in college at Holy Cross, which wasn't exactly like USC film school. But there was a sense of like some sort of people levitating above whatever the last 30, 40 years of movies and trying to figure out commonalities and structure and themes. So you have that. And then, you know, I just feel like this podcast we do now, the roots of it are like in the mid-90s.

It's the first time people really just dove into shit like this and wherever, like think about Klosterman. If we'd all known each other and we're just all sitting in a bar, we probably would have argued about some scene in Pulp Fiction for like two hours. I believe that. Were people doing that in like 1982? I don't know.

I think that the video store conversations that Quentin and Roger and all of those guys were having are kind of like a representation of that. Yeah, and they're extensions of record store arguments. Do you feel like there's... Could you say this was the dawning of the deep dive era? Because the OJ trials in 94. When people care about something, you're just like, oh, now I can try to grab every piece of this. I wonder whether or not there's something to...

the sort of matriculation of underground culture into mainstream culture. So whether it's independent film, whether it's alternative rock becoming rock, whether it's all these things, it's not like a pop artist, which is, this is not to dismiss pop artists, but it's not like you're like, what you kind of see is what you get. Like the, there is like this surface image, there's the music. And then you can be like, I can learn who this person is and where they came from in a paragraph. When you kind of got into say, I don't know, Soundgarden,

You found out that there was a lot of stuff going on contributing to whatever made Soundgarden, what made them sound that way. They were basically normal guys living somewhere. And I wonder whether or not there was an element of there was something to deep dive into. And then also all the things that kind of shaped that band or shaped this filmmaker or shaped that writer. That was like a huge...

It took a lot of scholarship to like kind of find out all the stuff that you wanted to find out about the things that you were interested in. Yeah. I feel like I've lived through every phase of this and you could feel it in sports too. It was like, I really cared about the NBA draft in the eighties and there was no draft guide. There was no like rankings to read. I remember like listening to sports radio show. There's one show W fan and they did like a draft special and I was like,

It's like, oh my God. And they're like, oh, and I think this guy will go forth. I'm like, what? What are they doing? How are they doing this? By 94, that's kind of starting to become in place, right? You could... Whatever you wanted to deep dive, you could probably find it. And I just don't feel like that was the case in the 80s. I think that like...

recombinant culture made this possible too. Where like I wanted to know every sample on the Beastie Boys album in the same way and I would like look for it on the internet. I remember there was a, you know, my family mostly went to Blockbuster but there was an independent video store in my neighborhood called ATR. And ATR, I remember after Pulp Fiction came out, there was just a whole shelf that was, it came from Pulp Fiction. And it was like all the movies that were referenced by some like, you know,

endeavoring clerk who put, put, you know, Corbucci movies and, and Sonny Chiba martial arts movies. And this is like stuff that you can't get a blockbuster and that you wouldn't understand was a part of the movie until you started reading and reading and listening to Quinn talk about it. And there was like, that's the, that is what you're describing. There was no money in it for that guy to do that. Right. You know what I mean? Like to make the shelf that way. It's how you made that job fun. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I had this,

It was also making a podcast. I mean, we do this all the time. You know, we're doing it right now. I do feel like this was the apex of pre-internet culture because I listed all just and I probably missed 20 things, but we had Seinfeld, Friends, and ER on the NBC Thursdays. We had the OJ trial, grunge music apex, and the hip hop

early apex and rap and West coast, East coast, biggie Tupac's happening. Generation X is happening. The 94 Olympics, Tanya and Nancy that happened. MJ's retired. And we're all like,

Going to bars like this feels fishy. What the fuck actually happened here? And then he comes back. Pulp fiction. I love the idea of you going to a bar at night when MJ retires. Like, oh, a Michelob. I have a couple of things I want to get off my chest about this retirement. That was the era. It was like my uncle's next door neighbor is friends with David Stern. And he said he got suspended. It was like a lot of like, I know this guy who knew this guy who knew this guy. Shawshank and Forrest Gump. Letterman and Leno. The 94 Oscars.

The Cowboys and the 49ers just battling every year. Mike Tyson's comeback. There was just like all this shit going on and you basically only had to talk about it with your friends. You had nowhere else to go. I was thinking about the Vincent telling Jules about Europe scene and how like

Jules is like, no, you fucking, you have the mic, man. You just tell me all about it. Yeah. And you really, I did feel like a much more present person who listened more because I was like, yeah, man, I watched on YouTube. Like, I know about, I've never been to Amsterdam, but I know about Amsterdam. You know what I mean? Right. It was like, oh shit, my friend went to Prague. Let's hear about it. Yeah.

Yeah, just the unknown. Things you don't know about and you're willing to be open to other people describing them. You don't have to feel like, yeah, I already heard about this before. It's a great point. Was this the most ripped off movie of the past 30 years? I believe so. I think it was too. Not just two days in the valley, very bad things, things to do in Denver when you're dead. Like the usual suspects even a little bit. Gross point blank, eight heads in a duffel bag, go, way of the gun. All those movies that were just like, hey, let's try to do Pulp Fiction.

But pieces of it, I think, got lifted in all these ways. I would say that there is a pattern to this movie. The references...

I mean, you can see this movie showing up in Gilmore Girls. You can see this movie showing up in the first few Avengers movies that Joss Whedon wrote. Like, you can see this movie still has its fingerprints in so many different things, even if the people who wrote it didn't know that they were kind of referencing Pulp Fiction. Yeah. I think the attitude... Fucking Deadpool. Yeah. Completely. The attitude has been photocopied a million times, but I think the style has never been replicated. There's nothing like it. What do you think, Craig?

Because you're exactly... You've basically been alive that entire time. Yeah, I mean, I think that...

I was a film major in the mid-aughts and Pulp Fiction was like the almanac for every single kid because it felt like Tarantino was so relatable and his story was so attainable that everybody was like, this guy's just writing a movie about shit that he likes. And so I think everybody has been trying to rip off, specifically with dialogue, where it's so unique. And honestly, a lot of characters in this movie kind of speak the same, which I think is interesting. And I think that has been recreated a lot in movies now. Yeah.

