Pulp Fiction

0:00:03.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Welcome to Pop & Locke. I’m Natalie Dowzicky.

0:00:05.3 Landry Ayres: And I’m Landry Ayres. Joining us to discuss Tarantino’s non-​linear, uncategorizeable black comedy, neon war, gangland camp extravaganza are Director of Health Policy studies at the Cato Institute, Michael Cannon.

0:00:22.4 Michael Cannon: How are you doing Landry?

0:00:23.7 Landry Ayres: As well Culture Editor at The Bulwark, Washington Post contributing columnist and co-​host of Across the Movie Aisle, Sonny Bunch.

0:00:32.6 Sonny Bunch: Hello.

0:00:34.0 Natalie Dowzicky: Alright, so fans of this 1994 classic love to point out that it basically resurrected John Travolta’s acting career, but another common reaction to the film that many people walked away with, a lot of people said that they didn’t understand the point or the purpose of the movie, why do we think that is?

0:00:56.1 Michael Cannon: I think there are a lot of reasons. People get distracted by the extreme violence in this movie. They wondered why are these gangsters engaging in such pedestrian but also humorous banter. The narrative was non-​linear or it didn’t unfold. The scenes didn’t unfold in chronological order, and so a lot of viewers were probably thrown by that. “Wait this happened before that, and why is this the final scene of the movie, it’s not the last thing that happened in the lives of these characters over this time span.” I think there were a lot of really neat things that Tarantino did that I think helped drive the main theme of the film, but were not the sort of things that people were used to seeing when they go to the movie theater, and so a lot of those things threw them.

0:01:57.2 Sonny Bunch: What’s interesting about this is that Tarantino, through Samuel L. Jackson’s character, actually explains the point of the movie though, which is, there is literally a sermon, literally a biblical sermon at the end of the speech where he talks about being the shepherd of man and etcetera, etcetera. And if you’re not paying attention to the film, if you are confused as to why John Travolta is killed earlier and now he’s back in the movie at the end, you kind of don’t understand the point, which is that he continued being a bad man and doing bad things and he got murdered, he got straight up killed. It’s not… Again, I don’t think that’s the point of the movie. I don’t think that is the… I don’t think Quentin Tarantino was making a message film. This is not a movie that is necessarily trying to teach people the right way to live, but it is like a fairly obvious literal, moral parable. Again, it’s not subtle, it’s literally in the language of the Bible. It’s like Biblical, it’s like old testament stuff. So I don’t know. The reaction to this film has always been very weirdly frustrating to me because people don’t… People just get hung up on the… Either the language or the violence, not much sex in this one, but… The drug use, etcetera. And the idea that it’s glorifying any of this stuff is kind of crazy.

0:03:30.8 Landry Ayres: But what does it do then? Is it adding to the genre? Is it sort of trying to amplify a certain idea? ‘Cause it is obviously is a stylized use of violence and drugs, not quite as much as some of Tarantino’s later work that becomes even more stylized. You’ve got Kill Bill and everything. But you can see sort of where it came from with Pulp Fiction in a lot of ways. What does the use of violence and how it is done do for the rest of the movie? ‘Cause obviously, I think it was Bob Dole in 1995 was… There were a lot of… I think he cited Natural Born Killers and another Tarantino film as being exemplifying this turn towards gratuitous violence that was being glorified and nonsense like this. But he also cited Pulp Fiction as, I think, glorifying heroin use, and one of the studios that had this before Miramax completely funded it. And it was actually super hesitant about funding this movie because of the way that it showed like a compassionate almost angle or at least a full angle of someone that was using heroin. So what do those examples do for the movie that those people were missing?

0:04:54.3 Michael Cannon: Well, so Bob Dole had a problem with all of the films you mentioned, but he said that True Lies was okay. Despite its violence and borderline racism, it was okay because Arnold Schwarzenegger gave to Republican candidates and the people involved in those other films didn’t. I gotta go ahead and disagree with Sonny here. Well, I do that with some trepidation because people pay Sonny for his views about films, and I don’t have that.

[laughter]

0:05:25.3 Michael Cannon: People don’t pay me for that, but I gotta disagree. I think this is a message film, and I think all of the violence and the drug use and even some things that seem obscure and made people wonder why is that even in the film, they all serve what I think is the message of the film which is a message of “How do you break the cycle of violence?” And the sermon is part of that. And one thing I love about the sermon in the diner scene is that like many biblical interpretations it’s so open to interpretation, it could go either way. Jules uses the same biblical passage at the beginning of the film to be a vicious killer that he uses at the end to try real hard to be the shepherd and to break the cycle of violence. And if you look at it through that lens, that what Tarantino is trying to accomplish is to show people how on a personal level, or show them what is necessary on a personal level to de-​escalate conflict, to break the cycle of violence. Then you see all of these elements of the film lining up to serve that goal. And that includes all the horrible and what seems to be gratuitous violence, at least vicious violence that we see, such as the sermon, the speech that Jules gives when he and Vincent Vega are retrieving Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase from the guys who stole it.

