Pulp Fiction, Nearly Thirty Years Later

Pulp Fiction [PF] came out almost 30 years ago. If the audience or critics ranked their favorites of the 90s, I bet it would come out on top. It's hard to argue with Titanic or Silence of the Lambs--popular films in their time that people continue to talk about--but PF should still rank the highest. 

 

This might surprise some, for reasons I'll discuss below, but I still think it'd be at or near #1. My favorites of the 90s weren't nearly as big. Time Out and Rotten Tomatoes rank it #1. Probably others. (A bunch of other movies I should rewatch.)

I don't recall my first viewing or if there were multiple viewings, but my latest viewing differed from the first. My first viewing loved everything. There was a coolness about it. The title, the characters and their blithe approach to murder, the way the film repurposed old things and made them feel new and refreshing, the memorable dialogue, the funky plot. Memory told me this was one of the greats.

I rewatched it to see what made it tick, and was surprised. The plot, while beautifully intricate, is rather thin. It's almost like the movie was composed of Tarantino's favorite outtakes (i.e. "Kill your darlings") from every script he'd ever written. Memorable lines, albeit asides. They don't actually advance a plot. Rather, these are show pieces. Dialogue that actors would love to speak. If I suggest Tarrantino is show-boating, this isn't bad-mouthing. It works.

Crazier still is how he brings in five decades of film and music together in one work. I suspect this aspect would be lost on younger generations. They'd probably only see the plot unless they did some deep-diving into movie and music history.

The cussing, when I'd first watched it, felt normal after I'd worked on a ship that had deployed a similar barrage. Since PF, everybody and their dog has drowned the media in cussing so that it's lost its original power. Some find a barrage hilarious, but to me, it's like saying, "Nissan that Nissan guy!" Okay, so what? But Tarrantino makes the swear words hilarious, spins straw into gold-plated art.

The title, while cool, detracts. Crime Stories might be more accurate but less compelling. Only Bruce Willis's story feels pulpy. 

 

One description called it a gang story. Follow the characters. This isn't a gang story--even if it's a pervasive element--at least it's a far cry from being a typical gang story.

The movie uses these definitions, for pulp/fiction:

1. soft, moist, shapeless mass or matter.

2. A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper.

Is this a self-critique? Or maybe a modus operandi? "rough, unfinished" and "lurid" and "shapeless"? Apart from "lurid," which is accurate, only in a nonliteral sense does the title sort of work. Shapeless, sort of--you could ask a number of scenes why they were included--but some of it is beautifully sculpted, and it has finish (some of it, pyrotechnically so) if a little rough in places. Certainly it is not your usual blockbuster. Maybe this is what they had to do to justify the film to the producers (or critics) who might have complained.

Off topic: the movie made 25 times its original investment, the low operating cost is somewhat surprising considering the names that worked on the film.

Minor spoilers:

I misremembered the plot. I thought it was more of a Shakespearean tragedy where nearly everyone died in the end. Instead it ends with the character who has the most compelling story: Samuel L. Jackson's. The narrative switches around and really, few of them land. Just Jackson followed by Willis but his story, while it takes us on some wild loops, isn't as surprising. Jackson's transformation is wildly surprising and feels so authentic. He reframes his whole existence in a line (rewritten from the original, btw)--plus, his newfound change is immediately put to the test. Frankly, I don't recall that at all. Travolta's character story only works in light of Jackson's as a sort of foil.

Could a writer replicate this work as a novel? I don't think so although, no doubt, many have tried.

Review: Dead at Take-Off by Lester Dent

Dead at the Take-Off 

by Lester Dent 

MysteriousPress.com/Open Road 

Mystery & Thrillers

Lester Dent visits us from the pulp-hero past. He's famous for penning Doc Savage and distilling the pulp formula.

The story dizzingly launches us into Chance Molloy's life who is recognized at the airport, but he immediately denies who he is, to the puzzlement of the man who recognize him. [Read the mesmerizing opening at the end of this post.]