Let's take a break and then we got to do the story and then dive into a couple of the actors. This episode is brought to you by Twizzlers. We didn't have a ton of candy at the movies when I was growing up. Obviously we had popcorn and then we had some of the basics, but

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All right, quickly, the story behind Pulp Fiction. Danny DeVito's company, Jersey Films, signed QT and Avery. They formed a company, been a part to a dev deal. He got 900K to write and direct Pulp Fiction, goes to Amsterdam, writes out the script, lives there in like a one bedroom hotel room or something for three months, hand writes everything. And then somebody types it up. He wanted to do a three-story trilogy. Roger Avery wrote one part as a short, the Butch Marcellus part. And then QT said,

Take the oldest chestnuts you've ever seen when it comes to crime stories. You know, the guy's got to go out with the big man's wife and don't touch her. All the old forms of storytelling and then have them purposely run away. And then he got two scenes from or two ideas from Avery were the miraculous missed shots and the rear seat automobile killing. And then the notion of the crime world cleaner inspired by a short called Curdled.

they saw as a film festival and he actually used the actress as esmeralda um but nothing really happened until harvey kytel signed on with his and he's like can i show my penis no no we don't need your penis for this one we just need you so they raised their first 1.5 that way there's some we don't need to dive into it too much but there's some interesting credit stuff with him and roger avery that has been well documented that at some point when they released the movie

The studio, Tarantino, somebody wanted it to be written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. So they did the story by the both of them and Avery definitely gave up

the co-writing piece, but got points. And it's been murky, and both guys, they do a podcast together, so it's not like there's bad blood. They're good. They're friends. But Tarantino bought ideas from Rogers, what was reported at the time. And he bought Pandemonium Reigns, which was the Butch and Marcellus boxer idea. And then there were other pieces of it. But he says, you know, he rewrote all the monologues that appear in those sequences. And, you know, he gets the screenplay credit. The one, my favorite piece about this sort of

making of the script is he wrote the script obviously in these basically like these school notebooks while he was living in Amsterdam and then didn't get it typed till he came back from California so there's this moment where he's like got Pulp Fiction in like 30 notebooks yeah and I'm like that's like the most valuable piece of luggage in the history of movies right

Because there's no backup for that? That's within the suitcase. The suitcase is the fucking, you know, his suitcase full of scripts. What if he still has those? I don't know. That's a good question for the archives. And apparently his writing is like mine. It's like basically unintelligible. So he had some typewriter. Don't sell yourself short. Typing out all this stuff. Meaning your penmanship? Yeah, his penmanship. I don't think it's great. So Promotion of Pulp, besides Khan, one of the best trailers ever.

And I don't remember how many months before the movie came out, but the trailer was one of those, wait, what is this? During an era when movie trailers really meant something. Now it's like they get leaked online and it's not the same experience. If you're in the theater, you'd want to go to the theater because you'd want to see the trailers. Do you guys feel that way anymore? No. I mean, I think that he and I are both recovering addicts of trailers. I love them, but also feel like they...

actively ruin movie experiences now. Well, back then that was how we, a lot of times we found out if a movie was coming out, it was the trailer or you read it. But now I'm like actively, like every time the Alien Romulus trailer comes up, I'm like, I don't want to see it. So I see a movie with my friends every year on my birthday. So for my 12th birthday, we saw The Client, the John Grisham movie. And Paul played before The Client.

And I think that's probably when I really fully became aware of the movie. And it was hard to not be like, put that inside of me immediately. Like, I need this now because it was just such a great trailer. So yeah, those two things. Then you had the press push was about as masterful as it's ever been. Like Tarantino's doing every interview. They're pushing the indie story hard. They're pushing Miramax. And it's just press everywhere. Yeah.

And then a really savvy ad campaign. And by the time it came out, people were like, okay, yeah, I'm there. Let's go. The 12 rules of Pulp Fiction. Oh, intriguing. Foot massages are sexual proxy apps. The holiest of holies. Boxers don't have an old timers day. This is, you're just replacing coach Finstock right now. Don't fuck with another man's vehicle. You just don't do it.

American names don't mean shit. Uncomfortable silences are actually okay. No milkshake is worth $5, but any time of the day is a good time for pie. Pigs are filthy animals, unless it's Arnold from Green Acres. Do you actually agree with that? I thought you don't like bacon. I'll eat bacon and pork. Pork chops taste good. Bacon's good. Any nimrod given $1,500 should be shot on general principle. Yeah.

Even people who hate each other can't allow their enemy to be raped in a pawn shop basement. Gotta remember that one. Stay cool at all times. And then the big one, anyone can become a good person. Which I watched with my son last night and his mind was blown and then we had to pick up pieces of his skull like he was Marvin in the backseat afterwards. And he's like, Dad, if you had to say...

What is that movie about, ultimately, in one sentence? We just had this conversation. In one sentence, what would you say? And I was like, you know what? I think it's about anyone can become a good person, would be my answer. But I might be wrong. I think you're right. Second chances. That's definitely the big theme of the movie. Redemption. Redemption. I think the twist I would put on that is that this is a movie about movies saving their life.

Because it's constructed out of this guy's experience with movies throughout his life and with culture throughout his life. He's trying to make this movie for most of his adult life. It's banging around his head. And, you know, it's a kind of deeply spiritual film when you watch it. You know, it's like there's so many references to divine intervention and God. People think the briefcase is God. We'll get into that. Free will versus fate. Yeah. And...

I think it's about that. I think it's about, yeah, it's never too late to be saved and anything can save you. And in some ways, like, I think that this film is about how film saved him. Unless you're a Jets fan. Jesus. I think if you, I think there's a way to read the movie and maybe this interlocks with some of my Jets fandom. There's like, if you choose to live righteously, you will survive. And if you do not,

You're Vincent. You're Zed. You're Brett. Anybody who trespasses gets killed. Obey the laws of karma. Yeah. Big part of my life. The redemption arcs. Vincent rescues Mia. Butch rescues Marcellus. Jules rescues Ringo and himself. Butch and Jules use second chances to launch new lives. Vincent continues his old life.

Until he doesn't. But then he kind of does because of the structure of the film. Right, right. And Marcellus, I would assume, continues his old life and he'll be dead too at some point. Not a lot of geriatric drug dealer kingpins. Free will versus fate. Not sure what happens to Winston Wolfe. Structure of the movie goes like this. Prologue, The Diner, Vincent and Jules, Butch and Marcellus, Vincent and Marcellus' wife, Me Almost Overdoses, Gold Watch,

Butch versus Marcellus, the Bonnie situation, Wolf saves the day, and then the epilogue in the diner. Do you want me to tell you the... I have the actual structure. The actual structure, yeah. Because my son asked afterwards, he's like, is there a version of this movie that's chronological? And I was like, I don't know if you'd want to watch that, but here's what it would be. The watch, it's first scene. Vincent and Jules pick up the briefcase and shoot everybody but Marvin.

Vincent accidentally shoots Marvin in the car. Oh man, I shot Marvin in the face. Vincent and Jules go to Jimmy's house and get help by the wolf. Vincent and Jules go get breakfast as Honey Bunny and Ringo are also having breakfast. They rob the diner. Jules doesn't kill them, keeps the briefcase. They go to Marcellus' club, drop the briefcase off, run in a butch. Vincent goes to buy heroin from Lance. Vincent takes Mia out for a date and then Mia almost overdoses.