0:07:03.1 Michael Cannon: When you think about it, he didn’t really need to be so cruel about it and go through the motions of giving this lecture, because he was going to kill three of these four guys anyway. But he did that to establish the character of these two individuals that they really were vicious killers to heighten the drama and the change of heart that one of them would have after a near death experience. And so even… And the violence that we see in the Butch and Marsellus storyline also serves a similar function because it shows just how dramatic a change of heart you can effect when you put yourself at risk to help an enemy. And that is… That’s what happened in the… In both the Jules storyline and the Butch and Marsellus storyline. So I see all of these elements and all of the really horrible violence in this movie as serving a very optimistic and positive message that Tarantino wanted to convey.

0:08:24.4 Sonny Bunch: Sure. I don’t even really disagree with that. I do think that that is at least in part the point of the story. I just mean, it’s not a message movie in the sense of it’s not a God is dead type thing. I hesitate to call anything a message movie. But it should be… We should also note that Tarantino rewrote that Bible passage, it is him… It is like rewriting the end of World War II or rewriting the 1969 Hollywood. He is very fond of remaking things into his own preferred image. Yeah. Again, I think that the violence in this movie is entertaining, and that is why it is there as much as anything else. It’s like anything else that Tarantino does. He does it because it is more or less entertaining, and that’s fine. That’s fine. Also True Lies is good, Michael Cannon. True Lies is a good movie about killing bad people, and all the best movies are about killing bad people. So.

[chuckle]

0:09:33.1 Michael Cannon: True Lies is great. It’s about family and relationships.

0:09:37.2 Sonny Bunch: It’s…

0:09:38.2 Michael Cannon: I too love True Lies. And turmoil in the underworld, I think was the best part of that film.

[music]

0:09:46.4 Landry Ayres: Why do we never find out what’s in the glowing suitcase or briefcase rather? What’s the purpose of that? Why do we not find out what it is?

0:09:55.6 Natalie Dowzicky: This has bothered me for so long. [chuckle]

0:09:58.2 Landry Ayres: I have heard a lot of explanation. I’m always curious what people think. Uma Thurman’s character asks if it’s Beatles or Elvis, this is my, yeah, this is one of mine. What do you think was in the suitcase? Why do we not find out?

0:10:10.5 Michael Cannon: Because as soon as… We don’t find out, because as soon as Ross and Rachel kiss, then we’re not as interested in their relationship anymore. I mean, it’s the mystery is why we’re still talking about the briefcase, it drives interest. And I think we all know without them saying what is in the briefcase it’s Marsellus Wallace’s soul or some such thing, which was taken out of the back of his head by Satan himself or something like that, which is why Marsellus has that band-​aid back there in his first scene.

0:10:44.8 Sonny Bunch: Well, this is… It’s a pre-​Reddit Reddit movie Pulp Fiction is because it has a lot of little, it has like a lot of little things that you can look into. I mean the briefcase what’s the glowing thing in the briefcase is the big one, of course. But I saw somebody talking about… The couch did as a fan theory that like… That Bruce Willis’s boxer character is the one who keyed John Travolta’s car. Remember, there’s like… He’s talking about how he’d just got his car out of storage. And I can’t believe that it’s on the street for 30 minutes and somebody keys it. I wish I could have caught the guy who did it, I just would have… But, and I was kinda like, “Oh, come on, that’s silly, that’s a silly fan theory, fan theories are dumb”. And then Tarantino himself in an interview, like during Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, he was like, “No, that’s what… That is what I intended for people to take away from it”. That it was in fact Butch keying the car.

0:11:42.7 Sonny Bunch: Which is… Again, it’s interesting. It’s like these little things that kind of pop up throughout. And because he has structured the film in the way he has in this sort of non-​linear recursive almost format. You can get away with things like that that are both clever and also like I guess in hindsight kind of obvious, that you couldn’t necessarily do if it was just a straightforward boom, boom, boom. Here’s the thing.

0:12:11.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah. I think there’s a lot of holes, but they don’t necessarily disrupt the movie, if that makes sense. Like, I think it’s almost like it does lip service to the fans that there can be all these Reddit pages of like people going back and forth. And like, that was the intention that there were so many holes that you could have these discussions that go on forever. Like 20 years later, we’re still talking about what’s glowing in the suitcase.

