The rise and slight dip of a rock n' roll director
By Jerry Saravia
When Pulp Fiction was released in the fall of 1994, it pointed to a renaissance that has been unequaled since. "Pulp Fiction" rewrote the rules of the crime genre, the thriller genre and film noir. An independent production from Miramax that cost 10 million to make, it resurrected the fading careers of Bruce Willis and John Travolta, showing them to be truly fine actors, if they were ever given half the chance. It reignited the malice and fury of Samuel L. Jackson, the actor who fueled the rage of Menace II Society, Jungle Fever and who was often cast in drivel like Amos and Andrew and National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon I. As for "Pulp's" conceit, it had a narrative that jumped from the normal linear lines of time and space but not for show - the fractured timeline was necessary to show the redemptive end of one character, the hit-man Jules (Samuel L. Jackson). More importantly, "Pulp" established the talents of the writer-director Quentin Tarantino to the front lines of the mainstream, already armed with his gory directorial debut Reservoir Dogs and the screenplays to True Romance and Natural Born Killers (the latter was completely rewritten by Oliver Stone). "Pulp Fiction" and the director became phenomenal sensations to the world of cinema, even lending the film the prized Golden Palm award at Cannes and a Best Original Screenplay award at the Oscars.
When a film and a director become phenomenons the world over, detractors swing in full force. Tarantino is only partly to blame for the negative buzz. The film-loving, big-chinned geek appeared in cameos for films like Somebody to Love, Destiny Turns on the Radio, Sleep With Me, Little Nicky, Desperado, etc. He had also been on TV talk shows and sitcoms. Occasionally, Tarantino would come in and add flashes of pop-culture on something like Crimson Tide.
As for directing, he did chores on an E.R. episode, which ironically involved a sliced-off ear. In December 1995, Tarantino finally returned to direct for the big screen'; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;">big screen when he helmed one of the episodes of Four Rooms, an anthology of stories taking place in a hotel room with Tim Roth as its bellboy. The last segment is directed by Tarantino and it involves movie producers and actors engaged in a game over a lighter and a finger. But the story didn't have much surprise or pizazz - it was merely an echo of what Q.T. could do. As it rolled to an unexpected denouement, the whole affair was about as fun as a boozy late-night party.
Spring of 1996 brought From Dusk Till Dawn, a road movie that transforms into a vampire movie, starring Tarantino and George Clooney as the Seth brothers who rob and kill at banks and convenience stores. The screenplay was by Tarantino but the directing reins were handed to Robert Rodriguez. After that pop carnival of a movie, there was Tarantino's much-needed return to a bigger picture, directing the Elmore Leonard novel Rum Punch which was retitled Jackie Brown. Pam Grier was cast in the title role as the airline stewardess, Jackie. Robert Forster was cast as the bail bondsman, Max Cherry, who forges a relationship with Jackie to screw an arms dealer, Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson), out of a half million dollars. The film was met with mixed reviews, mostly centering on the fact that it was an uninspired Tarantino flick. I found that the dialogue was the real star, and it was expertly delivered by a game cast. What followed was Tarantino's acting debut on Broadway in Wait Until Dark. And then he disappeared for almost six years until he delivered his socko, over-the-top, bloody Kill Bill volumes with Uma Thurman at her kinetic best as an avenging former assassin who wants, quite simply, to kill Bill (David Carradine), her boss.
Since "Pulp," Tarantino has been unable to get away from his own Citizen Kane of neo-noir. Innumerable young directors started to make their own pulp fiction stories. They thought the movie glorified violence in such a way that the violence was the subject. Those very same filmmakers forgot that Tarantino infused humanity into his characters, even if they were shallowly conceived. He also imbued his stories with a precariously clever balance between comedy and violence, to the point that you were not aware if you should laugh or cringe.
After "Pulp Fiction," we were littered with dreck like Things To Do in Denver When You're Dead, Truth or Consequences, N.M., Thursday, Suicide Kings, and even a spoof called Plump Fiction, the latter being the latest example of how you can't spoof a spoof. The trademark violent scenes in most of these films would usually feature an asynchronous song playing in the background, as typified by Tarantino's own "Reservoir Dogs" where Michael Madsen's Mr. Blonde slices a cop's ear off to the tune of Stealer Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle With You." An example of songs used as counterpoint to the bloody violence would be "Truth or Consequences, N.M.," where Martin Sheen's big boss character severs a victim's finger to the tune of Lesley Gore's "It's My Party." "Thursday" has no asynchronous songs I can recall but the emphasis is on cold-blooded murders, including one where a woman (Paulina Porizkova) is shot while raping the main antihero! Even Oliver Stone's deliriously cartoonish U-Turn had more bloodshed than Stone's own Platoon.
Granted many of these filmmakers defended their own films, indicating they thought of their stories long before they ever heard of Tarantino. But Tarantino just happened to come along and set a new standard for language and interwoven stories - you couldn't look away from dialogue in general and not say that it lacked the Tarantino feel. Hell, even David Mamet had to compete with Tarantino's rapid-fire dialogue, and Mamet used to be the king of poetic, fast-paced, staccato foul language (see Glengarry Glen Ross as an example, released in tandem with "Reservoir Dogs").