Butch double crosses Marcellus, wins the fight, goes on the run. Marcellus and Vincent stake out Butch's place. Butch kills Vincent. Marcellus gets raped. Butch and Marcellus kill the rapist. Butch and his girlfriend escape. And that's the end of the movie in the linear fashion. I like it the way he did it. Of course you do. Yeah. Yeah. Got it. How many days is this? Two? I had this in Unanswerables. I think it's more. I think it's like...

Because here's the tell. So Vincent goes on the date and he has his clothes from when they go get the suitcase. Oh, but they would be bloody? Or either, or they threw them away, right? They threw them away. So he just has another outfit? He's like Johnny Cash? We don't know how much time transpires between when they leave the diner and go to the club. And then after that, is it later that night he's taking out Mia? Yeah.

Well, I think... Is it the next day? Did they say? So they drop the briefcase off. They run in a butch. That's all... I mean, that's seven of the 13 shifts are all in that one morning. But then I don't know how many days pass between him dropping off the briefcase... Well, it's like, is the fight that day? No, he's going to buy heroin as the next thing that happens. That could be two days later. It could be three days later. He has the key of, he says...

you know what somebody did the other day? They scratched my car. Like, I wish I could find that motherfucker. And does that, and I assume that's Butch who keyed the car. And he said the other day. So the other day could mean two, three, right? So that's like the second set of. We also don't know what, how much time passed between Mia's adrenaline shot

And then the fight. Yeah, because Mia's so put together. Because she sees him again. Right. It could have been one day. It could have been five days. Doesn't Mia see Vincent and go, like, how have you been? Yes. Does she say, I wanted to thank you for the other night? She does. Okay, so it's like... Maybe a couple days. It's been a couple of days. I think it's three days. I think it all happens within a week. Okay. Would be my guess. John Travolta. You've been... It's all been leading up to this for you. One of your guys.

The phenomenal comeback by which all phenomenal comebacks heretofore have been mentioned against. It's the best one. Is there a better one? At least until Embiid plays 65 games in a season. I just took a judge shot. I know. I had to keep the streak alive. I'm at six now.

Probably. Probably the greatest movie comeback of all time. It's a little bit of a misnomer. A little bit. Because you're counting Look Who's Talking. Those were big movies. They're not cool movies. Yeah. But he was definitely still present in movie culture. He had not disappeared or been, you know, shunted off to network television. He was in a little bit of movie star jail, but he was still making movies. I would say he was in movie jail. Okay.

Because Tarantino and the list will do in part two with the casting. What ifs said one of the actors adding the list was John Travolta and it came back. The entire list is approved except for John Travolta. So I'm going to say that's officially movie jail, right? He couldn't make the movie of John Travolta was one of the three biggest parts. So Travolta, uh,

who we love and we've talked about and we talked about for a long time in the blowout podcast but um from 82 to 94 he turns down american gigolo well that was earlier than 82 but american gigolo officer and a gentleman he turned down manny from scarface and he turned down splash and then a few years later turned down forrest gump tough tried out for first blood top gun pretty woman didn't get him

And then some of the bombs he made, Staying Alive and Two of a Kind, same year. Perfect. A Tubi classic. Kind of like it. A Tubi Hall of Famer. Yeah. The Experts, Chains of Gold. It just goes south. And then he's in these Look Who's Talking movies. But he's kind of like a parody of himself. Like he's heading toward, he's going to have like a Tuesday night sitcom on NBC. Definitely. It's going to be Welcome, Welcome, Back, Cotter. Where it's like he's a single dad and one of his kids is...

He's a little wild. That's where his career is heading. Staying alive is the, that's the sliding door. Yeah. Taking that movie and doing that over all the other stuff he could have been doing is a mistake. You know what I mean? It's worth saying that for everything that Quentin Tarantino is incredibly gifted at doing, he may be the preeminent caster of movies. Yeah.

Perhaps ever. I don't know. I agree. Over the course of his filmography, the fact that he has such a distinctive way of writing and such a distinctive way with characters...

Then also is like I can pick the exact right person at the exact right point in their career and show something that's just a little bit different about them while also capturing their essence. Like did it with Brad Pitt. He did it with DiCaprio. He's done it with Jamie Foxx. He's like over and over and over again. He has shown this ability to be like, this is the guy. This is the part. This is the time in this guy's career.

And everything changes for that person afterwards, almost. I think it's because, and this was one of the reasons why he was such a good guest on this show and knows what this show is, is he's better than anybody at understanding movie star persona and how important that is. And like it's written in Cinema Speculation, he writes a lot about that. He understands like the dynamics, he studied acting. But for famous people,

He really gets how they think about themselves and then how to subvert that in a way that doesn't violate their idea of themselves. And that's the Travolta thing. I mean, this part in this movie is unlike any movie he'd ever made by far. I mean, he never played a guy like... This guy's a piece of shit. It was written for Madsen. It's not supposed to be Travolta. Right. Yeah. You see, like, I sent you that YouTube clip of him...

Tarantino, most of the directors, like they watch the monitor and they're over on the side and he stands next to the cameraman and there's this video of him watching the twist scene, Richard Bolton, Uma, and Tarantino's kind of dancing next to the camera, but he's such a movie fan. He wants to be as close to the actors as possible. Like he's in the first row of a Broadway play and he just sees stardom differently, which I would encourage people to read his book, which I thought was excellent. But his Steve McQueen chapter, which we talked about before about, um,

the essence of what made Steve McQueen a movie star and how we don't have that in the same way anymore. He just sees, he just sees certain things and other people are good at it. I think PTA is really good at that. For sure. There's, it's usually if you're a great director, you usually have a pretty good eye for casting. You're going to at least be like a B plus. But he saw something philosophical in John Travolta. Yeah. I mean, Vincent is a philosophical character. He has ideas about how the world should be.

did John Travolta ever evince that in any movie? No. Like, that's not... Let's talk about that dinner they had. I think it was more than that. I mean, it was like, he went over to his apartment, Travolta, Tarantino, according to Travolta, explained his fandom and

and why he loved him, what he loved about him for a long time, just to, you know, be honest but ingratiate himself to Travolta. But he was trying to get him to do Dust Till Dawn. From Dust Till Dawn. He wanted him to, I think, be in the Clooney part. Because he thought Madsen was doing Vincent. Right. So he was pitching him on a different movie. And he went on and on about how much he loved, you know, not just Blowout and Saturday Night Fever, but Welcome Back, Cotter and Grease.