0:12:35.2 Sonny Bunch: Yeah. But the briefcase is just a MacGuffin. All MacGuffins are good.

0:12:38.6 Michael Cannon: Right.

0:12:39.4 Sonny Bunch: I mean, it just is the thing that gets the story started.

0:12:42.3 Michael Cannon: And but it was also a really powerful thing because not only did Vincent Vega pause when he opened it and say, “We’re happy.” And so it had an effect on him, but when Jules opens it in front of Pumpkin or Ringo as Jules calls him, it has almost a transformative effect on him. He says, “Is that what I think it is?” And he says, “It’s beautiful.” He almost begins to cry, which is enough, I think, example of Tarantino’s genius in putting together this film, because he shows that even one of the guys that… One of the characters, one of the most vicious characters who does not get on the road to redemption, like Butch and Jules do, Marsellus Wallace, one of the most vicious characters, ’cause he’s the one throwing Johnny Rocky Horror out the window, he’s the one on whose behalf, Jules and Vince are doing all these horrible things, even he has some good in him. And I think that’s one thing, one purpose that the briefcase serves, it shows there is some good and some beauty even in this very evil person. And we do see another glimpse of that, when he lets Butch go. When Butch puts himself help at risk to save Marsellus and then Marsellus lets Butch go so I’m…

0:14:10.5 Sonny Bunch: Bans him from Los Angeles. His Los Angeles privileges are revoked.

[laughter]

0:14:14.3 Michael Cannon: That’s right, that’s right. But all of this stuff that happens between Bruce… Butch and Marsellus is pretty horrible. And when you think about it, yes, Marsellus coerced Butch into throwing a fight and then he can’t really take that Butch double-​crossed him, and he never even really lied to him, but Marsellus was understandably angry over that, and then he ran over Marsellus with his car and then drew Marsellus into this shop and then beat the crap out of him, and then left Marsellus that is incredibly… Which caused Marsellus to have incredibly horrible traumatic things happen to him. And so yeah, when Butch saves him, he does, Marsellus does say your LA privileges are revoked. He does that a little bit just to save face among… I think, my theory is he does that to save face among his gangster peers, but you almost wanna say that that’s generous, given all the things that Butch has done to Marsellus at this point.

0:15:25.9 Natalie Dowzicky: It’s also like one of those films that have so many characters and they’re… Because of the nature of the non-​linear progression of the film, it’s so unclear like who’s supposed to be likeable in the movie. So I mean that in a way that… Stupid movies make it very obvious like “This is the bad person A, and you’re supposed to like this person, and then the hero goes after the bad person.” It was very unclear to me, it was like, who was supposed to be likeable in the film.

0:15:54.0 Sonny Bunch: Well, everybody.

0:15:54.5 Natalie Dowzicky: I don’t mean that in a negative way, but like…

0:15:57.1 Sonny Bunch: But everybody in this movie is likeable though.

0:16:00.1 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah.

0:16:00.4 Sonny Bunch: That’s actually the genius of the script, it’s that there is no villain really except for like Zed.

0:16:04.9 Natalie Dowzicky: Right.

0:16:05.6 Sonny Bunch: And his band of backwards… LA backwards rapists. And I don’t know, I don’t know exactly how that works.

0:16:13.1 Landry Ayres: Yeah, like deliverance in what…

0:16:14.7 Sonny Bunch: Deliverance by way of [0:16:16.0] ____, or I don’t know.

0:16:19.4 Landry Ayres: Yeah. [laughter]

0:16:21.4 Sonny Bunch: But everybody in this movie is basically somebody who you could like… Who you at least understand and appreciate the motivations of and kind of enjoy being around, even Honey Bunny and Ringo are kind of amusing in their deranged sort of way.

0:16:41.6 Natalie Dowzicky: So if you had to get dinner with one character from this film, [chuckle] who would it be?

0:16:47.1 Michael Cannon: Oh, Jules, hands down. Jules, after his transformation.

0:16:51.5 Natalie Dowzicky: Does that mean you get to have dinner with Jules and Samuel L. Jackson or just Jules? [laughter]

0:16:56.3 Sonny Bunch: Miss Mia Wallace.

0:16:58.4 Landry Ayres: Okay.

0:16:58.5 Natalie Dowzicky: Okay.

0:17:00.5 Landry Ayres: I feel like it would be a good conversation.

0:17:02.3 Sonny Bunch: Yeah, she’s fun. She was in the pilot, she can talk about her jokes.