Molloy is traveling as Rand and plans to manipulate Janet Lord by having a man steal her purse and he pretends to beat the man up and rescue her purse. He hopes to get in her confidence so he could investigate her relative, a senator, who shafted Molloy in his airplane business. Molloy suspects something illegal had occurred. Hence, the disguise and investigation.

Meanwhile, Lord recognizes something is fishy about Molloy, but she is drugged by a doctor who is not a doctor, and Molloy's old flame is aboard and could blow Molloy's secret identity. Her love, meanwhile, has the means to expose Molloy in his hands....

Dent is a barrel full of pulpy monkeys, but literary snobs need not waste their time. It might knead their brains into pulp:

"Intensely, honestly, stewardess Mary Rounds hoped that she would like Janet Lord. She believed she would. On the basis, the very thin basis, of observing Miss Lord while she was unconscious, Mary had formed a vague but delicious  liking for Janet, and she was glad she had. Chance Molloy now meant more, in a solidly Gibraltar-like sense, to Mary than she had imagined he would. She was satisfied with this." 

Still, the energy is vibrant string, a deep base thrumming new revelations every chapter. The plot may be overly complex yet possesses a certain joy. The ending is the kind you'd often find in the old black-and-white movies. If you pine for stories like those of yore, you could do worse than read a Lester Dent slam-bang novel.

The opening shows the master pulp writer at the height of his powers (the bastard gets two hooks for one punch):

HE SWUNG HIS HEAD away, tried to pass on. But the man named Fertig saw him and thrust out an enthusiastic hand. "Hello, Mr. Molloy!" Fertig cried. "How are you, Mr. Molloy? ... God-amighty, this is a nice surprise, Mr. Molloy!" 

He felt trapped. He could not ignore Fertig, so he halted, but his attitude made it plain that he had only paused on his way into the terminal. He realized with relief that he barely knew Fertig. He did not so much as know Fertig's other name; therefore, Fertig must scarcely know him. So he gazed at Fertig tolerantly, blankly, without recognition, and waited. And presently Fertig's face became redder than the heat in the street had already made it. "Aren't you Mr. Molloy?" Fertig asked. 

"No," he lied. 

He let his tolerant expression become slightly smiling. But he did not speak again, avoiding the chance that Fertig might become sure of his voice. The heat pressed against him; it reflected up from the sidewalk and hurt his eyes, and it was inside his crisp, medium-gray, tropical-worsted suit. Suddenly he remembered where he had met Fertig, at an executive session where Fertig had presented some dull sketches for the new BETA terminal in Atlanta. Fertig, an architect, had impressed him at the time as being stodgy and without imagination, and he recalled disliking Fertig, resenting the man's callow glad-handing and obvious salesmanship; even Roy Cillinger, vice-president in charge of maintenance, who had no imagination beyond keeping air liners flying, had thought Fertig's ideas stupid, and they had dismissed Fertig as being quite inadequate, then had forgotten about it. Now he felt no qualms at having to stare Fertig down. 

"Aren't you Mr. Molloy?" 

He shook his head. 

"That's funny ... I'd have sworn ..." Fertig was smoking a fat, mink-colored cigar, and he took it from his mouth with a quick grab, leaving a damp flake of tobacco clinging to his moist, full lower lip. "I guess I made a mistake." 

He shrugged. 

"Sorry," Fertig said. 

The taxi driver came across the sidewalk with Molloy's bag. Fertig crowded into the revolving door ahead of the taxi driver and simultaneously a colored porter, wearing gray trousers piped in maroon and a white shirt, hastened for the bag, so that for a moment all three—Fertig, cabby, and porter—seemed to chase each other around in the revolving door, while the door made tired breathing and flapping sounds and emitted gasps of chilly, conditioned air from within. 

He waited. He was shaken. His plans, laid with such meticulous care, now seemed menaced at the very beginning.