And then they played the Greece and Welcome Back Hunter board games together for hours. Yeah. Until 4 o'clock in the morning. He let him have the Barbarino part. But there's this part there in the research that said about he kind of goes at Travolta when they're hanging out. And he gives like the, what the fuck are you doing, man? You're one of the great actors of the last 25 years. Like,

what's up with your choices? Why are you picking movies like that? And Travolta was kind of taken aback. Yeah. But he mentioned during the dinner, oh, I had this one part I would have been great at, but I promised it to another actor. And then Madsen drops out. Did you Wyatt Earp? How do you feel about that, Sierra? It's a tough beat for Michael Madsen.

Yeah. I mean, it's also interesting. CR's doing a solo Wyatt Earp pod that we've discussed in the past for rewatchables. It's like when I did Castaway by myself. CR doing Wyatt Earp for two hours. Part three, buffalo hunting. It's funny. I rewatched Reservoir Dogs for this. Yeah. And, you know, Madsen is Mr. Blonde is unreal. But the part that jumped out to me the best is after he and White and Pink are yelling at each other when they've all gotten back to the warehouse. Yeah.

And they've just finished yelling and Keitel is finally starting to calm down. And Madsen goes, that was really exciting. And I was like, I wonder, he could have been Vincent. You know, like he definitely could have done this. I also think, I think Sizemore could have done it.

And I'm probably a bigger Sizemore fan than most, but... You were always a little hot. Yesterday, I had to do more research for this, and I wanted to put something on TV. And I swear this happened. I turned the TV on, and heat was on. That was when... When you texted? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like, oh my... So I watched like an hour and a half of heat as I was researching this. And I was watching Sizemore in the... For me, the action is the juice. I'm in.

And I was like, I think I could have bought him as Vincent. But it's so hard because like, we'll get to this. And I mean, the casting would have sort of amazing for this, but there is a sweetness to Vincent. Yeah. That is quintessentially like the thing that I associate with Travolta. Well, would you, would you go best Travolta performance ever? Yeah. Absolutely. Yes.

Him in the diner with her, he's lights out. Not just the dancing. I think I agree. Even the Tony Rocky horse. I love Saturday Night Fever. Yeah, that's a big scene for me. When she comes back from the bathroom and his performance when she comes back from the bathroom is crazy. He gets to use all the best pieces of himself.

I mean, he's unbelievable in Saturday Night Fever. Yeah. And he's like a kid in that movie. Yeah. Blowout is pretty great. Yeah. Yeah. Really good stoneback. My gold. Yes. My gold, silver. Yeah. What he does, he kind of came up with the accent and Tarantino kind of let him have it. Broken Arrow. Well, then, so after this, this movie, all of a sudden he's back. He makes 14 movies from 95 to 99. Yeah.

Including Get Shorty, Broken Arrow, Phenomenon, Face Off, Primary Colors, Thin Red Line, General's Daughter. And then Battlefield Earth happens in 2000 and people are like, whoa, what the fuck's going on here? And then that was it. He kind of lost the moment. But it had this five-year crazy resurgence that he's still kind of dining on. He's had some moments, you know? Yeah, but that was like the window. Like it felt like he was...

one of the five biggest stars in the world by the time we got to the late 90s. He's still a good actor. He's taken on some really bad movies, like a lot of VOD movies. The last few years, it's, yeah. But like, I don't know, if you watch him in Savages, you know, like he's pretty good in that, that Oliver Stone movie. He's good in like Hairspray and Wild Hogs. Those movies are big movies. Those are big Hollywood movies. Only 15 years ago. Yeah. But it's not. Your big Wild Hogs guy? Yeah. Huge hit. See what I mean?

My buddy Mike Tolan did that movie. No, no. He's like, yeah, I'm doing a movie with Travolta. I'm like, what? Yeah. I have Travolta, Cruise, Harrison Ford, and Sigourney Weaver as the four biggest stars of the past 50 years who never won an Oscar. Wait, say that again. Travolta, Cruise, Harrison Ford, and Sigourney Weaver. The Sigourney Weaver call is great. They've never won an Oscar. Good job by you. What about Amy Adams? Adams fifth.

I mean, Glenn Close, I think, is the most cited one. Biggest stars are best actors. Biggest stars. Biggest stars who are also good actors. Yeah, the Glenn Close one is legendary now because, you know, she's trying. But she wasn't a force of nature star like those four. She wasn't. I can't believe it. Is Wahlberg in this? He's second level. I mean, he's a huge star and he was nominated. This would be a fun podcast. It's a good idea. We could level it out.

I think this movie did lock him down as the best movie dancer ever. Cause now he's got grease Saturday night fever and this twist scene. It's like, that's it. Top that. Nobody's topping that. Travolta said before this movie came out three times, I had set trends with fever and urban cowboy in Greece, which launched disco cowboy chic and greasers. So he's like John Travolta. I said trends. That's what I do. It's like CR said trends. Talking babies. A lot of people don't know. Um,

The haircut, the extra weight, and the weird accent are three things that don't usually catapult somebody back to super startup, but they all work there. He talked about slowing words down and overemphasizing them with his lips and teeth like royale with cheese and doing that. Then Quentin said to him, "I didn't know I was doing a comedy. You made this role so funny."

Say something off-kilter bizarre at the time this awful thing happens. It's funny because it's unexpected. Any other Travolta stuff? It's funny because I'm just looking at my favorite quotes from the movie and the best delivery of the quotes. And none of them are Travolta. Even though he's ostensibly the star.

Bacon is good. That's a good one. Pork chops are good. I mean, it's hard because he's up against fucking Bo Jackson in his prime. I have a couple. I have a couple of trombones. Let's talk about Bo Jackson in his prime. Sam Jackson. So we're going to play a clip right now of when Sean and I did King of New York and the Rewatchables with Tarantino. And there's been this perception in the last 30 years that he wrote Jules for Sam Jackson.

And Tarantino told us that's actually not true. He wrote it for Lawrence Fishburne. So we're just going to play that right now. You never considered him for Jules? Yeah, he turned it down. Yeah, he was offered it and he turned it down. I think that worked out for the best. Yeah, it worked out for the best. No, he was offered Jules and he turned it down. Why would you turn down Jules? I'll tell you why. You want to know why? I'll tell you why. All right. His people suggested he turn it down. It all happened. It's an interesting thing. I wrote initially, I wrote Jules and Vincent together.

for Fishburne to be Jules and Michael Madsen to be Vincent. And then we offered it to Fish. He read it. His people read it. And his people suggested that he pass. They said, you got to pass. You got to pass on this one. And the reason they suggested is they said, okay, here's the deal. You could have done this last year. But the reason you hired us is to make you a leading man, to make you a star.