0:17:05.7 Michael Cannon: Fox Force Five.

0:17:07.0 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah, but do know how to dance?

0:17:10.3 Sonny Bunch: No, I don’t dance.

[laughter]

0:17:11.9 Landry Ayres: It’s a shame. Natalie, we have to cancel the dance segment of the podcast.

0:17:15.6 Natalie Dowzicky: Okay, right. Yeah you’re right.

0:17:16.7 Landry Ayres: We’ll tell the dancers we’ll get them back next time. [chuckle]

0:17:21.5 Natalie Dowzicky: Send ‘em home. [chuckle]

0:17:23.4 Landry Ayres: Shut it down.

[music]

0:17:24.9 Landry Ayres: A lot of people think this is Tarantino’s best. Do you agree? Why or why not?

0:17:32.0 Michael Cannon: So I would say this is Tarantino’s best. I think there are other Tarantino films that did a better job on individual dimensions of the film. I think his best villain was Inglorious Bastards. What was it, Christopher Waltz who played the Jew Hunter? And it’s hard to find, and a more terrifying villain than Christopher Waltz in that film. And you see… And much of that is Christopher Waltz’s performance, but a lot of it is… I think most of it is Tarantino’s writing and direction, and you see some of that ability in… I mean you see a lot of that, a lot of that talent in Pulp Fiction, you see it in Marsellus Wallace, you see it mostly in Jules Winnfield, some in Vince Vega, the ability of these somewhat likeable characters to be absolutely terrifying. But I don’t think any of Tarantino’s other films are the tightly written package that Pulp Fiction is. That is so efficient, it accomplishes so much and has, despite all the violence, what I think is a very positive life-​affirming, uplifting message, even though you can find that in other Tarantino films as well.

0:19:06.0 Sonny Bunch: Yeah, I don’t like answering questions like this because I think… Because my actual answer here is that he has essentially five perfect movies, but they’re all doing… They’re all doing slightly different things, Pulp Fiction is doing one thing, Jackie Brown, which is also a perfect movie, is doing another thing. And I think people have come around to the fact that Jackie Brown is actually great, but was slept on at the time and has been re-​evaluated. Inglorious Bastards is in the vein of Kill Bill Volume 1 and 2, and also Django Unchained in that it is kind of both a pastiche and a parody, but not really a parody, it’s too serious to be a parody, and it’s also playing with history in a way that is really interesting. But honestly, my favorite of his movies right now is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and it’s not just because it’s the one I’ve seen most recently, although it is, and I’ve watched it like six times since it was in theaters, but the… It’s a profoundly… People’s…

0:20:20.4 Sonny Bunch: The knock on Tarantino sometimes is that he is not, he is… It’s not that he doesn’t care, it’s that he is just kind of in his own little world, but it is a profoundly sad movie in a way that none of his other movies are. That final crane shot at the end of the movie where he… Where Rick Dalton is talking to Sharon Tate and Emile Hirsch’s hairdresser, I forget the name… Is a profoundly sad look at what might have been, which is very different from the end of Inglorious Bastards, which is a profoundly triumphant version of what might have been. And you could say the same thing about Django Unchained, which is kind of another kind of triumphant rewriting of history, if you will, even though it’s not really based on a historical character. Sorry, I’m rambling. The short answer is Pulp Fiction is definitely his best film, but he has like five best films, so…

0:21:27.2 Michael Cannon: I’ll accept that answer.

0:21:28.6 Natalie Dowzicky: It’s better than Forrest Gump.

[laughter]

0:21:30.9 Sonny Bunch: Forrest Gump… I… No, I see why… Yes, it’s better than Forrest Gump, certainly it’s better than Forrest Gump. But I always…

0:21:36.3 Natalie Dowzicky: But that’s what won the academy award that year, Forrest Gump.

0:21:39.2 Sonny Bunch: But Forrest… Whatever, Forrest Gump’s a good movie, and I’m not gonna… I don’t mind throwing that out there, I enjoy Forrest Gump for what it is.

0:21:47.6 Landry Ayres: Yeah, for sure, for what it is. Which is… That’s what you have to capture.

0:21:52.2 Natalie Dowzicky: For what it is.

