I will never forget watching Pulp Fiction for the first time. I
was 14, and my mate from school had some "connections" which obtained
him a copy of the film on video, during the early days of dubbing movies. After
school one day, I went around to his house like usual, and we watched it in his
room. He told me his mum didn't want us watching it, so we had to be discreet.
We viewed it in secret and what I saw on screen was pretty cool. The characters were criminals essentially, but likeable ones. Before they ‘whacked’ someone, they’d talk about hamburgers, foot massage and Miracles from God! Then I got hit with a huge amount of confusion when it appeared that John Travolta's character had come back from the dead after being shot! I couldn't piece together that the film had gone back to the first story. When the film was finished I was left feeling very confused by this twist in the story and talked about it to all my school mates the following day. Many of them were just impressed that I had seen Pulp Fiction, given it was rated R18+.
We viewed it in secret and what I saw on screen was pretty cool. The characters were criminals essentially, but likeable ones. Before they ‘whacked’ someone, they’d talk about hamburgers, foot massage and Miracles from God! Then I got hit with a huge amount of confusion when it appeared that John Travolta's character had come back from the dead after being shot! I couldn't piece together that the film had gone back to the first story. When the film was finished I was left feeling very confused by this twist in the story and talked about it to all my school mates the following day. Many of them were just impressed that I had seen Pulp Fiction, given it was rated R18+.
It was a few years later until I
watched the film again and had it explained to me before-hand that the reason
JT comes back was that the film jumped from the end back to the beginning to
wrap up that story. When I watched it a few more times and figured out what was
going on in the other stories, making the connections between the characters, I
fell in love with this film.
Pulp Fictions impact is still being felt in the movie world. It
inspired a plethora of films which told their stories out of order, from
various perspectives and found creative ways to link all the characters together.
One of the early imitators of this style in the late 90’s was “Go” which many
described as a junior Pulp Fiction. I believe “Traffic” got its reins from the
legacy of Pulp Fiction, and the list of copy cats goes on and on, and I’m sure
you can name a few.
I then went on to discover all of Quentin Tarantino's other
films, but for me my favourite has always been Pulp Fiction. There's just no
other film like it, and I really admire the way it broke all the rules of
conventional cinema and brought John Travolta back into the limelight again. It
also proved that a guy who loved movies (Tarantino) could make his own movies,
please other movie lovers and silence the critics at the same time. And the
story goes that Tarantino worked in a video store before making Pulp Fiction,
apparently watching every film on the shelves whilst working there. What a
great way to build up your movie knowledge, and I think you can see the thread
in all his films; that being that they are inspired by other films and genres.
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