So, yes, if this was your searching for Bobby Fischer time, this was your class action time, then you could have done it. But you can't do that anymore. Now it's got to be Larry Fishburne in ba-da-da-da-da. And you've got to be above the title. And so you're not – he was like, but I begin the movie. I end the movie. You're a supporting character. And they're casting John Travolta. You're supporting to John Travolta.

You're a supporting character. You can't, you, you've got to, part of the thing is you got to say no to supporting roles, no matter how good they are. If you want to be a leading man. All right. Now, actually their strategy is actually right on. If, if, if, if you've gotten stuck in the really good supporting character role and it's hard to turn them down because that's a good director, it's going to be a good movie. You're working off the big stars. They took me lightly.

Their strategy was right on. They took me lightly. Now, here's the interesting thing. So he turns it down and talks to me about it, though. And he says, look, I want to do it. All right. But, you know, look, I'm paying these people. So, you know, if I'm paying them out, I ought to listen to them. You know, they got a strategy. The movie he did instead of Pulp Fiction was...

Is it just cause? No, it's not just cause. It's a, that would be a supporting role actually. It was a movie he did with Ellen Barkin. All right. Oh, Bad Company. Bad Company. That's what it was. That's the movie he did instead because it was, he was starring in it. Yeah. He goes into like a little, I like that movie. But he goes into like a little bit of a black hole for the next few years. Oh, here's, okay, but there's a really one, I mean, he eventually, what he passed up

With Pulp Fiction, he eventually gets with the Matrix. That's where he finally gets it, gets it. But what happened, I mean, it was just the weird turn of events. What ended up happening is, okay, so he turns down Pulp Fiction because it's not a big enough role. He's not the star in it. So Sam Jackson gets the role instead. So Sam Jackson does it. Now they're going to do Die Hard 3.

And they've literally written the role for Larry Fishburne, the black character in it. And well, he's holding out for the right movie. This is the right movie. It is. He's one of the leads in it.

It's him opposite Bruce Willis. It's going to make $300 million. Yeah, it's for sure a hit and not just a hit, a hit that will play all over the world. So the entire world, not just America, the entire world is going to know who Larry Fishburne is. He will be the guy from Die Hard 3. I love this movie, by the way, but keep going. So he is that guy. They've written it for him. Not only that,

He knows they can't cast anybody else. They're not going to get Denzel and they're not going to get Wesley. They need him. They need him for this movie. So he asked for a million dollars. They don't want to pay him a million dollars, but they need him. So they're going back and forth, negotiating, negotiating, negotiating, and they have one out.

And that is, it's now May. It's Cannes Film Festival. And Andy Vanya is going to be in Cannes. And there's this guy named Samuel Jackson, who's apparently really good in Pulp Fiction. So they're going to go literally and see the premiere because they're going to support Bruce anyway. They're going to go and see the premiere of Pulp Fiction. And if they like the Sam Jackson guy, they're going to pull the offer from Larry Fishburne and give it to Sam.

And if they don't like the Sam Jackson guy, they'll close the deal with Larry. And the rest is history. Unbelievable. I think that's a top five movie. What if? Because if Fishburne gets this part and then he also gets Die Hard 3, plus he had Ike Turner, plus he gets the Matrix down the road. You could argue he's one of the three biggest stars of the 90s.

Does he market correct Denzel at that point? What happens? It kind of blows your brain. Is he a little bit older than Jackson or are they the same age? I think Jackson is actually maybe a little older than him. Remember Fishburne's 17 in Apocalypse. I think it's a tricky thing. Sam Jackson's 13 years older. I think it's a complicated question because I'm not sure that

Mass audiences specifically showed up for Sam Jackson or for Laurence Fishburne over time. Like, they were simultaneously huge stars. You know, they worked a lot, but they were not like what you would classically define as a box office draw. So Denzel and Snipes in that decade. Whereas Denzel is. Yeah, you put them on a poster and people came. Exactly. I do feel like Sam Jackson got to that point because they started putting him on like Shaft and movies like that where he was the only reason to see the movie and

people were going. Yeah. But he also did this weird character actor side too where he'd be like in Deep Blue Sea. He basically did everything. He just worked all the time. To me, he reminds me a little bit of Michael Caine. He's like really good all the time but works constantly. And so it kind of, I don't know if it dilutes it, but it kind of shows up in the movie and does his thing. And the movie might be a piece of shit or it might be really good. And he used this movie and this performance to

to get involved in franchise movies, to get involved in Die Hard or The Vengeance, to get involved with Star Wars, to get involved with Marvel, because that's a way to get bigger and bigger, make more money, be more famous. I mean, he really leveraged this beautifully. Well, so he thinks he has the part, and he goes and he does a reading for it, and he kind of mails it in because he thought he had it. He didn't want to bring the guns out. And Tarantino, who we talked about when we did the pod with him, loved this actor, Paul Calderon.

This is a big what if. Brings him in to audition like a just in case and Paul Calderon crushes it. Yeah.

So now Jackson comes back not realizing now he's fighting for the part. And they tell him and he gets pissed and gives like what everybody says. It's one of the great auditions ever. There's an oral history of the movie in Vanity Fair. And it's basically like it's down to the two of them. And they both fly from New York to L.A. to do an audition. Yeah. And in the Vanity Fair article, at least, it's like Calderon shows up and Quentin's late. So he does the audition with...

like one of the producers. Yeah. And kind of blows it. Yeah. And pulls the plug midway through. He's like, I don't have it. And then Sam Jackson walked in and was super pissed that he had to do it. And he's eating a burger when he does the audition and is like, fuck all of you. And they're like, it,

like this is Jules like and then Paul Caterham becomes the bartender in Pulp Fiction yeah so I think what it is is that he the audition that he gives is for the final scene with Tim Roth right and he does the entire I'm trying to be the shepherd part and Lawrence Bender says that that's when they knew they had the end of the movie like they weren't totally sure that the end of the movie was going to work because he changed his tone yes and Jackson's performance in that audition clearly indicated to them like we got this we nailed this is the right movie and he's the right guy for the part

All right. So watch this movie with my son last night and he was blown away. But Sam Jackson was the piece that blew him away the most because he's known Sam Jackson. Sam Jackson's been in a million movies. He knows him, but he was just like, he, I was like, who's your favorite characters? Like Jules. Yeah. And he was like, was that performance a big deal when it happened? Cause like, has anyone ever been better in a movie? Like he just like, he couldn't like get over it. That's actually a very valid question. And I was like, it's funny cause I have that written down.

Was this the enduring performance of the 1990s? Because if you're looking at like Hannibal Lecter, Forrest Gump, Ellis Red Boyd, it's not like the it's a it's a less long list than you think. But if you're just thinking like, yeah, no, no, no. Yeah. I think it's I think it's him and Lecter in the finals, though.