0:21:52.5 Michael Cannon: In its genre, in its genre, Forrest Gump is one of the best. It came out in ’94, I saw Forrest Gump three times in the theater because I loved it so much, it had not… I think Pulp Fiction hadn’t sunk in at that point, and Forrest Gump is the kind of movie that’s easier to see three times in a row because you know you’re gonna like it, you know the experience you’re gonna have, it’s gonna be rewarding. So I love it, and it did take some time for it to dawn on me how much of a travesty it was that Forrest Gump won over not only Pulp Fiction, but also The Shawshank Redemption, which also came out in 1994. But as I mentioned in some notes I shared with you folks, what can you expect from an Academy that also nominated Four Weddings And a Funeral for best picture in the same year? So… The Academy is what it is, and at least they nominated Shawshank and… Shawshank, Pulp Fiction and Quiz Show in 1994.

0:23:06.9 Natalie Dowzicky: I meant to bring this up earlier when we were talking about the violence in the film, but why… So there’s violence and there’s crime throughout the entire film, how come we never see any police?

[chuckle]

0:23:16.8 Michael Cannon: Police? What does that have to do with anything?

0:23:18.6 Natalie Dowzicky: I was thinking about it while I was watching it. I was like, there has not been like… ’cause even like… A lot of time when movies surrounded by crime… We at very least see like a cop car speeding towards the crime scene as people are leaving or something, we never see any police in this film.

0:23:33.1 Sonny Bunch: The cops are never there when you need ‘em.

0:23:34.4 Michael Cannon: Yeah, it was… I guess it’s open to interpretation. I guess I always sort of under… To the absence of police to be an indication of how good these criminals were at their jobs. They could be in and out quickly enough after the shooting started that…

0:23:54.4 Natalie Dowzicky: They don’t seem that great at their jobs though. [chuckle]

0:23:56.0 Michael Cannon: That the police weren’t going to be there. But yeah, if you count the seconds from when Jules first shot the guy on the couch to when there was this fuselage from the hand cannon and they made their way out of there, there probably would have been enough time for the LAPD to get there, and I guess it’s not too surprising that they made it all the way to the junk yard without a policeman pulling them over, noticing anything about the car. But I guess it’s most surprising that you could have a hit and run…

[laughter]

0:24:34.4 Michael Cannon: And then have these two crippled participants in that hit and run, chasing each other and shooting each other down the street, popping into a store front, and then there’s no police. That is the least plausible part of this, that…

0:24:50.0 Natalie Dowzicky: And that’s when I noticed it, yeah.

0:24:52.1 Michael Cannon: Yeah.

0:24:52.3 Sonny Bunch: I mean, the real answer here is that plot mechanics demand it, that’s…

[chuckle]

0:24:56.0 Sonny Bunch: That is, I don’t know that there’s a profound or deeper message really than that. Reservoir Dogs is all about a cop, really… And I’m trying to think… I mean, Jackie Brown has significant police presence, although they’re feds, but…

0:25:13.9 Landry Ayres: Did you all know… I didn’t know this until today, that John Travolta’s role was originally written with Michael Madsen in mind, and he was gonna be… Because he plays Vic Vega in Reservoir dogs, and he’s… Vincent Vega in this one they got Travolta and that, it’s sort of like Tarantino’s, I don’t know if it’s head canon or if he’s floated to the idea of writing like “They are brothers” type scenario film before it.

0:25:41.6 Sonny Bunch: Yeah, that was floated around for a while in the ’90s, that there was gonna be a Vega Brothers movie. I think that died a few years back but I heard somebody mention that he might actually make a… Write a book about it, like he wrote the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelization that he might do a Vega brothers book, which would be interesting.

0:26:00.6 Landry Ayres: That would be good.

0:26:01.2 Michael Cannon: Natalie…

0:26:01.6 Landry Ayres: I was like… Michael Madsen was always one of my favorite people that Tarantino used a lot all the time, like him and Hateful Eight or… Yeah, and Hateful Eight is my favorite.

0:26:10.3 Michael Cannon: In Kill Bill and Reservoir dogs… Just wonderful, but Natalie mentioned at the beginning that Pulp Fiction kind of resurrected John Travolta’s career and that’s one of the things I love about the film because I remember John Travolta from Saturday Night Fever, from Grease. I may be the only one here who was born in the ’70s, who remembers these things when they came out, and then not to see… I watched him on Welcome Back, Kotter and then to see him… Not to see him for so many years and come back as this, I think it was a much better choice not only for John Travolta but for the film, because the Jack Rabbit Slims Twist Contest would not have been what it was with Michael Madsen there. John Travolta made that a much better scene because as my brother said, we all know he can dance, but also for the nostalgia reasons that people of a certain age would experience seeing him in that role.

0:27:12.7 Natalie Dowzicky: Grease has always been one of my favorite movies. I watched it so many times when I was younger with my parents.