Sometimes a brief scene in a movie post-"Pulp" alluded to Tarantino in some way, no matter how unintentional. For example, Sidney Lumet's Night Falls on Manhattan has an opening scene where two cops discuss the virtues of decaf coffee over caffeinated. Ang Lee's The Ice Storm has a brief opening moment where the merits of Marvel Comic Fantastic Four are discussed, mostly in familial terms (a scene not to be found in Rick Moody's novel). Amateur, the most sedate crime thriller I've ever seen, even from the typically sedate director Hal Hartley, has scenes where the hit men discuss the subject of cell phones'; return true;" onmouseout="window.status=''; return true;">cell phones. Even Donnie Brasco has a bar sequence where Lincolns and Cadillacs are discussed - probably no accident that "Reservoir Dogs" own Michael Madsen is seen at the same table. And a more obvious example is the Scream trilogy, which began in 1996, and which poked gruesome fun at slasher films and had the characters behave as encyclopedic fanatics of horror movies. Had it not been for Tarantino, "Scream" might never have happened, pure and simple. The difference is that "Scream" did not rewrite the rules of horror movies, it just brought back the intensity and a deep level of irony.
Vincent Vega: "You know what they call a quarter pound of cheese in Paris?"
For better or worse, "Pulp Fiction" signalled the growing amorality of the times. I recall a 1993 issue of Newsweek with a front cover that read "No Shame." Basically, the article discussed the fact that pubescent kids and teenagers (and adults, to some degree) were no longer the scapegoats of their own actions, criminal or otherwise. You had to find fault with anyone but the kids - parents were often considered the culprit since they no longer paid attention and were fed up. Thus, the under-18 crowd could get away with anything. Morality in itself was no longer an issue. In a strange way, "Pulp" focused on the lack of morals in a universe guided by moral principles ("Natural Born Killers" is another example, especially when 20-year-olds and under blamed the movie for their homicidial actions). Even though most of the characters in "Pulp" pay for their actions and some are even forgiven - the innate feeling is that one can get away with anything, as long as they focus on a solution as a getaway. In other words, no consequences and no sense of guilt (the antithesis to Martin Scorsese's own moralistic work). For example, the scene where Jules and Vincent escape death when a college-age kid (Alexis Arquette) attempts to shoot them is followed by a "theological discussion" on the matter. Jules and Vincent should be dead. Jules sees this as a sign from God whereas Vincent shrugs it off and compares the incident to an episode from Cops. This is followed by a further discussion in a car ride, along with their informant, Marvin (Phil LaMarr), as Jules persists with the notion they had been saved. This leads to Jules' final decision to quit the life of a hit man. When Vincent asks Marvin for his opinion, aiming his gun in Marvin's direction, the gun fires. It was accidental yet Marvin is dead, and the window in the backseat is covered with blood. They argue and bicker over what to do. Jules decides to take Marvin's dead body to his friend Jimmie (Quentin Tarantino).
Now, at the first screening I attended of "Pulp," this singular moment was met with howls of laughter. It is a funny scene in a blackly comical way, but let's not forget the point Tarantino is making. Jules and Vincent can escape death and point to salvation as justification, yet an innocent man is accidentally shot by a bullet to the brain and no one thinks that this man had been saved. His life was taken away and God did not "get involved." Amazingly, Jules and Vincent never mention the irony of Marvin's death - it is forgotten and it results in guiltless chatter about other subjects such as "Green Acres" and English Bob (a character from Eastwood's Unforgiven) at a local diner. Jules' main concern is his own welfare, focusing on quitting the life and walking the earth like "Caine in Kung-Fu." Vincent objects to all this, and we know that his objection to God's supposed intervention results in his own death by Bruce Willis's Butch character. If Vincent followed suit and quit the life, he might still be alive. It is an escapable assumption to make of Vincent's future since the film unfolds in a non-linear narrative. Vincent dies midway through the film, then miraculously comes back in the third act.
"Pulp Fiction" remains, oddly, a far more spiritual journey than 1994's own Forrest Gump, which won a multitude of awards including Best Picture. Most of my friends walked out of "Pulp" before getting near the climactic subplot of Jules's redemption, accusing the film of being too violent and unredemptive. If they only stayed through the closing credits. As for more proof of the film's spiritual and moral concerns, Jules is confronted by amateur robbers in the diner - Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer). Jules is asked by Pumpkin to give up his briefcase and wallet. But Jules disarms Pumpkin and gives him his wallet as collateral for Pumpkin's life. Instead of a random shoot-out sequence, the scene plays with threatening dialogue and pop-culture references to deliver the epitome of Jules's turning point - he has been saved and chooses to abolish Biblical rants and executions in favor of saving someone else. The irony of the film (the 1990's being the Age of Irony) was that Jules and Vincent became heroes - they saved the diner's customers yet Pumpkin and Honey Bunny still stole all the customers' money and valuables.