There's some other ones you throw in, right? Like, Haley Joel Osment in Sixth Sense, stuff like that. Like, there's a couple of, like, iconic, memorable figures. I just think that this is a guy... He has, like, three of the coolest speeches ever in movies written for him, and he nails them. He is them. And...

it is as exciting to watch him perform in this movie for me as it was the first time. And I've seen it north of a hundred times. You know, like how they talk about like movie starlets from like the forties and the thirties and how directors would like make the audience fall in love with them with the way they shot, you know, Greta Garbo or Betty. Yeah. It's like, that's how I think Tarantino shoots Sam Jackson. It's like, he's fucking in love with Sam Jackson. He's like, I see this thing in this guy. I've written this material for him, but the entire first time,

the big kahuna burger scene, the camera is all the way in like kind of where Vincent is for the most of it. Yeah. Because it's like he dominates the entire thing. And so much of Carantino's writing is about the way control and power shifts within dynamics when conversations are happening.

And Jules is the only one with the power in that whole scene. The entire time. He's the one who tells everybody what to do. He's the one who's like, you sit down, flock of seagulls. Vincent, are we happy? Like, it's like watching, it is like watching an incredible athlete go off, basically. Yeah, I was thinking, my friend Goldman, when he wrote about, like, the best actors he ever saw on stage and the way he wrote it. I'm not a stage guy and I haven't been to a lot of plays, but he would talk about, like, what it was like to see Olivier on stage. Yeah.

And the way he would recount it, like you just never, almost like the way I would talk about sports. Like you had to be there for Jordan in 96. Like I've never seen, and you would tell stories about it. And he would talk about Olivier that way. It rarely happens in movies where you see somebody that is acting so well, you're like, you almost feel like you're on stage in the first row watching, you know, like Daniel, that when we did, there will be blood. Daniel Day-Lewis was like that. He has a couple of scenes where you're like, holy shit. That's, you know, some of the best acting I've ever seen in my life.

And you're right. Jackson has like three or four of these, but I think what's really cool is not only does he have these big, powerful speeches and this force of personality stuff, but he's also a really good wingman for the dialogue with, with, uh, he sells him. Yeah. Yeah. Vincent, like he's funny. For example. Yeah. He's just, it's, it just brings everything to the table. I think it's one of the great performances ever for me. I was mesmerized by him this last time I watched it. There's a,

The scene towards the end of the movie, but kind of in the middle of it when they finally get to Marcellus' bar and they go up to the bar and he's got the case...

And, you know, they're asking, Paul's asking Vincent about going out with Mia, how he's like, have you ever met Mia and all that. But right before he asks that, Sam Jackson's just sitting there with the case and he is staring at Marcellus. Yeah. It's like he's going to quit, presumably, you know, but like there's like what he's able to do in silence versus reality.

What he's able to do with screaming, what he's able to do being funny, what he's able to do listening, what he's able to do with action sequences. It's just like every single tool that you could possibly ask an actor to do. You're calling the wolf?

Yeah, he's really sly and funny and also really scary. Like, within five minutes of the movie, you get both, you are aware that there is an invention called television and on that invention they show shows, right? Which is so funny. And then five minutes later, he's like, I don't remember asking you a goddamn thing! Yeah. That was good, Sean. It's like, that's as funny as, it's like that and then it's also like, allow me to retort. Yeah. Um,

The hair, everything about it. You know, we knew Sam Jackson for a few years there. He's in a bunch of stuff, but he was Jungle Fever was like that. That was the one he played the drug dealer, right? The drug addict. Yeah. Yeah. So, and he was always like the number four, number five, number six guy. He's in a movie called Fresh that I really liked that he's really good in. Which by the way, it's on Netflix now. People want to watch the movie. But he was always kind of,

Produced by Lawrence Bender, who produced this movie, which is part of the reason why I think they were on board with getting Sam involved. I think that's what he was doing when he was like, cool, I got this part. I have to go back to New York to make fresh now. So he was always on the side. He had, you know, he's discussed it, like major drug issues in the early 90s and he cleaned himself up. The Jungle Fever performance is like this rendition of that. But I don't think there was a lot of signs that this was inside. And then you'd think like,

Then it just launches the rest of it. Not for nothing, there's also not a ton of opportunities for black male lead actors to perform with a bunch of white actors. I mean, it's still a very, like, it's a relatively segregated time in terms of those kinds of movies. Especially late 80s. We talked about that a lot. Like, there's TV and movies. There was nothing going on. Yeah, I think it's the best performance at least of the 90s.

I don't know how to measure that, but I know that this is my favorite character in my favorite movie. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's it. So Bruce Willis, we talked about Die Hard, Die Hard 2, marries Demi Moore. He becomes an A-plus lister. He's on Moonlighting. Does the Seagram's ads, the wine cooler. Seagram's golden wine cooler. Like one of the worst 30 seconds. It's so funny. Had a couple bombs.

and was still one of the biggest stars in the world and was also smart enough to realize like, I liked Reservoir Dogs. I'm in your next movie, whatever you got. And he wanted to be the Vincent part and he didn't understand why. He was annoyed that he wasn't the Vincent part. Yeah, he didn't understand why Travolta would have a higher kind of ranking. Could that work? I don't think it works the same way. I don't,

part of the problem with Bruce Willis and why he's so good in this movie is he always kind of feels like Bruce Willis. I don't know if I'm buying him as Travolta really becomes a different person in this movie. I don't know if Bruce Willis had that in him. Do you, do you think he had it in him? Uh, I think that there's parts of him. I think that he could have done parts of Vincent, but I think he's perfect as butch. I mean, he looks like a boxer. He looks like an,

An old boxer, you know, and this is really as it's kind of a Steve McQueen part which ties back to the yeah He's also really good at because he does it in the diehard movies. He does it in his other films Like when he's flipping out in the car Yeah, and he's just like god damn it the fucking watch on the kangaroo like that's like he's like not that's not McQueen McQueen doesn't do that. Yeah the soundtrack

Movie soundtracks were having a renaissance around then anyway. And then this one, I just tell you anecdotally, like this was just an album that was all over the place for years and years after. They literally gave this to you when you got to college. Yeah. It was just...

