Screenshot of "Pulp Fiction," produced by Miramax Pulp Fiction is an example of fine cinema made accessible for everybody.The Gimp character in Pulp Fiction, clad head-to-toe in studded black leather, has no lines in the film but still manages to be memorable. Tarantino took everything he loved about the movies-drawing from French New Wave to Hong Kong crime thrillers to 70s-style grindhouse flicks-and packaged them together as a sampler platter for American audiences. But that doesn’t mean it’s garbage on the contrary, it’s quite the opposite. Pulp Fiction is the cinematic equivalent of fast food. These types of conversations would come to mirror critics’ reactions to the film, with some repelled due to the viscerality of the subject matter (TriStar supposedly turned down the screenplay for being “too demented”) while others were attracted to Pulp Fiction for exactly these reasons that the content was too sensational to pass up. In Brett’s apartment, Jules says he can’t eat meat because his girlfriend is vegetarian (“which pretty much makes me a vegetarian”), but he does value the taste of a good burger. Vince talks about the intricacies of smoking hash in Amsterdam and the novelty of drinking beer in a movie theater or at McDonald’s. Tarantino took everything he loved about the movies-drawing from French New Wave to Hong Kong crime thrillers to 70s-style grindhouse flicks-and packaged them together as a sampler platter for American audiences.Ī love of guilty pleasures also present as a prevalent theme in conversations about food. (“Goddamn, that’s a pretty fucking good milkshake!”) Later, Jules mentions that he doesn’t eat pork because he believes pigs are filthy animals (“Sewer rat may taste like pumpkin pie, but I’d never know, ‘cause I wouldn’t eat the filthy motherfuckers”), while Vince extols the merits of bacon and pork chops, and then presses him about his definition of what truly constitutes “a filthy animal.” At Jack Rabbit Slim’s, Mia Wallace orders a $5 milkshake ($8.66 in 2019) to Vince's chagrin, but after tasting it, he changes his mind about its value. In one scene, Quentin Tarantino himself makes a cameo as Jimmie, who recommends investing in good quality coffee for brewing at home with his wife, even though Jules and Vince “would’ve been satisfied with some freeze-dried Taster’s Choice” as they stand in Jimmie’s kitchen, unhappy and covered in blood. Several times throughout the film, one character will fail to appreciate the full complexity of a particular food item perceived to be appalling or grimy, until another character enlightens them about how great it actually is. Similar types of debates about Pulp Fiction-namely, whether the movie serves as substance or slop-symbolically play out on-screen in the form of conversations about food. Cheeseburgers, milkshakes, bacon pancakes, and other assorted diner favorites are cheap and quickly consumed, the culinary equivalent of the exact type of trashy paperbacks after which Pulp Fiction is named. But for all the movie’s now-iconic symbolism, there’s one theme that usually goes overlooked: that all the food eaten or mentioned in Pulp Fiction-from the bowl of Fruit Brute cereal that Vince’s dealer Lance (Eric Stoltz) is having for dinner to the frosted cinnamon Pop-Tarts that Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis) sticks in the toaster while retrieving his prized watch-is conventionally seen as garbage. This scene kicks off what is arguably Quentin Tarantino’s greatest film, which revels in drugs, gore, and yes, even cheeseburgers. “ got the metric system, they wouldn’t know what the fuck a ‘Quarter-Pounder’ is,” Vincent Vega (John Travolta) explains to Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Thanks to Pulp Fiction, released 25 years ago this week, we all do: a Royale with Cheese. Do you know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in Paris?
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