Jackie and Mel Van De Werfhorst (@melissavandew on Twitter) get caught up in the crazy world of drugs, money, and Quentin Tarantino's mind. Goes without saying that we leveraged the "explicit" tag on this one!
Must-know:
Follow us on Twitter @JackieWatches
This episode produced by Sean Flynn (@wxgeek)
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/jackiewatchesstuff)
Jackie and Mel Van De Werfhorst (@melissavandew on Twitter) get caught up in the crazy world of drugs, money, and Quentin Tarantino's mind. Goes without saying that we leveraged the "explicit" tag on this one!
Must-know:
Follow us on Twitter @JackieWatches
This episode produced by Sean Flynn (@wxgeek)
Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/jackiewatchesstuff)
Hi, Mel.
Mel:Hey, Jackie.
Jackie:So I have another movie that I feel like I have to tell people about that I haven't seen and I chose you to share this journey with. Can I tell you a movie that I've never seen?
Mel:Please do.
Jackie:Okay. The movie is Pulp Fiction.
Mel:Pulp Fiction?
Jackie:Pulp Fiction.
Mel:Like made in the 90s Pulp Fiction?
Jackie:That one. Yep. And literally all I know is Uma Thurman, John Travolta looking greasy with a ponytail and cigarettes and Quentin Tarantino, so I feel like I should have started probably with Quentin Tarantino knowing full well that that means I'm never going to be able to guess what this movie is about, but, I mean, I see a lot of like smoking and the cover of the like, DVD jacket has like real sexy dark looking Uma Thurman, so I'm guessing there's some like, maybe a murder or maybe like she's just being her typical self being like, kind of slinky? I don't know. Lots of secrets maybe? I really have no idea.
Mel:You do. You got it. That's the whole movie.
Jackie:What?!
Mel:Yeah!
Jackie:I mean, it is a Quentin Tarantino movie, so....
Mel:Well, you're in for a ride. I'm so excited for you, honestly.
Jackie:Oh my gosh. Well, now I mean, if I already kind of guessed it, and all my guesses were like, all over the place. I'm a little nervous, but I'm excited, I guess. I mean, you don't have to watch it now, to be honest because you know everything there is to know. Oh, man. Greasy John Travolta, Uma Thurman looking sexy. Yeah, you're good. Okay. Well, then, I guess. Thanks for thanks for coming out. I'll talk to you later, I guess. Thanks for coming.
Mel:Thank you.
Jackie:Well, I'm gonna go jump into this crazy ride with John Travolta and Uma Thurman and I'll let you know how it goes.
Mel:Okay, good luck.
Jackie:Welcome to Jackie Watches Stuff. This is a podcast chronicling my cinematic quest to finally watch the movies I probably should have already seen and I'm bringing my friends along with me. Hey, so before I tell Mel what I thought about Pulp Fiction, I just wanted to let you know that I'm going to be hosting my first ever movie of the month live stream. It's on August 26. Now, normally this is something that only supporters on Patreon can get access to, but I wanted to share the first one with all of you. So on Wednesday, August 26th at 8pm Eastern, me and Shawn, my producer, will be talking about one of my favorite movies, Mean Girls. You guys will be able to listen to our discussion about the movie live and you can ask us questions as we're talking. We're gonna have a ton more information in the show notes and you can head over to patreon.com/jackiewatchesstuff to tune in. So, hope to see you on the 26th and we're pink on Wednesdays. We wear pink. So Mel, I think it goes without saying, we have an explicit tag on this podcast, but I think we definitely need it for Pulp Fiction. That was a lot. That was a lot.
Mel:Oh, are you talking about the cursing? That's just a little occasional sparse cursing that happened?
Jackie:Yeah. It's only a couple times. A little bit. I think everybody probably Googles this, but I did Google the number of times they use the F word. Do you know how many times they use the F word? They use the F word 265 times in this film.
Mel:Really? I feel like that's low.
Jackie:It does feel low, but there's some other colorful language that we choose.
Mel:There's some really colorful language.
Jackie:Yes, oh my gosh. I'm also really nervous because I always am required to recap these movies in 30 seconds and this is real, real difficult, but I'm going to try my best. Will you time me?
Mel:Yes, I will. Tell me when you're ready.
Jackie:Even if I fumble through this.
Mel:I'm so ready. Go for it.
Jackie:Okay, count me in.
Mel:You got this. Ready? Three, two, one, go!
Jackie:Okay, so there's like three-ish things happening at the same time and they're all out of chronological order and it's super confusing because it's Quentin Tarantino, but there's a ton of drugs and this dude, Marcellus is like super rich and powerful and makes this boxer guy throw a fight so that he can win a bunch of money, but then he also tells this guy Vince to take his wife out on a date and Vince kind of almost kills her after they win a dance contest. Whatever, it's fine. And then Vince's partner, Jules, he says he's not going to kill anybody anymore and then there's a robbery in a diner, but they save the day.
Mel:Wow. 28 seconds.
Jackie:I don't even know if I missed any plot points, but like, I probably did.
Mel:Does it matter?
Jackie:It doesn't. It doesn't. Oh my gosh, yeah, this was an adventure that we went on.
Mel:So Jackie, how did you like the movie?
Jackie:How did I like the movie? Well, it was an adventure, I definitely spent the first like, half of it not sure what was going on. I also couldn't quite tell what the point was, especially as we got towards the end of the movie. So, that's my answer. Gotcha. What the point was, you know, that's a really good
Mel:Gotcha. What the point was, you know, that's a really good point. So, I am a writer and I enjoy storytelling and the point. So, I am a writer and I enjoy storytelling and the question I asked myself was, who is the protagonist of the story? question I asked myself was, who is the protagonist of the story? And I don't have the answer to that question still. I have not And I don't have the answer to that question still. I have not a clue. It might be Quentin Tarantino himself. a clue. It might be Quentin Tarantino himself.
