[[[Happy 20th Anniversary Pulp Fiction]]]]
Read this loud and clear: Pulp Fiction will never ever happen again. The impact, the delivery, the timing, and the overall stamp it has placed in cinema history can never be duplicated. See, there are bad movies, good movies, great movies, and trailblazers. The trailblazers are films that jump-start a movement, revolutionize the industry, change the landscape of motion pictures, and delivers an impact whether immediate (Star Wars) or down the road (Fight Club) that never exits the general consensus.
Wizard of Oz, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Psycho, Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Graduate, and Goodfellas are all examples of films that are trailblazers. None of these films have any contemporaries, they are their own category and all films of similar genres become compared to them. Pulp Fiction is a 90s indie trailblazer that absolutely altered the entire culture of movies by crafting what at the time was easily one of the most jarring, unexpected, stylish, and wholesome cinematic experiences ever witnessed.
Pulp Fiction was a low-budget flick with such high aspirations that 1994 didn't know how to handle it. The soundtrack (among the best in film history), the unexpected blend of violence, drugs, and realistic dialogue, the surprises, the utter lack of chronological order, the style, the tone, and the overall look of Pulp Fiction made it stand out not just among the films of the 90s, but everything preceding it. It talks like a Scorsese movie, moves like a 1950s Italian neorealism flick, paces like a spaghetti western, and breathes like an underground comic book come to life. Pulp Fiction is tasty cinematic soup.
Pulp Fiction knew it was cool before the viewer did. Pulp Fiction knew that its audience was going to put up with the 150 minutes of dialogue because the characters were so strong, the story lines were unique, and there were so many details (explained and unexplained) that it required multiple viewings to catch it all, and jump-started urban legends and mysteries that remain unsolved to this day. It was a movie that created its own culture and fanbase that would follow madman Quinten Tarantino for the entirety of his career---through the "bad" (Death Proof) and the good (Django Unchained).
Everything in this movie works. The cast was downright phenomenal and nearly miraculous considering the budget (Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, AND Christopher Walken in one movie??!!). The dialogue was sharp, witty, brutal, and breathes life into each character you see within the pulp-influenced saga. The directing by Tarantino was practically flawless as he makes transforms the camera into a curious witness by mixing in a barrage of close-ups, long shots, and spastic movement that never feels like its framing a shot but more so just following the story along where ever the action was going.
This movie literally has it all: sex, violence, drugs, rock n' roll, dancing, singing, crime, morality issues, romance, revenge, monologues, potential miracles, shootouts, dark humor, dozens of film references, and even a couple glimpses of the California underworld that most people would rather not know about. And all this was accomplished without a Hollywood budget. There was a slight sense of amateurism that gave the movie an edge, like a black sheep in the meadows of the film industry. This would inspire an entire wave of budding, ambitious, and hopeful filmmakers that also had their stories to tell and didn't want to cater to the typical Hollywood output or abide by its rules. Pulp Fiction is a B-Movie setup executed like an underground masterpiece from the dialogue-heavy start to the sudden finish.
You can't duplicate this. I couldn't duplicate this. Tarantino could never duplicate this. Pulp Fiction is one of the greatest films ever made, and a perfect storm of innovative filmmaking that lifted 1994 into one of the best years of film that has ever existed---and launched an entire era of indie filmmaking that still has its effects on the industry today. Pulp Fiction is as absolutely cool as its gets.
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