0:27:17.5 Landry Ayres: I wasn’t allowed to watch Grease. One time, my mom caught me watching it at my Nana’s house and she made me change the channel because it’s so crass.

[laughter]

0:27:24.8 Michael Cannon: It is. It is a little racy.

0:27:28.1 Landry Ayres: It is, more than most people remember.

0:27:32.0 Natalie Dowzicky: Well, do you guys remember John Travolta was in Hairspray. When they do the Hairspray… He’s the mom.

0:27:37.5 Landry Ayres: He’s great in Hairspray.

[music]

0:27:41.4 Landry Ayres: Obviously, the movie is saying something with the title, it brings it up first thing. There’s a title card with the two definitions of pulp on it, which are a soft, moist, shapeless mass of matter, or a magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper. So, your pulp paperbacks and things where you have mysteries, and detectives, and sci-​fi, and fantasy, and all these different types of novels. What do you think calling this film Pulp Fiction, what is the overlying message of that when you slap that label on what this story is, because there are a lot of things that you could name this that would make much more, like, literal sense and be an obvious thing. Why is it Pulp Fiction?

0:28:31.8 Michael Cannon: My guess, I don’t really know. My guess would be that… He knew there was gonna be lurid subject matter here and wanted something that alluded to that, but what the title card reminds me of is… The Monty Python Flying Circus would just come out and tell people where to send their complaints to the BBC, because they knew people are gonna complain about certain sketches. It was… I sort of saw this as Tarantino saying, “Look, I know you’re gonna upset about this, alright. Let’s just be up front, there’s gonna be a lot of lurid stuff in here, and just relax. It’s just a movie.”

0:29:17.3 Sonny Bunch: Yeah, and it’s also, of course, a homage to the things he read growing up. This is, again, he does this. Like for instance, I mentioned the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood novelization, which I have. This is the form at first… There was no hard cover. There’s a dime store paperback book, that’s it. This is what he grew up reading, it’s what he liked and the… I do think there’s a minor message here, which is that the form of the product matters. And you see this, not only in his films, but the fact that he collects films. He collects film prints. He now owns two movie theaters that only show actual film prints. And I think that that sort of thing matters to him. The medium is the message, if you will, and it means a lot to him personally.

0:30:19.8 Landry Ayres: Yeah, because you can see that in a lot of his activism, have been like you said, preserving film and wanting people to appreciate it. But he also creates films with that love in mind, with the spectacle. You saw that with the Hateful Eight 70mm Roadshow that they did, where they brought it to special theaters, and they had an act break, and an overture and everything, just like you would… It was really, really great. So there is that kind of embedded… The medium carries a nostalgia and a grandeur for him that he wants to build into the stories, and I think you see that. We’ve seen that a lot with his historical revisionist kind of ideas. I’m curious if that was sort of a reaction, or wanting to go in a different way from something like Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs, ’cause there has seemed to be a sort of pivot in his career.

0:31:19.2 Landry Ayres: I think Once Upon a Time in Hollywood gets closer, back to where he was originally, but in a more mature way perhaps. I don’t know if you all would agree with that, but it definitely… And the setting of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and where it is and that type of California, and during that time period, I think is very much about the medium and what goes into that culture of Hollywood and what it creates. But I don’t know if you all agree with that.

0:31:50.7 Sonny Bunch: Yes, I think Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is really interesting, in part because he is doing… Again, I mentioned this before, but it’s interesting because he is doing the historical revisionism thing, but he’s doing it in a slightly different way to slightly different ends. And he’s also playing with our ideas of what… The most interesting thing in that movie is the treatment of Cliff Booth and his… The possibility that he killed his wife. Because what that movie is asking you to do is, by not telling you one way or the other, whether he did or did not, it is saying do you… Can you accept that this possibly terrible person is also necessary to do good things in the world in which this movie exists? The book is interesting because it makes it very clear that he killed his wife, like the book is… The book is like, you know… You can’t tell if it’s canon for the movie or not, but the book is like, yes, he murdered her and got away with it, and take that and do what you want with it.

0:33:07.6 Sonny Bunch: But the nostalgic factor for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is very strong and the idea of like people, film execs sitting down and throwing on like 16 mm prints to watch them in their home because they don’t have VHS. There’s no DVD, there’s no Blu ray is very is kind of interesting and amusing. And again, like calls to mind Tarantino’s own actual existence, because he does that, he just sits at home and we’ll watch like 16, his own 16 mm prints of stuff.