Jackie:Oh, that was that's interesting. I was gonna say Vince, maybe, but then I would ay that, I mean, he takes ove a good like, he's kind of involved. I mean, I gu ss they're all involved in ll aspects of the story, exc pt maybe the robbers, Honey Bu ny and the other dude whose nam I can't remember, but I would a so maybe say Butch because he g es through a bit of a mom nt throughout this movie, but ye You know what, I get that. I get it. So, can I share the first h, it was a little c mplicated so I'm kind of ex ited to jump into it, es ecially because it was such a bi deal. So, I know that this w ole podcast is about me not se ing the movies I should have se n, but this thing has won se eral awards, it was co sidered a touchstone film and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry from the Library of Congress. Yeah, t is is considered culturally historically and/or aesthetical y significant. So, I mean, I do 't know which one it technicall qualifies under. I don't know if I would say aesthetics but... time I saw it, but I won't make this whole podcast about me? This podcast is so much about you as it is about this movie so go ahead.
Mel:Alright, so this movie came out in 1994 and I was 16 years old and I had pretty much never seen a cooler movie in my life and I think that's what every 16 year old was thinking at the time. Like, this was the epitome of just coolness, at least for like the suburban Seattle white girl that I was, who was a little bit grungy, and like into grunge at the time. And there was something about Quentin Tarantino and then like violence in his movie where you're like, oh my god, look at all this violence. It's so pointless and cool. I don't know. I look back at 16 year old me and I think, wow, kid, you really grew up. I'm proud of you.
Jackie:Yeah, I mean, knowing you as a human now and hearing what I'm hearing from you about how this movie impacted your life, I would say you did okay. You did okay because you didn't end up OD'ing on somebody's floor with a syringe in your chest so...
Mel:You know, I'm pretty sure this movie gave me a pretty strong phobia of actually doing any cocaine or heroin, like at all because I didn't want that. I was like, oh, you know, I don't. I really don't want a syringe in my chest so I'm going to stay away from the hard drugs.
Jackie:Well, maybe that was Quentin Tarantino's MO the whole time? Like, don't do drugs kids. Look what can happen.
Mel:There it is. Stay away from the drugs. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's exactly what his point was and not that he was like on the drugs at the same time?
Jackie:Absolutely not. Well, let's get into this crazy plot. For those of you who have not seen this movie, or if you couldn't tell when I was talking so fast about it, this movie is one to three stories smooshed together and then jumbled up into different pieces of the timeline so you're not really watching it in the correct chronological order. Solid example is it opens in a diner with a robbery about to start and then it ends with that same robbery and you see what happens so I don't know. It's a lot to go through. So Mel, thank you for coming with me on this crazy ride.
Mel:I'm holding your hand right now and we're just walking through this really scary place together.
Jackie:It's real scary.
Mel:It's also a little funny because like, there's just we're just surrounded on both sides by Quentin Tarantino and his bullshit.
Jackie:That's a great way to describe it. So let's walk over to the apartment building that's kind of one of the first scenes that we see after the robbery begins in the diner. It's Samuel L. Jackson, it's John Travolta. John Travolta has got some hair going on. He has an earring.
Mel:Oh, the hair.
Jackie:I don't know what is happening there. And then also, I wrote weird accent? Because I'm not quite sure what he was quite going for with this like, kind of character choice. I'm not sure if we had like a thick, like New York or New Jersey accent. I don't know if we were like trying to be "ghetto," which I'm putting big quotes around, but it was weird.
Mel:Maybe because he had just spent three years in Amsterdam?
Jackie:Yes. Did you hear that he was in Amsterdam?
Mel:Oh, did I hear it? Oh...
Jackie:Did you know he went to Amsterdam?
Mel:Gosh, I only heard it once, maybe twice.
Jackie:Oh, my goodness. Goodness. Okay, we get it. Cool. You went to Amsterdam. Did you know that I ate at a McDonald's in Amsterdam? I did. I did. I did. And I actually I know that this whole "What do they call a Big Mac and France?" line is fairly popular. I had never heard it, ever. The thing that really confused me, but then makes sense is they're talking about whether or not a foot massage has any sexual implication and I've never heard the word foot massage used so many times in dialogue in a row.
Mel:Right, right. I mean, I think sometimes they call it a fucking foot massage, but yeah.
Jackie:Like, whoo. Because then we learn later that this whole thing maybe was a lie? We're not really sure because according to the person who "received" this foot massage, aka Marcellus' wife. Nothing happened so we're really not sure.
Mel:Yeah, it's a little unclear, but, you know, what is clear is the subtle homophobia they slipped in there about giving guys foot massages.
Jackie:Yes, that was very clear and I think a common theme utside of swearing in this ovie is like, ooh, this doesn't eel great anymore as a movie. n 1994, we could get away with aying some of these things, but ow in 2020 we learned that t ose things aren't cool to say a d that's something I've been r alizing through this podcast i that many movies made in the l te 80s and early 90s had a v ry different view on the world t an we do now so there's a lot o not great stuff in there.
Mel:So I think I watched it about six or seven times between 94 and like 98 because it was the cool movie that you watched with your friends. And then I went away to college and when you were in college in the mid to late 90s, every person you knew had a pulp fiction poster. It was not optional. You had to get one. You were given one at the registrar's office and you had to put it in your dorm somewhere or in your apartment. It was required. Now that I think back it's like, there was a really low standard for problematicness in the 90s.
Jackie:Absolutely. Absolutely. And we're seeing that, like very clear through this movie. And through all of the dialogue and just the the choices that were made explicitly and implicitly, I would say, throughout the entire movie, which is...
Mel:Yeah, so what happens? Let's go back to the apartment scene.
Jackie:Oh my gosh, yeah.
Mel:Holding your hand.
Jackie:We're in the apartment. I think we learned at this point, maybe not, John Travolta plays Vince and Samuel L. Jackson plays Jules. They basically show up, Jules, terrorizes these three young kids that are just kind of chilling in their apartment. He eats their cheeseburger and then he takes a suitcase and shoots the kid while quoting the Bible, which I did learn is not completely accurate in typical Tarantino way. He's like, I like this Bible quote, but I don't love it for what I need it to do so I'm just going to tweak it, which I didn't know you could edit the Bible for your own personal use, but that's, I think, a different podcast.
Mel:You didn't know. I mean, didn't you get the email from King James?
Jackie:Oh, no, I did not. I absolutely did not. So, that's quite the opener. We see basically a robbery in action. We get some typical late 90s or mid to late 90s credit roll. And then we see Samuel Jackson shoot a kid in the face so here we are. After that scene, we have to now watch Vincent like, go take Marcellus' wife out on a date, but not before, he goes to buy heroin from his buddy, I guess.
Mel:Eric Stoltz.
