What if Quentin Tarantino's revolutionary Pulp Fiction was, in actual fact, just another cheap pulp knock-off from a studio who had a bunch of has-been actors on their books with contracts to complete before being tossed aside. What if said pulp film became a Cannes and Oscar-winning classic?
As I was going through and taking the screencaps I realised I was only about an hour into the movie so I decided to do two entries devoted to Pulp Fiction, because... really, why not?
Things we can learn from this experiment. Amanda Plummer looks just as crazy and deranged in black and white as she does in colour.
Remember when Samuel L Jackson was good? I try to as often as I can, but all he keeps making is shit and it gets harder and harder with each ever-frequent franchise that he signs himself up for.
See, this is why I love QT! Just small simple things like giving Ving Rhames' character a bandaid on the back of his neck. It's not entirely necessary, but I still dig them all.
I bet that, after many movies now of constant incredibly overt references to old school cinema, many forgot this scene was in Pulp Fiction. If he were to do it now people would say he's worshiping at the alter of bad cinema (as always, thankfully) and that it "takes you out of the movie" or whatever.
What would a pulpy B-movie be without a cigarette-smoking femme fatale? Uma Thurman is just so amazing in this movie, isn't she? It's staggering that Tarantino is the only director to have been able to harness her into multiple great performances.
I could have done this entire entry based around caps from the Jack Rabbit Slims sequence, but I chose not to. The entire scene is just brilliant. Everything from the acting to the writing to the composition to the dance to... everything.
I love how this looks like it belongs to a long lost scene from Sunset Boulevard! Except maybe without the Edwyn Collins on the soundtrack.
It's weird to say, but isn't this one of Christopher Walken's least insane performances?
I just love this shot.
I don't think they had guns like that in the 1950s, but it's fun to imagine isn't it? Something like Kiss Me Deadly would look a whole lot different, wouldn't it?
Part II will arrive, hopefully, next Friday.
1 comment:
I love how this looks like it belongs to a long lost scene from Sunset Boulevard!
Actually, it's a not-so-lost scene from The Conformist, which Tarantino was homaging there, but I see your point -- that screencap does have a certain Norma Desmond vibe. I think it's the way she's holding her hands.
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