You would just hear it. So I believe the first time this was ever done was in good the good morning Vietnam soundtrack Which was the same company mercury that put out the Pulp Fiction soundtrack style and they put not the style but they put dialogue of Robin Williams doing the DJ stuff from that movie on the soundtrack and it's this great like Motown 50s 60s collection of songs kind of like a you know subpar sub Big Chill kind of style and

And I have every line of dialogue from that movie, a movie I don't really like that much, memorized because I listened to that soundtrack all the time as a kid. And then the same company did this for this. So when you listen to this soundtrack, you know Ezekiel 2517. I know it forever. I'll never forget it because I've listened to it so many times waiting to hear fucking Never Can Tell or whatever. Jungle Boogie, Let's Stay Together, one of the best songs. It's just an amazing song. Weird that it hadn't been used in a movie in the right way. Son of a Preacher Man.

Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon, which is a remake of the Neil Diamond thing. Tarantino, one of the things I admire about the way he thinks about filmmaking is he's very kind of crazy about

what a song means to a movie. And once a song is used in a movie, it's almost like it's got to be hands-off, which I don't feel like a lot of filmmakers are just like, oh, yeah, I'll grab that one that they used in Remember the Titans. His thing is like, I am picking songs that have never been crossed over into a movie in the right way, and that's it. That is totally true. However, he also does something where he recontextualizes a piece of music like...

the Green Hornet theme in Kill Bill. And he'll be like, this works really well and I want you to have the feeling you had if you watched the Green Hornet. But this is a totally different experience that we're having with it. So like, he does do both things. Like he would, he wouldn't just, he would lift a salt, like a score from a spaghetti western and dump it in the middle of a samurai sequence and be like, wow, I didn't realize

that these things were not only connected, but the same. Yeah. And so he has like a real gift for understanding the way that those things interplay. But also he's, same thing with movies and TV. Like he's got a jukebox in his head. He knows every song. Some of the songs here, like, uh,

Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon, Mia's singing as she's dancing around the living room. So it's kind of diegetic. She obviously starts it on the reel-to-reel. Others, a lot of the surf music keys in. Not Miserlew, but some of the other surf music is used around getting high. He has a real logic to why things are where they are. He even seems to have a real understanding of let's stay together as nighttime music.

Like, you know what I mean? This is daytime music. You know, it's like, it has like, everything in it has an internal logic. Everything in the film itself has an internal logic that while you're watching it, you're like, I understand. I don't get it. It didn't, I've never seen it done this way before, but I somehow understand. What do you think he saw in Uma Thurman? A classic, almost European looking ingenue. That's funny because the thing that jumped out to me this time watching it is, um,

She's also a kid. She's young. But like a woman who could hang in this kind of environment too, which is like a very violent and like intense series of events that happens to her and around her. Like a very dark world.

And someone who's comfortable in that dark world and who seems cool or at least can perform the idea of cool around it. But it's interesting because she wasn't. Like, Uma Thurman herself has been very open about being like, I've never done drugs. I didn't want to do it because of what happens to Marcellus later. It's interesting to think about her lack of comfort with the material. She's coming off. Final analysis. Jennifer 8. Mad Dog and Glory.

Interesting movie, by the way, Mad Dog and Glove. Jennifer Eight. Even cowgirls get the blues. And then all of a sudden this and that was, she became, it seemed like she was the coolest actress in Hollywood just because of this movie. Can I ask a question about Uma or Mia? So the poster of this movie is like, I don't know, maybe the most famous movie poster of all time. It was in like every dorm room in college, almost to the point where it became a stereotype. What do you think went into the decision to only feature Mia on the poster of this movie?

I have some stuff on that in part two. Okay. Ironically.

Do you want me to answer that or no? You can answer it now. I mean, the poster is just meant to replicate the kind of pulp novels and magazines that the story is entirely inspired by. So, like, if you looked at... The movie was originally supposed to be called Black Mask when he and Avery were talking about it. And there was a magazine called Black Mask. And if you look at a lot of the covers, it'd be, like, a guy with a gun. Or it'd be, like, a femme fatale, you know, in a bedroom, you know, laying on her back or something. And it's meant to be an homage to that. And also just, like, put a sexy girl on a poster. Yeah.

is a tale as old as time in movie marketing. But to not feature Bruce Willis or John Travolta, you know, for a relative, you know, a movie you want to succeed is like a bold choice. It is. Well, you know, it's, I had some of this for part two, but they, they did. There's a savviness about how to market a movie that exists in 1994. So they're doing all these different posters. They had one that was when they thought the movies come out in October 24, 21st. They did four movie posters of Harvey Keitel, Sam Jackson, Uma, and,

And I think in Travolta.

And each one is different and has like what their name is in the movie. And that's, they marketed that too. So that you would see these posters and be like, where the fuck did that come from? Especially when eBay comes in in 1999, 2000, whenever. And all this stuff was just on eBay. It was like these weird posters that were put all over the place. But they really tried to create this cool culture around the movie that I don't want to say they invented it, but it felt like they perfected it. Yeah, it was brilliantly marketed for sure.

It's interesting too that she's on the poster because they obscure her in the film until they get to Jack Rabbit Slims. That's a big Tarantino trick because you don't see what Marsalis looks like and he doesn't look like a bitch. But you don't see what he looks like either for a couple scenes. Hey, I'm going to give you the best same day release combos ever and you guys pick which one you think is number one.

June 4th, 1982, Poltergeist and Star Trek II, Wrath of Khan, same day. July 15th, 1988, Die Hard, A Fish Called Wanda. July 12th, 1991, Point Break and Boys in the Hood. June 8th, 1984, Ghostbusters and Gremlins. June 16th, 1978, Grease and Jaws 2. What a day that was. November 25th, 1995, Casino and Toy Story.

December 15th, 1995, Jumanji and Heat. Solid day. It's a good double feature. June 25th, 1982, Blade Runner and The Thing. It's a big Sean day. Goddamn. Were you born that day? July 26th. Wow, you just missed it. July 19th, 2023, Barbie and Oppenheimer. And then October 14th, 1994, Pulp Fiction and Hoop Dreams. And Shawshank had been out, I think, for two weeks before that.

You forgot about my favorite October 5th, 2018, the day that A Star is Born and Venom were released.

I think I'd probably go Blade Runner thing. Okay. How about you, Sean? I can't pretend like I was like, Hoop Dreams is next after watching Pulp Fiction. What's the day where like a Tribe Called Quest album and a Wu-Tang album and... And like a Wilco record. And like an Outkast album all came out. There's like a famous rap day like in 1995 where like all three albums came out and everybody was like, I don't have $78 for all three of these albums. There was a day when...

There was like a Ghostface and a Wilco record came out like on the same day. Yeah, yeah. I remember that. That'd be very important. I mean, I will go to a double feature of two shit movies and have a great time. So I can't imagine this one. I think the Pulp Fiction-Hoop Dreams combo wins because of the influence of both. Hoop Dreams basically creates documentaries. It's a master piece. It took a while for me to get hip to Hoop Dreams. Probably also not playing in very many theaters. 1995 Oscars. Pulp wins for best screenplay.