Jackie:It's very weird. I did read that Quentin Tarantino was like tossing up the idea of playing either this role or playing the role that he took, Jimmy, and he decided he wanted to play Jimmy only because he wanted to be behind the camera for the overdose scene, which is selfish? Interesting? Aware? I'm not quite sure. I'm really not. Not sure.
Mel:That's fascinating, you know, trying to picture him as switching places with Eric Stoltz and I'm just not feeling it.
Jackie:No, I don't think he could have played like, chill, just kind of floating, you know, kind of dude. I think he needed to be the uptight friend that got stuck with a dead guy in his garage.
Mel:Although I see that either case, like he would have been wearing basically like a robe and some pajamas-ish.
Jackie:Yeah, that's again, a good choice.
Mel:He's got a thing. He's got his theme. Like, he knows his comfort zone and the movie was really his fantasy about like, what would be the most awesomest, cool things that guys could do? And he just inserted himself into that fantasy where he felt comfortable and I wish I could respect that. I'll just say that I do. So, he buys like world class heroin from Eric Stoltz.
Jackie:Yes, because I learned that coke is dead and I'm like, oh, yes, of course. I know all these things.
Mel:As a 16 year old I felt, you know, like I could say that with confidence now and just sound really cool. Coke is dead.
Jackie:Yes, coke is dead, obviously. So here take this amazing heroin that I have. So, he buys this heroin and he says that he can't stick around to kind of hang around and get high with them, but he's like, oh, I gotta go do this thing. Can I just use your bathroom real quick and just shoots up in the bathroom and we have to watch this needle and I didn't watch it, I will admit. So, I guess I haven't watched this movie in full because I did not watch the scene. It was very gross. But...
Mel:It wasn't the best. It was really, really extreme close up on the needle and then like a little bit of blood goes in it and then like, I know, it's disgusting.
Jackie:Like, disclaimer this. So sorry, listeners if you're nauseous and get nauseous like me. Gross.
Mel:I'll put a trigger warning right now. Trigger warning, trigger warning.
Jackie:There's blood and needles in this movie, but they...he has a content warning. And then he gets high as fuck and drives, which, do a lot of people drive on heroin? I don't know. So, because I stayed away from the hard drugs after watching this movie. I don't know if people drive while they're on heroin. I don't know if this was just a metaphor for his like, how he feels or like anything like that and then we need to transition over into the next scene, which is him showing up at Mia's house or is it that he truly drove, which wouldn't surprise me either. If I were to summarize Quentin Tarantino, I would show somebody this scene of like John Travolta pretending to have just like, shot up heroin in a friend's bathroom, driving a car with like the wind blowing through his greasy, gross, long ponytail hair.
Mel:Uh, yeah. So, he shows that he was kind of like slurring his words and looking really sleepy when he shows up to that super creepy 50s diner, which, I don't know why I didn't realize it was so creepy before, but I was super creeped out by it. What did you think?
Jackie:Yeah, he was definitely not all there. I mean, even when he shows up at Mia's he was kind of not with it and then she had the creepy like, I'm watching you on the camera thing, which that didn't really go anywhere. I thought maybe that would evolve into something, but it didn't. And so he shows up at the house and I was so happy because I finally got to watch the original scene of the John Travolta looking around trying to find something meme and I'm very excited.
Mel:You did. Congratulations.
Jackie:Yay. And I will say I was very excited because I was watching this with my boyfriend and I'm like, ah, the meme! Oh my gosh, the meme! And he said, what are you talking about? So, I got to educate him on this incredible GIF meme thing.
Mel:What a moment. I'm so proud of you.
Jackie:It's so good. And I love that something that is that iconic on the internet stems from a movie that came out in the early 90s. It's just like, that shows, I guess, that this really is a timeless and historic piece of cinema.
Mel:Timeless. It's like Shakespeare.
Jackie:Absolutely. I would put it on the same level. Tarantino and Shakespeare, two greats.
Mel:I mean, what's the difference?
Jackie:Absolutely. But then they do go to that really, really cool diner thing that I would dine at all the time. Apparently this cost $150,000 to build this set.
Mel:Oh, really?
Jackie:Yeah, it was the most expensive thing that they had to build or buy for this entire movie. Their whole budget was $8.5 million. And so to spend like $150,000 on this set that truly wasn't, when you think about the entirety of the movie, wasn't really that big of a deal. I know that we have this iconic dancing scene and, you know, we have some plot movement in this diner, but did we really need to get all these cars and look alikes and all of these background actors and all these kind of things? Did we really have to have a dance contest? I don't know, but yeah, $150,000.
Mel:Whoa, that's bananas. I did not know. I actually thought maybe it was a real restaurant, because, you know, restaurants kind of like come and go. Yeah, and you're right. And I learned afterwards, or sort of realized that like, buddy, Holly was Steve Buscemi. Yes, I did not know that until I was doing my research and I felt really embarrassed for myself and I was like, wow, that's amazing. I love that. I didn't even notice. Also, did you notice how the milkshake was $5 and that seemed really expensive?
Jackie:Yes. And I was like, why are we freaking out? I wasn't quite sure where we were going with this whole thing.
Mel:I remember thinking that that did seem expensive. Like I didn't question it. I was like, oh, yeah, $5 milkshake. That's super expensive when I was 16, or whatever, and, but now it's, I mean, I would expect to pay $10 for a really good milkshake, especially in LA.
Jackie:Yeah, well, and she got like the bonus cup. That's a big deal.
Mel:Right?
Jackie:They give you the extra.
Mel:That was so nice of them.
Jackie:Tune in to our new podcast all about milkshakes with Jackie and Mel. Good. I love it. I will say and I am silly because I read it, but I forgot to note it down. I do remember in my research that however Buddy Holly, Steve Buscemi asks her how she wants the milkshake, what he says is basically saying do you want it white or black, aka vanilla or chocolate? So, just another feels bad kind of moment. Right? If we're clocking those. So he mentions again that he was in Amsterdam because he tells literally everybody and she talks about this movie that she was in or a pilot, Fox Force Five, which is apparently also mentioned in Kill Bill and it's essentially the description of the first one, which is like, very odd to me. I mean, not odd, but interesting.
Mel:A little continuity. Okay.
Jackie:Yeah, we're just drawing lines, but he loves to do that. He loves to have characters move through movies and maybe evolve and then show up later as the same person, but years later or stuff like that so it doesn't really surprise me.