Paul Schrader, the writer of The Last Temptation of Christ, Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, said in a 1996 New York article that he was surprised Tarantino considered "Taxi Driver" one of his favorite films. The Taxi Driver himself, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro), was the existential antihero, the one who felt guilt over his sinful actions, the one who abhorred the Madonna whore, and so on. Tarantino's films created the ironic antihero, the one who simply doesn't care. The attitude is, "So what?" or "Whatever."
Quentin Tarantino has been accused of stealing scenes from his favorite films and using them as a template for his own scripts. Most notably is Quentin's cribbing of scenes from Ringo Lam's City on Fire, a mediocre and sporadically exciting crime picture with Chow Yun-Fat as an undercover cop who tries to infiltrate a ring of thieves. Some scenes are obviously lifted from here and used in "Reservoir Dogs," especially the final fifteen minutes where Yun-Fat's cop suffers from a gunshot wound and the leader of the pack knows he is the snitch. They hide in a decrepit warehouse where three characters point guns at each other's faces. The difference is that "City on Fire" is exclusively about the cop, his own haphazard attempts to marry his bitter girlfriend, as well as his criminal activity involving the exporting of guns. What "City on Fire" doesn't do is show the blazing personalities of its ring of thieves nor does it contain any pop-culture references. "Reservoir Dogs" benefits from superior direction and tighter editing, not to mention time-twisting moments and a strange bathroom sequence imagined by its own cop character (played by Tim Roth). "Dogs" has imagination and style and feels alive. "City on Fire" is merely a cursory footnote but worthwile for those who want to speculate and discuss Quentin's influences.
Beatrix Kiddo: "It's mercy, compassion and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality."
As for Quentin's "Kill Bill" epics, the first volume is designed as an homage to the kung-fu, martial-arts epics that starred Bruce Lee, Sonny Chiba and many others. In fact, the opening features the old Shaw Brothers logo (for those who watched these movies after school, you'll feel a certain giddiness when you see that logo). The focus in the first "Kill Bill" volume is clearly the violence, as we witness Uma Thurman's assassin seeking bloodthirsty revenge on those who tried to kill her (it is no accident that the movie opens with the Klingon phrase, "Revenge is a dish best served cold.") Thurman carries a powerful steel blade and cuts her way through the screen with intense ferocity. We see gallons of blood (a staple of kung-fu epics) when male and female victims are impaled, dismembered, punched and kicked into oblivion. Whereas Tarantino would often show much less blood, the movie becomes an endless blood-splattered trip through excess - of course, he still knows when to cut away when it feels right. It is easily Quentin's most violent film yet, but don't be easily fooled - he borrows heavily from everywhere. Still, like Quentin said in the "Kill Bill" DVD interview, he aimed to pay homage to movies he grew up with, just like Spielberg and Lucas did with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Homage it certainly is, but he also brings a high level of intensity that makes for a truly entertaining viewing.
The second volume follows the calmer, gentler tone of "Jackie Brown," the latter being one of the few recent movies to focus exclusively on dialogue. "Kill Bill Vol. 2" opens with a hysterical homage to black-and-white noir where our deadly assassin (Uma Thurman) describes her dying need for bloody satisfaction - in two words, kill Bill. As it turns out, the movie opts to lengthen small moments into whole sequences with Tarantino stretching our own ADD attitude to unique heights. One example is the opening sequence where the killer pimp/big boss Bill (David Carradine) surprises bride-clad Thurman at the wedding chapel. If you have seen the first volume, you'll recall what happens at that chapel, and the intensity builds and builds as we wait for the climactic moment. Even moments between Michael Madsen's Budd Sidewinder, Bill's brother, and eyepatch-wearing Elle Driver (played by Daryl Hannah) also stretch time and space - you'll feel you are watching a Michelangelo Antonioni film. What Tarantino accomplishes this time is to pay more attention to character behavior, languishing in each character's own trials and tribulations. And nothing beats Uma's underground coffin sequence (no doubt inspired by the Dutch cult thriller The Vanishing) - it is as powerful as Jesus's crucifixion in The Passion of the Christ. "Kill Bill Vol. 2" is like an extended update of the spaghetti western with moments of punctuated violence crossed with Sam Raimi's occasional comical overtones.
As for my own personal taste, "Pulp Fiction" is definitely Tarantino's finest work, a crime epic that rewrote the rules and yet is still, to this day, misunderstood in its intentions and its ironic pleasures. As Roger Ebert once said, "it is a comedy masquerading as hard-boiled." Some may see it as nothing more than a comic-book movie masquerading as noir. The difference between Tarantino and others of his ilk is that the Q cares about his characters and happens to inject them in stories revolving around undesirable, unsavory people without an ounce of sentimentality. Tarantino may have streaks of wickedness and cruelty in his work, but it is his humanity and compassion that propels his narratives to unusually delirious, unexpected heights. Name one other recent movie where you really cared about an assassin or a hit man. That is why Tarantino is the man.
MARTIN SCORSESE's body of work
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Who the HECK is FIGARO WEAVER?
ROGER EBERT: OUR BELOVED CRITIC