0:33:33.7 Natalie Dowzicky: That’s the thing we’re like, super quick to try and categorise films and I think Tarantino’s films are probably some of the more difficult to categorise, like Pulp Fiction, I mean, I’m gonna throw it out there, I’m not sure how you would categorise it in terms of like putting it into its own, is it its own genre, or… I have also was reading a few things that were claiming that it just kind of burst open genres and kind of is like the defining movie of the ’90s. And I think like other, like you were saying, with Quentin Tarantino’s other movies, they’re a little bit more easily definable. Maybe I’m not even sure how you would, how would you categorise Pulp Fiction? If you had to put it like in a certain type of movie.

0:34:24.8 Sonny Bunch: It’s Altmanesque, right? It’s like this is like, it’s like an old Altman film like MASH or Nashville, or something like that. In the sense that it is following a bunch of different… Following an ensemble cast doing a bunch of different things, all kind of at the same time. But it did give rise to the adjective Tarantinoesque, right? Tarantinoesque connotes its own thing, and you had a whole bunch of Tarantino imitators, you know what it was, A Dozen Ways to Die and Die in Denver. I forget the name of that movie. There’s just a whole there’s a whole world of film that was spawned in the mid to late ’90s that owes itself to Pulp Fiction, which is about the best way you can describe like a new genre.

0:35:19.2 Michael Cannon: I hadn’t really given… Tarantino said that he created a new subgenre of gangster films. I haven’t really thought about how to categorise Pulp Fiction in terms of a genre. Obviously, it’s a gangster film, but it is like Reservoir Dogs, a gangster film where you really get inside the heads of some of these gangsters you do see that there’s good and bad in each of them, you have these really dramatic conflicts that get set up and then resolved sometimes in uplifting ways and sometimes in very tragic ways. It is… And what stands out… One thing that stands out about Tarantino’s subgenre of gangster films is they’re so much funnier than all of the others. I mean, parts of Pulp Fiction are hilarious, parts of Reservoir Dogs are hilarious. And, so yeah, I don’t have a nice pithy genre title or whatever to give these films.

0:36:31.0 Michael Cannon: One thing though, that has come up is that it seems, this seems like one of those films that ties together multiple threads at once. I really I don’t quite see Pulp Fiction that way. It is fragmented, the narrative is non-​linear, it jumps around in time. But I think it is much more tightly inter… All these storylines are much more tightly interconnected than the storylines in Short Cuts, which was a film that came out the year prior, also set in Los Angeles, bunch of seemingly random people whose lives do come together in a certain way. Magnolia sort of the same way, much more loosely connected storylines that do come together in one way. As I said before, I think Pulp Fiction is a much tighter package than all of those, and that they… All the storylines pretty closely related, and all serve the same central theme that I mentioned before, how to break the cycle of violence.

[music]

0:37:50.7 Landry Ayres: And now for the time in the show where we get to share all of the other things that we’ve been enjoying with our time at home. This is locked in.

0:37:58.6 Natalie Dowzicky: Why don’t we start with Cannon.

0:38:00.7 Michael Cannon: Right now I’m enjoying Loki, the Marvel television show through… Television series through Disney+. I have… I’m almost done with the first season. I’ve been trying to avoid spoilers on Twitter, it’s kind of hard. I’ve been seeing some people have what they thought, what I’ll describe is incredulous and maybe even negative reactions. I’m not sure what they’re talking about yet, maybe it’s time travel is a theme and people always get upset about time travel. But I’m four episodes in and I’m enjoying it. I mean it’s fun. It’s not what I thought. I could see a little bit of formula in there but it’s I’m still having a good time with it.

0:38:45.6 Natalie Dowzicky: How much other Marvel knowledge do you need to watch it?

0:38:49.4 Michael Cannon: Oh, it helps if you’ve seen all of the films. There are…

0:38:52.5 Sonny Bunch: All of it you need all of it that’s the whole point of the whole MCU.

0:38:55.8 Michael Cannon: But I’ve never read any Marvel comic books so you don’t have to go that far.

0:39:02.5 Natalie Dowzicky: Well, ’cause I enjoyed Wanda Vision and I didn’t have like I didn’t pick up on all the Easter eggs that were in Wanda Vision but I still enjoyed it even though my…

0:39:10.2 Sonny Bunch: Yeah, same.

0:39:10.4 Natalie Dowzicky: Marvel knowledge isn’t as, you know.

0:39:12.0 Michael Cannon: And maybe that’s the test to tell you whether you’re talking to a nerd or not.

[laughter]

0:39:18.5 Michael Cannon: If they acknowledge that you can enjoy it without seeing all of the films and other shows from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, then that person is not a nerd. But if they say, “Oh, my God, Natalie, what are you doing?” Then that person is definitely a nerd and can be safely avoided.