Mel:I wonder if, you know, I didn't see a lot of Quentin Tarantino movies after this one, I will admit. Partially because I was in college and I just didn't go to the movies a lot for some reason. I was just, I just did it. And then I just didn't see Quentin Tarantino movies after that, for whatever reason. Like, my tastes really changed and I changed as a person so I didn't see his movies, especially the one that was like Inglorious Basterds?
Jackie:Yes.
Mel:I'm just curious though. Was there some continuity with with the military and Butch's family or anything?
Jackie:That's interesting. I saw Inglourious Basterds so long ago that I would not be able to tell you factually, but that is something interesting to look into. I wonder if his family with the whole watch thing. That was weird. If he is part of that, or if he's just an actor or something in the background, interesting, interesting. Quentin Tarantino, call us. Let us know.
Mel:Are there more watches up people's asses in your movie?
Jackie:How many watches are hidden in Inglorious Basterds? That's the question.
Mel:We will never know. Literally, there could be like dozens.
Jackie:We have no idea. So, at the diner they enter the twist contest. It's a very interesting dance moment and they get home and we see them with the trophy so they won. Yay! But apparently when Butch is going back to get his watch at the apartment, so we're fast forward all the way towards the end of this movie, there is a radio alert that is going on as he walks in his apartment to get the watch that talks about this trophy being stolen. So again, we're just weaving all the threads,
Mel:I must have missed that entirely. The trophy was stolen?
Jackie:So, this actually came from my research. I will not say that I caught this myself. So, the implication is that when we see it for the first time, this trophy, when Vince and Mia get home, we say oh, they won that's adorable. But we hear this radio bulletin apparently later that says that the trophy was stolen from the diner, probably implying that they didn't win. They just stole it and got out of there, which wouldn't surprise me.
Mel:Okay, I gotcha. I'm right there with you now.
Jackie:So just a fun little Quentin Tarantino fact. So...
Mel:You know, I really felt like that they had earned it. I don't think I see any other dancers because, as far as we know, they were the best dancers so why wouldn't they win a trophy?
Jackie:And maybe everyother couple just said, well, I can't beat the energy that these two are putting down.
Mel:I'm really surprised that I didn't see better dancing from John Travolta, I will be honest with you.
Jackie:Yeah, I was just uncomfortable the whole time and I really was trying to find like, behind the scenes about this particular moment because it was a little bit of hey, John, you were Greased Lightning for a hot minute. Aren't you good at this, like, don't you have hips? But apparently not.
Mel:Wasn't he in like "Saturday Night Fever" or something? Yes, he's in a lot of movies that require him to be good at dancing. Basically Patrick Swayze, but I don't know. Not as cool.
Jackie:I mean, yeah, I guess. Less like, inherently sexy. Patrick Swayze is just always sexy. Can't turn it off. John Travolta can control it.
Mel:I gotcha.
Jackie:So, but who knows? Maybe he was told not to? Maybe he was told to knock it down. Like, hey, too sexy. Bring it down.
Mel:You're not Patrick Swayze, John.
Jackie:Yeah, hey, hey, listen, Know yourself, know your strengths. But this is right before one of the crazy scenes of Mia overdosing. So, they're back at the house and she finds his heroin, but she thinks it's coke and decides to snort it and almost dies so they rush to Lance's house and John Travolta pulls out a cell phone from 1994 and it was like a very beautiful throwback for me in the year 2020.
Mel:Do you remember how Eric Stoltz is freaking out? It's like, are you calling me on a cellular phone?
Jackie:Yeah, he was freaking out. He couldn't handle it. It also never ever ever goes to voicemail, which I think is very funny because it just keeps ringing forever. So, we dragged Mia's cold... I was about to say cold dead body, but nope, she's not dead yet, cold body across the lawn and then they just are...The whole thing is panic. And I learned that this scene that I also barely watched through my squinty eyes because it involves a needle. Disclaimer, there is a needle involved in this next scene listeners. This scene wher Vince has to stab the adrenalin shot in her heart, which stil doesn't track. I am not a medic l professional, but that didn t feel like it was the right mo e to me generally, but I don t kno
Mel:You know, I really should have researched this because I'm really curious.
Jackie:Yeah, that was one Google search that I didn't want
to do like was:. How do I stab someone in the heart?
Mel:I feel like I know enough from watching Grey's Anatomy slash when I was in school that the heart really is on the left side of your ribcage a bit, but yeah, I don't know, but this rare moment, I'm going to trust that Quentin Tarantino did his research.
Jackie:I would guess so. I mean, we have Lance even saying "Oh, you have to break the rib cage here and you have to pull and do this" and all these things. I learned that the way they shot this was actually in, well, not in reverse, but they shot the scene with Vince pulling the needle out of her because it was already in there and then when they went to go fix it in postthey just played it backwards to make it look like he was stabbing her, I guess because they were like, oh, maybe we shouldn't try to trust John Travolta to stab Uma Thurman in the chest effectively? Maybe?
Mel:I'm thinking that it's, I think that all the characters are pretty much lucky that they're alive in this movie. Anybody who is alive at any point is probably pretty lucky to be alive because they didn't get shot. They didn't OD. They didn't crash or whatever so I mean, a little bit of a fakey, not quite medically accurate injection. Okay. All right. Yeah. Like, we'll let it go. Just when he said you have to stab her in the heart. I said I'm sorry, what? What? We have to do what in this movie? I'm sorry, what? But I was kind of surprised that there wasn't just like a prop syringe or something to that effect, but instead they just said "Okay, we'll stick this in her and just pull it out and play it backwards," which is fairly smart. I'm not a movie producer, but it's a good option. I would say probably one of the safer ones. So, it's pretty obvious that this probably was not accurate. I can't imagine that the answer to oh my gosh, this person is almost dead on my floor is just stab them in the heart and I also can't imagine that you would have to just stab them anywhere in the heart because the heart is a complicated organ and there's no way this is the way that you solve the problem. I can't imagine either. I was really, really worried about the needle being sanitized because I've watched a lot of Grey's Anatomy and I know hearts can get infected and I was like, what if bacteria gets in that heart? Wouldn't that'd be bad?
Jackie:I feel like that was their last thought and truly, you bringing that up, says to me that there is no way that this whole process was scientifically sound.