It's nominated for movie director, actor, supporting actor, actress, editing. Get it off your chest, man. Best picture. Forrest Gump wins. Four Weddings and Funeral, Pulp, Quiz Show, Shawshank. So we're redoing that. Pulp gets it. I think it has to at this point. I think to this side of the table, yeah. Quiz Show. I like Quiz Show. Pulp, obviously. Best director. Zemeckis wins for Forrest Gump. Woody Allen, Bolts Over Broadway, Tarantino, Redford for Quiz Show.

And it got the Polish name for three colors. Come on, Kristoff. Work through the last name. That's probably a more egregious one because I could make a pretty strong Shawshank case against Pulp even though I think Pulp's a more creative and influential movie. But Tarantino should have won for Best Director. That's kind of outrageous looking back. Forrest Gump, great movie. Really respect it. Baby boomers triumphing over Gen X. That's what that is. Best Actor, Hanks wins.

over Morgan Freeman and Shawshank, Nigel Hawthorne, King George, Paul Newman in Nobody's Fool, weird one, and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. That's so interesting that Tim Robbins wasn't nominated. Yeah. Yeah. Really strange. Obviously, Freeman is great in that movie, but the movie is on Tim Robbins' shoulders. I mean, they both should have been nominated. Yeah, it's just unusual. Hanks or Travolta? Travolta. Agreed.

I think it's a harder part than Hanks. I enjoy watching Forrest. Hanks is amazing. I get it, but this is not even the same stratosphere to me. Do you think he got it for the premature ejaculation scene? Best actress, nobody nominated. Best supporting actor, Martin Landau wins for Ed Wood as Bela Lugosi. Sam, Chaz Palminteri, Paul Schofield, Gary Sinise, and Forrest Gump. It's a crime.

I think this is the number one biggest Oscars outrage of my lifetime, except for maybe Pacino in 1974 and Godfather II, but at least Chinatown was that year too. There's no case to be made with this category. This is outrageous. I agree with you. It's hard to take down. I like Martin Landau quite a bit. I think he's very good in Ed Wood. I think Ed Wood is an interesting movie. It's one of the last good Tim Burton movies.

there's no question that Samuel L. Jackson should have won. This is the only time he was nominated. He's never been nominated again. He's clearly not going to win an Academy Award. He's like 80 years old. How old is Sam Jackson? He's like 75. 75. 75. It's crazy. It's crazy. It's a sin. Should he have gone for Best Actor? I don't know. Like if Hopkins can win for Silence of the Lambs being in the movie 18 minutes, it's hard for me to believe Jules couldn't get a sniff here.

He's in half the movie. I mean, this is also you get into the Harvey like machinations of like how they won it. So Harvey probably thought he had that locked up for supporting actress. And then supporting actress, Uma gets nominated but loses to Diane Weast in Bullets Over Broadway. And yeah. Interesting. One of my...

favorite Oscar moments, because I remember just being like, God, this is candid, is when Quentin won screenplay and he got up on stage. He's like, this is probably the only thing I'm going to win tonight, so I'm going to do my thing. I was like, this is awesome. He already fucking knows how this is going to go. He's repeated it the other times he's won, too. He just kind of is like, I'm going to cook right here. So Ebert had it as the most influential film of the decade in 2008 Entertainment Weekly, best movie of the previous 25 years.

February 2020, New York Magazine did their best movies that lost best picture at the Oscars. It was one of the 10. Interesting list, by the way. Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, Dr. Strangelove, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Conversation, Nashville, Taxi Driver, Elephant Man, In the Bedroom, There Will Be Blood, and Roma, plus Pulp Fiction. That was the New York Magazine list. $8.5 million budget made $210 million at least, probably more. First indie ever to make $100 plus million.

Our guy Raj, who didn't just invent podcasting. He, uh, four stars, a comedy about blood guts, violence, strange sex, drugs, fixed fights, dead body disposal, leather freaks, and a wristwatch that makes dark journey down through the generations.

The screenplay by Tarantino and Roger Avery is so well written in a scruffy, fanzine way you want to rub noses in it. The noses of those zombie writers who take screenwriting classes that teach them the formula for hit films. When was this review published? Did you clock that? I thought that was the original one. It's not? I can't remember because he's written about it a few times. He put it in the Great Movies book. He saw it at Cannes.

And I remember, I could be wrong about this. I don't think I am. I think he was kind of like, this is either the greatest movie of all time or something very scary about what's going to happen in movies. And he both sides it a little bit. Did he? And it's something that he's done in the past. He did the October 14th, 94 is four stars. So that's the release. That's when the, that's like,

the theatrical release said new movie is a comedy about blood guts violence yeah it's all the stuff i had yeah so i want i'm i don't know what he wrote about it after after seeing it at can but i think it's an interesting thing because you the critical there was a critical consensus for the most part that this was a thrilling explosion of a essential new voice saying raj yeah but it did a little bit well i think some people but he's he always had a little weird thing about violence

Yeah, the morality thing is slipping in a little bit. But like a guy who's obsessed with movies and the way that movies talk to each other from a guy who's obsessed with movies and the way that they talk to each other is you'd think it'd be catnip. But there were also like some...

more hail critics who were like very very down on this yeah very down on what i represent down i think andrew siris was kind of like a little down on it john simon was down on it you know a handful of critics who were very very kind of torrent in the la times he trashed it um so that's like when saturday night live came out and it got like mixed reviews and the new york times guy didn't like it sometimes they don't know until it's too late

I think that there's still some critics. I forget the name of the critic from the Christian Science Monitor who Quentin has always really liked. And he didn't like his movies, but he still liked him as a critic. And Quentin knows everything about critics too. And...

This idea of like acknowledging the virtuosity of the work, but hating what it is and what it represents and almost like what it portends for the future. Because a lot of smart critics who'd seen every movie were like, oh, fuck, this is going to be like a thousand of these now. And just feeling like their jobs are going to get more annoying because of this movie, which I think is a fascinating outcome. Yeah. And the premier magazine, which is right here, the

They have a quote from Weinstein where he's just like, we sit through scripts and everybody's got a heist and it's eight guys and it's just like, just sifting through. Yeah. It was already happening by the time this came out. All right. That's it for part one. Somehow we're almost at two hours already. What was the over-under? What did Fando have for the over-under for the Pulp Fiction pod? I thought four total, but we'll see. And we could be headed toward four and a half. Produced by Craig Horlbeck. You will be able to hear...

Part two of this podcast, probably like 12, 15 hours after we put up part one. So stay tuned for that. And you'll be able to watch all of it on the ringer movies, YouTube channel as well. See you for part two.