How Pulp Fiction Became a Groundbreaking Hollywood Masterpiece

THE TALES of two hitmen, a stolen briefcase, a mob boss, the boss’ wife and an aging boxer are cleverly woven together by director/co-writer Quentin Tarantino — and then told out of sequence — in the groundbreaking 1994 film “Pulp Fiction.”

John Travolta (Vincent Vega) and Samuel L. Jackson (Jules Winnfield) play the hitmen out to retrieve the purloined briefcase for mob boss Ving Rhames (Marsellus Wallace), while boxer Bruce Willis (Butch Coolidge) double-crosses Wallace by winning a fight he was paid to lose. And Travolta is called upon to take his boss’ wife, Uma Thurman (Mia), out for a night on the town.

Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer round out the key players, with familiar faces like Rosanna Arquette, Steve Buscemi, Phil LaMarr, Frank Whaley and Eric Stolz in smaller roles. Then there is Christopher Walken in a memorable scene involving a watch hidden by a POW in a very private place.

Besides making a screen appearance, Tarantino supplied several personal props. The gorgeous red 1964 Chevrolet Malibu that Vincent drives belonged to the director — and it was stolen shortly after filming concluded. Nearly 20 years later, in 2013, the car was found stripped for parts and two teenagers were busted. Tarantino also supplies Jules’ iconic wallet.

In one memorable scene, panicked Vincent plunges a needle into Mia’s heart to save her from an overdose. The “syringe scene” was made realistic by having Travolta pull the needle out of Thurman’s chest and then running the sequence in reverse.

It was the multitalented Travolta who choreographed the quirky dance between Vincent and Mia at Jack Rabbit Slim’s.

“I’d actually told Quentin about the dances I grew up with,” Travolta recalls. “There were other fun dances from that era: The Spin, The Batman, The Hitchhiker.”

Jackson’s reputation as a badass is enhanced by Jules’ biblical kill speech. But only two lines are actual Bible verse: “And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.” Tarantino devised the rest of the terrifying banter.

Besides never revealing exactly what’s inside the crucial briefcase, there’s the mystery of Wallace’s bandage. It’s never explained in the film — but it came about one morning when Rhames cut the back of his neck while shaving and applied the bandage as a cover-up. Tarantino loved the look and kept it.

And Rhames was not scared off at all by the sordid scene in which Tim Roth is one of the many Wallace is nearly raped. familiar actors in small roles The hulking actor explains, “Because of the way I look, I don’t ever get the opportunity to play many vulnerable people.”

Talk about money well spent, “Pulp Fiction” cost a mere $8 million to make, with $5 million of that going to pay the actors, and raked in a whopping $200 million at the box office.

In a Hollywood rarity, all of the primary actors agreed to the same salary — $20,000 a week and a shared percentage of the box office take. The diner set cost $150,000 … which was more than the $140,000 Travolta banked for his seven weeks of work!

The landmark film was nominated for seven Oscars, but only Tarantino and Roger Avary took home golden statuettes, winning for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.