Mel:I would like to know why these assholes didn't just give her CPR? Was it because she kind of vomited a little bit on herself?
Jackie:Oh, itcould have been, or maybe they were just so hyped up on adrenaline that they didn't think about it and they thought, oh, she's OD'ing. CPR won't do anything.
Mel:I'm thinking they didn't have CPR training, which is really sad cuz if you're going to be a drug dealer you should probably have CPR training.
Jackie:Absolutely. I would want my drug dealer to know CPR and how to administer an adrenaline shot, I guess. Because it's very important.
Mel:It's the first thing you fill out on the application online.
Jackie:That is so good to know .We really need this out there. So , we do save Mia, even though we think that this probably wasn't the way that she should have been saved, but whatever. And Vince drives her home and they kind of make a pact like, never happened, right? And she says, nope, never happened and they walk away. And then we cut to a new story and we watch Christopher Walken show up and tell a small child about how every single male relative in his family died at war and whatever. But here is this watch face that was shoved up everybody's butt and now I'm giving it to you.
Mel:You know, I've expected his reaction in that moment to be
like:I don't want to touch that watch. Could you please wipe it down a little bit efore you give it to me?
Jackie:Now I know nothing about storing things anywhere but your pockets, but how does one kind of excrete an item on demand as it were?
Mel:I'm not experienced in this area. You should have somebody else on this podcast because I don't know.
Jackie:Listeners, please tweet @JackieWatches with all of your information on the subject. We could really, really, really use it because truly, there are some plot holes here that I'm and I'm trying to fill.
Mel:I'm fine.
Jackie:Anyway, so after this traumatizing scene, it immediately cuts to Butch getting ready for a fight so we learn pretty quick that Butch is the small child in the earlier scene and he was bribed earlier in the movie by Marcellus to throw the fight and he did not do that thing. He actually did the complete opposite of that thing. And he not only won the fight, but he killed the dude he was fighting, which, what? What? So he bailed real hard because, probably not only because he killed a guy, but he didn't even know it, but also because he didn't make good on his promise to Marcellus.
Mel:Yeah, I mean, Vhing Rhames is really clear about that. He had it repeated several times. And then he jumps in, he gets in this cab from the 1950s. There's a theme here. They must have just bought a bunch of cars, like 1950s cars, to let's put some in the restaurant and then this extremely beautiful, mysterious Twin Peaks type lady is going to drive the other one. Absolutely. And I think she actually is a character that does have a web through Tarantino's movies.
Jackie:I will be honest with you, Mel and listeners, there is a lot to read about this movie because Tarantino has a wicked, twisted mind and I didn't go down all those rabbit holes, but I will tell you that this character, the taxi driver does actually have a thread in other Tarantino movies. And the fact that she is obsessed with death is actually related to her other characters, which is very interesting. And again, Tarantino doing his thing. So yeah, go listen, I'll try to find some some resources to put in the show notes, but there's just a lot and I'm like, I can't make this a four hour episode so not again at least. Not with Titanic under our belts.
Mel:You know, speaking of Tarantino and women, did I tell you that I once saw Quentin Tarantino?
Jackie:No, in the flesh?
Mel:In the flesh.
Jackie:Tell me everything.
Mel:It was at night, but you know, I knew it was still him because I walked right by him and I was like, oh, that dude looks just like Quentin Tarantino and then I realized t was because I live in this outhern California city on the oast, sort of close to the entral coast, really, on Santa arbara and it's known for rich p ople and film festivals and he was at the International Film Fe tival that year for whatever mo ie. And so I saw him and he ha two ladies on his arms, like on lady on each arm and they had clearly just been out for a really good time drinking and e was like, I didn't hear what e said, but I'm pretty sure his is what happened. He told a
Jackie:Why doesn't that surprise me? oke that wasn't funny and then t ey laughed a lot.
Mel:You know, that's the story that I'm making up about what happened because I can't imagine anything else happening, but he walked by and I thought this is really surreal because that was just Quentin Tarantino with two ladies on his arms and they were beautiful women and yeah...
Jackie:But when you're Quentin Tarantino, I guess you can get that. You know, I feel like that's the whole reason he even made movies in the first place was to become that guy. I secretly hope that Quentin Tarantino has been writing and directing and still filming a movie about his life that he will release after he dies and we will be able to watch it because that would be just incredible, truly. I don't know a lot about his life, but I know about when he was writing Pulp Fiction...Did you ever read that article? I think it was in Vanity Fair and it was just like, really interesting sort of expos of his, of what it was like being him in his early career. And apparently, there was this woman who was his typist, or his assistant or whatever and so she did most of the typing up of the script for Pulp Fiction and so he would give her just incomprehensible, illegible notes because they came from his mind, like his brilliant madman mind. And then she would type them up and turn them into an actual script with order and periods and stuff and she doesn't really get a lot of credit. So her name was Linda Chen. I'm just gonna put that out there. Props to Linda Chen for making sense of Quentin Tarantino because that is very challenging.
Mel:The funny thing about the article was it's basically like, she had no idea that she was typing up a good movie, it just seemed sort of like nonsense to her.
Jackie:I'm sure. I am sure. Well, let's get back to the nonsense because we need to see what happens to Butch because he is in a taxicab going to a motel maybe? Pretty seedy kind of secretive. We find out that he actually bailed on this fight, because he told his bookie friends about the bribe and therefore all of his like stats went down. This is where I very much exposed that I don't gamble on sports and I don't know what proper words to use, but essentially he gamed the system and told everybody about the bribe and then made a bunch of money. And so the plan is him and his girlfriend, maybe fiance. Not quite sure, their relationship, are gonna just get out of town. And then they talk about pot bellies for a while and I didn't realize that I hated that phrase. That I hate that phrase.
Mel:That whole scene was so so creepy to me.
Jackie:I didn't like it.
Mel:It was uncomfortable.
Jackie:It was bad.
Mel:You know what the uncomfortable part was and I will tell you because I realized is that she is infantilized. She is a child.
Jackie:She is and she's very young. I think that was the intention was that she would come off as very, very young compared to Butch, but it also wasn't really explained. We just kind of had to assume okay, this is just their relationship and we're gonna go forward.
Mel:I know, I think it was supposed to be kind of sweet, like a sensitive side or, you know, he's actually kind of a good guy, even though yeah, this is his shit litter and he's totally not a nice guy.