0:39:32.1 Natalie Dowzicky: That’s why I had to step away from Star Wars recordings because I’d only seen the big stuff and I didn’t understand anything else.

0:39:39.7 Landry Ayres: She refuses to do them with me, so she leaves them all to me.

0:39:41.4 Natalie Dowzicky: I will not do any more Star Wars recordings.

0:39:44.7 Landry Ayres: What about you, Sonny?

0:39:46.9 Sonny Bunch: I mentioned this right before the show started, but I just finished a book called Killer Instinct by Jane Hamsher. The subtitle is how two young producers took on Hollywood and made the most controversial film of the decade. She produced Natural Born Killers with her partner, and it’s actually very interesting to read in concert with watching Pulp Fiction because Quentin Tarantino is a character in this book. Quentin Tarantino, of course, wrote the first draft of Natural Born Killers. I think he still has a story credit on Natural Born Killers. But it is interesting to watch him as the story is being told in this book, Reservoir Dogs comes out and it’s a big cult hit, but it’s not necessarily a huge box office hit. But Tarantino is in huge demand as a script doctor and is getting tons of offers and he’s about to make Pulp Fiction, which of course would go on to win him his first Oscar. It’s just interesting to see how he is treated by Hamsher and everybody else in this, especially as his head gets a little bigger and he starts kind of becoming more of a, “I’m Quentin Tarantino, you’re not gonna make this movie without my permission,” sort of guy. It’s fascinating. It’s not a pro-​Tarantino book, I’ll put it that way. It is very anti-​Tarantino. It is Tarantino skeptical.

0:41:18.4 Landry Ayres: I just finished… I binged it over the weekend, Ted Lasso. Phenomenal, it’s very fun and heart-​warming. I’m not a sports person. It has a sort of quickness to it that is… It’s like almost 30 Rock. But not quite zany enough, and it’s mostly just contained within a handful of characters kind of that Leslie Knope energy. But everyone is great ensemble cast, very quick, surprisingly heart-​warming and sad sometimes. I really liked it. If you’ve got Apple TV, then definitely go watch it. If you don’t, I don’t know if it’s worth buying the subscription for, but that’s just me. I haven’t explored deeper into Apple TV.

0:42:04.0 Sonny Bunch: Mythic Quest is also great.

0:42:07.3 Landry Ayres: That is the other thing that I’ve heard is good and I might give a shot at some point soon. Mythic Quest is quite a good one.

0:42:16.3 Natalie Dowzicky: Is it the morning show? Is that the one with Reese Witherspoon?

0:42:19.3 Landry Ayres: That, yes. The morning show. Yeah.

0:42:21.4 Natalie Dowzicky: Yeah, that was another one that looked interesting.

0:42:23.8 Landry Ayres: The one that I’ve also heard a lot of good things about that I wanna try next is Schmigadoon! Which is like a musical.

0:42:35.5 Sonny Bunch: A musical parody.

0:42:36.5 Landry Ayres: A musical parody, that’s right.

0:42:36.9 Sonny Bunch: Something. I don’t know, yeah.

0:42:37.2 Landry Ayres: It’s supposed to be very good. So I’m gonna try it out. And it’s got Cecily Strong and Keegan-​Michael Key as the leads in it, and a lot of other good people, it looks like in the cast so I’ll probably check that out next.

0:42:52.5 Michael Cannon: I will echo what Landry said about Ted Lasso. Apple TV might be worth it if only to get Ted Lasso. It’s just that good.

0:43:02.0 Natalie Dowzicky: Oh wow. I just started The Expanse. I’m only on the second episode. It’s gonna be an undertaking. But there have been five or six people that told me that I’d really like it, so. That one’s on Amazon Prime. And I like it so far. I wouldn’t say it’s one of those I was like, first episode definitely convinced me I should watch the rest of the show, but I will give it time. And what else did I… I guess that’s kind of all I’ve watched recently. I’m still on my quest to read every World War II fiction novel there is. And I started another one called The Nightingale. I’m about halfway through. That’s my schtick, so. [chuckle]

[music]

0:43:50.5 Landry Ayres: Thanks for listening. As always, the best way to get more Pop & Locke content is to follow us on Twitter. You can find us at the handle @PopnLockePod, that’s Pop the letter N, Locke with an E like the philosopher, Pod. Make sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen as well. We look forward to unravelling your favorite show or movie next time. Pop & Locke is produced by me, Landry Ayres and is co-​hosted by Natalie Dowzicky. We are a project of lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org. To learn more, visit us on the web at www​.lib​er​tar​i​an​ism​.org.