Jackie:Absolutely.
Mel:But she acts like a nine year old child and it gives me the creeps.
Jackie:Yeah, I don't love it. So, we have a shower scene. We may or may not see Bruce Willis' his penis. I'm not sure. Didn't want to rewind it to check, but I think it happened and he's looking for his watch, the watch and he cannot find it and he freaks out, but then he has this beautiful anger management moment where he calms down and he says "No, I'm sorry. I didn't explain to you how important this watch was to me so I will go get it. And then he gets in the car and starts screaming and I was like, oh my goodness. I love this. I love everything about this. This is how we should deal with our problems.
Mel:Just like scream in the car. Just get into the car and just scream. Yes, don't take it out on her. She didn't do it on purpose. Thank you for recognizing that. Go whine in your car. Yeah, that's a really good point. We should all do that.
Jackie:I said, let's talk about this anger management tactic. I feel like it's important. But he decides to go back to the apartment because he cannot leave town without this watch. They have to go back to the apartment. He shows up and decides, oh, I'm in a huge hurry. I know I'll have this pop tart in my cupboard still, but then decides to actually toast it, which...What?
Mel:Right? That was hilarious.
Jackie:Like, I thought we were in a rush, bud. I thought we had to get out of here.
Mel:He genuinely thought he was cool. At the moment he was like, oh, you know what? Nobody is really here. And then he notices the enormous gun. I mean, after that, I mean.
Jackie:Yes. And so he...
Mel:It's about a foot away.
Jackie:Yeah, he kind of stops and thinks about it. And I need
to know, Mel:What would you do in this situation if you were Butch?
Mel:If I saw a semi automatic with a silencer next to my sink, I would literally be gone a second later. You wouldn't know that I was there. I would literally just not exist anymore, like I would operate out of the apartment. I would be gone so fast. Yeah...
Jackie:I absolutely agree, but that is not what he does. He decides just to stand there because he hears the toilet flush and the door opens and it's Vince and I was really sad and surprised. And this is kind of where all the timelines start to knock themselves up because it's just Vince so we're not quite sure where Jules is, but we learned later that Jules has decided that he's never going to kill people ever again because of divine intervention and he basically...he immediately kills Vince coming out of the bathroom and then immediately says, oh, I just killed someone and kind of gently places the gun on the side table and takes a Kleenex and wipes it down a little bit.
Mel:He did a really terrible job with that. I was so worried because I thought, okay, he's not wiping his prints off of that. It was a little like tododo with the Kleenex. This is the kind of thing where you watch sort of crime shows or whatever or you listen to...I listen to true crime. I don't know about you. And you think you really don't want the criminals to get away with things, but at the same time you're thinking to yourself, why did you do that? Why did you leave so much evidence behind? Why did you leave the prints? I feel like if you're going to be a criminal, you should just give
Jackie:Just a couple more minutes of planning really could a little bit more strategic thought to your actions. go far for these criminals. Goodness, we shouldn't make a podcast, Mel. I read a cool little factoid as I was doing my research on this and it's about the bathroom. Are you interested to hear it?
Mel:I'm super interested.
Jackie:So I'm just gonna read this verbatim and I apologize that I cannot cite the source, but I'm pretty sure this is also on many, many different articles if you truly just search Pulp Fiction facts, but it says bathroom breaks are bad news in this film. Whenever Vincent Vega goes to the bathroom tragedy occurs during his three bathroom breaks in the movie, Mia Wallace overdoses, the restaurant where he and Jules are dining is held up in a robbery and Bruce Willis' Butch Coolidge gets the drop on him.
Mel:I'm not gonna lie to you, Jackie, it seems like the most relatable thing in this whole movie.
Jackie:I mean, what terrible things have happened while you're in the bathroom?
Mel:I mean, apart from just the thing itself, I don't know. It just it's so relatable that you go to the bathroom and you're so vulnerable because you're not in the room where the stuff is happening anymore. I don't know, you take off your pants for a minute, which is kind of vulnerable.
Jackie:Very vurnerable.
Mel:Yeah, yeah, you need to wash your hands so you have to like run water, which is kind of loud. You're not really..listen, you can't covertly go to the bathroom.
Jackie:Absolutely.
Mel:And so I just really feel John Travolta on this one. I'm feeling him.
Jackie:Wow. Well, I am glad I could speak to you with this fact. I didn't realize it was going to have such a really big impactful moment right there with all involving the bathroom. I had no idea.
Mel:There were very many relatable moments in the movie for me. But this you know, John Travolta using the bathroom is up there.
Jackie:That's a great summary for this movie. So, after he kills Vince in the bathroom, he leaves and sees Marcellus crossing the street and then it moves very fast, but amongst all of this crazy, we see Kathy Griffin do a small cameo.
Mel:What?! Wait.
Jackie:Did you see her?
Mel:No. Was she one of the ladies who was hanging over him when he was like gaining consciousness? Yes, she was. She honestly does not, in my opinion, look like herself, but I was not sitting very close to the TV, but I had to remember that this came out in 94. So, yes, she does have a small cameo and she's in the credits so you do see her for a minute. And then they have a crazy scuffle in an electronic shop and then the calm and cool store clerk says, alright, just chill. Everybody chill. And I wrote in my notes, calm and cool store clerk is the MVP and then I said "Oh, wait, never mind." The vaguest nevermind you've ever neverminded.
Jackie:He completely does a 180 and has them tied up wearing gags in their basement and this is where I almost wanted to shut it off, Mel. This was the point where I said "I don't know if I can do this movie anymore."
Mel:That was literally my thought as well. I have to tell you, I said oh, yeah, that's right. That's what happens now and this is why I haven't rewatched the movie in 20 years so it was a big (inaudible) moment. It was like the guy who, I forgot his name, Zed. It's a guy who has like eyeliner on and some earrings and he's like, yeah, clearly off duty security guard. I was like, I'm gonna get hit right in the face of the wave of homophobia right now.
Jackie:Uh huh.
Mel:It was like weirdly mixed in with white supremacy.
Jackie:Mmhmm.
Mel:It was super uncomfy. This all feels bad and I don't want to skim over it and imply that discussions of white supremacy and homophobia are not important, but for the sake of discussing this movie and keeping it in a reasonable amount of time, we will just say that this feels very, very bad in 2020. Wow, I just wondered where they were going with the moral lesson, you know?
Jackie:Yeah.
Mel:Jackie, can we talk just a minute about the craziness happening in the secret torture basement of that pawn shop.
Jackie:Yeah, there is a lot happening here, especially, I mean, on the surface there's a lot happening here because we have pivoted to a whole different kind of movie, but also we look at it through kind of the 2020 lens back into the 90s. We've got a lot of homophobia, we've got some white supremacy going on, we're just not loving that and I know we could have a whole episode on strictly this scene, but I mean, the thing that jumped out to me first was just this idea that basically Zed was going to rape Marcellus, but also we can't tell people about it and super homophobic. It was not great,
Mel:It, it was it was really awkwardly executed and I think didn't love. that the thing was that he thought he was being super edgy. Just make it seem so edgy for a mid 90s movie, but I really feel like once you just get past that just a little bit, you realize just how awkward it was and extremely problematic. And it's not the only point in the movie where there's just like this really obvious racism and I want to say it's racism because I'm seeing the whole movie through the lens of being Quentin Tarantino writing this and thinking, you know what would be fine, is if I had a white guy say the N word a lot. And yeah, you know, and then there are some scenes where Samuel Jackson is interacting with white people and he's just really like, calm and meek around them and I don't know, it's just super weird a I don't know, there are a lot of derogatory words for different races used in this movie, which I'm not going to name what they are, but you know what I'm talking about, right?
Jackie:Yeah, I even had to Google a couple phrases, because I had not even heard them and figure out oh, that's not a great one, either. Add that to the list.
Mel:Right. It's kind of old timey racism, but those words sort of stuck around for a while and they got replaced by other words, but it was racist cross the board. There was some racism against Latino people, generalized Asian population, black people and it was just just a bit of a free for all, but I really think that seeing it through the lens of actual creator who was kind of glamorizing the people who were racist, and when they were being racist.
Jackie:Right, and yeah, I was gonna say the same thing earlier. Right in the beginning of the episode, you said this is Quentin Tarantino trying to be the cool guy and just insert him in the cool guy things and I mean, in 1994, I was in a different place in my life and didn't see the world the way I see the world now, but, you know, Quentin, was this the way that you saw the world that you thought was cool? Was this the cool thing to do? And I mean, calling everyone the N word, whether you're black or white, I know that was on trend for the time and that does not make it okay.
Mel:So it doesn't make it okay, it was the opposite. It was like, okay is over here. It was way over there.
Jackie:All the way, all the way, all the way.
Mel:On the other side of the country. It was super not okay and it's just so interesting how the Times have changed since 94. I mean, that's been 26 years. We're just gonna round it down to 25 so that I don't feel superduper old. You know, because I don't feel like 25 years have passed since then, but they clearly have. And what I think is super interesting is that I didn't think about it at all and I had almost no awareness of my whiteness and my white privilege when I watched that movie, just being like a young person surrounded by her white family and my friends, strangely enough, didn't have those eyes opened and then as the years went by you look back on how much things have changed in 25 years. And it's fascinating and it's not that I would not that I'm like, saying he should have censored himself. It's just, why did he think it was so funny and interesting?
Jackie:Right, the fact that it was plot points, but even that it wasn't plot points. It was almost sprinkled in just because he could. That's always one that feels bad. It's one that feels bad. And that's why a lot of things feel bad when we rewatch it in 2020. It was hard. This whole scene was hard to watch, not only just because it was odd and really kind of diverted from the tone of the whole movie. I know we were seeing drugs and violence, but this took it to a whole level that I don't think it needed to go to for the sake of the plot, but here we are.
Mel:It was like he was uniting these two enemies with a common enemy which is getting getting sodomized by a man. And I know that it was meant to be non consensual, which is always not good in any situation. Obviously non consensual sex. The rape part is terrible. It's just that any mention of like men being intimate with men in the movie was a joke or was like the worst possible thing that can happen to you.
Jackie:Yeah, this reminds me of when everyone said no homo for a really long time. It was really painful. No homo. Foot massage, no homo. It was painful. But we get through the scene, thankfully, and Butch actually has a moment where he's gonna bounce and leave Marcellus to whatever was happening to him, but he has a moment of clarity and decides to go back, finds a samurai sword, there's a fight, Marcellus gets free, someone gets shot in the dick. It's a whole thing. You just got to watch it, I guess.
Mel:It was a lot. I will be honest and say that I fast forwarded because I remember what happened.
Jackie: You're like:I got it. Noted. I know what the scene looks like. And yeah, I mean, we can just leave it at that. It was was pretty far out there, even for a Quentin Tarantino movie. Like I said, it derailed, even from the craziness of this plot. It derailed a little bit too far. So, in any case, after this bonkers scene, we cut back and this is again where the timelines start to tighten the knots between each other because we're starting to see more pieces of the story tie themselves together and we end up back in the apartment that we saw in the beginning of the movie with Vince and Jules and there is someone trembling in the bathroom with a gun, seemingly getting ready to kill Vince and Jules. And, I wanted to mention this only because I found out that this actor, who plays this very, very shaky boy in the bathroom, is actually the same actor that played George in the Wedding Singer, which is another movie I just watched. I did not watch that episode.
Mel:I have seen the Wedding Singer, but I did not connect it.
Jackie:Yes. So the actor is Alexis Arquette and she actually underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2006 so after Pulp Fiction came out, and she has a whole documentary about her experience called Alexis Arquette, she's my brother, but she did pass away in 2016 due to HIV, which is unfortunate, because I absolutely loved her in the Wedding Singer and listening to her saying "Do you really want to hurt me?" a million times over.
Mel:That was the best part of the movie. Okay, alright, Alexis.
Jackie:Yeah so just a little note there. A little plug for the other episode of Jackie Watches Stuff, but just an interesting little fact. So anyway, I don't even know this boy's name in the movie. He's like, Bill or something, tries to shoot Jules and misses completely and Jules decides this is divine intervention and just says "I'm not doing this anymore."
Mel:The other most relatable moment in the movie was shooting and then missing.
Jackie:Oh, I was gonna say when you got shot at and then it missed you? I was confused what you were relating to in this scene. Do you mean you literally have shot something and missed or like a metaphor?
Mel:No, I just felt pretty confident that if I tried to shoot somebody in the heat of the moment, I would miss.
Jackie:At like super close range.
Mel:Exactly.
Jackie:So, either it was divine intervention or it was just bad luck. We're not quite sure, but Jules says "I'm out. I can't do this." So they take Marvin, this poor little boy who was trembling by the front door that we even see in the beginning of the movie, and they take him in the car with him and I will say I think I saw this coming because John Travolta is in the front seat and he whips around to talk to Marvin, and he's holding his gun and kind of lackadaisically flopping it around. It's kind of like when you're eating and you talk with your hands and you're holding the knife in your hand to talk to somebody. It's that level of threat, but times a million because this is a gun, and he shoots Marvin in the head.Oh, no.
Mel:Oh, Marvin. Oh, that moment was just so sad because I thought...
Jackie:It was 8am. It's too early for this.
Mel:Much too early.
Jackie:I don't love it. So, Jules with pieces of fake brain and blood on his body and his hair, calls his buddy Jimmy, who we know is Quentin Tarantino and says "Yo, I'm coming over, I got a problem." And Jimmy shows up in his like very suburban, very cutesy house that clearly him and his wife have made a nice little life in and says "Hey, I need your help. I need to get rid of this body." and Jimmy says absolutely not in much more colorful language that I won't repeat.
Mel:He drops the N word repeatedly, which I know that he felt relly good about doing and it was just not okay. I also want to point out that Toluca Lake is in like the valley so it feels really suburban because if you're in LA, you think anything sort of in the valley is not in the city, but for me, somebody who lives way up in Santa Barbara, if you're living in Toluca Lake, you're basically living in Burbank, which is basically LA anyway, so I mean. LA people do not @ me, I'm
Jackie:I'm loving. I'm loving this hot take. I have no sorry. It's just not the suburbs. It's like, really close to Griffith Park. It's, yeah. Anyway... knowledge of California geography so I'm so glad. I didn't even like plan this to have you on for this moment to talk about California geography, but I'm very excited that you could drop that hot take.
Mel:Thank you. I was born in the valley and spent a lot of time there as a kid. This is pre Seattle. So yeah.
Jackie:You heard it here first. It's not the city. Basically, LA.
Mel:This has been the Valley Girl Hot Take corner.
Jackie:We have a jingle and everything. I love it. Perfect. So, Jimmy is very upset. Like you said, he drops the N word many times. He's also much more concerned about getting divorced than the fact that there is a dead body in his garage, but you know, priorities. It's fine. So Jules calls Marcellus who calls in the wolf and these two boys, Vince and Jules fangirl over this guy. They love him. They're his biggest fan and he's going to solve everything about the whole headless corpse in the car that is now covered in blood because the face was shot off, if you don't remember that happening. Thanks a lot, Vince. Well done.
Mel:I do remember seeing part of his face in the trunk and thinking that was bad continuity.
Jackie:It was awful. I said the exact same thing. Thank you so much. I said he was shot directly in the face. So there should not be any of his face.
Mel:Exactly.
Jackie:Any of it. So, maybe this dude got off lucky and he didn't get blowed up in the face? Maybe like it was a quick and dirty in the heart thing or omething?
Mel:I'm not going to describe what I think it was. Let's just move on.
Jackie:Yep, moving forward. Absolutely. So basically, the wolf shows up and says "Great! You're gonna clean the car, you're gonna take the body and put it in the trunk, you're gonna go get me some quilts. It's going to be great and go." And so I googled how to clean bloodstains from a car and I have not been like arrested or anything yet and there's a lot of different options. You can use baking soda, meat tenderizing paste, lemon water, salt water or hydrogen peroxide and it should do the trick.
Mel:Oh my gosh, they really recommend a lot of those for when you have acid reflux too.
Jackie:Interesting. I'm not quite sure why those things would be the same.
Mel:I don't know. You know, did you tell that the FBI agent who's secretly monitoring you that this was just for your podcast?
Jackie:Yeah, I feel like I I should have probably done a subsequent search that was like how to clear your search history when you're researching for a podcast, but it looks incriminating.
Mel:Exactly.
Jackie:And that would have really done it. That would have really, really done it.
Mel:I would have gone incognito, but that would have been more suspicious.
Jackie:Right? That's weird. You don't do that. I just own it. My search history is all over the place, but I do now know there's a wikiHow about how to clean bloodstains from a car so clearly other people have done this for whatever reason.
Mel:Their reasons are their own.
Jackie:Right. No judgment here. So, it works, I guess. Jules and Vince have their little scuffle in the car or whatever and they clean the whole thing. It looks great. And now we get to go to the diner for breakfast, but not before changing all of our clothes. And then all of the timelines kind of locked together because they're in these dorky outfits, which we've seen when Vince and Jules went to the bar to go get stuff with Marcellus and talk to him. And so we see all the timelines coming together, but they show up at the diner and it's the same diner, we find out, that we saw all the way in the beginning of the movie.
Mel:You know, I found out about that diner. It was Bulldoze and now it's an AutoZone.
Jackie:Oh.
Mel:Sad, right? Because I would have really liked to go there. I actually went to the diner in Pa ks and Rec that they go to. It' actually a real diner in Van uys and I went there on purpo e because I wanted to feel ike I was in Parks and Rec. know, right? And I would ave gone to the pulp fiction di er just because I kind of l ke diners. It just doesn't exi t anymore.
Jackie:Wow, what a bummer. I wish they would have kept that around. Maybe because it actually, even though we didn't see the robbery, maybe they actually did get away with it? And that's why they had to bulldoze it down. They went into bankruptcy.
Mel:It's sad.
Jackie:Dun dun dun. So Jules gives Vince this whole speech about how it was divine intervention with those bullets earlier. I'm not doing this anymore. And then we kind of see the robbery go down because we hear the line where he says "coffee!" very loud in the beginning of the movie so you put all the pieces together. And of course we know that Vince goes to the bathroom and therefore something bad is about to happen and the robbers Honey Bunny, and why am I blanking on his name?
Mel:Pumpkin.
Jackie:Pumpkin. Thank you.
Mel:Tim Roth.
Jackie:Yes, more commonly known. They start the robbery and they start to hold everybody up. CUT TO John Travolta sitting on the toilet reading an actual Pulp Fiction magazine, which is very funny. Wow, you're right. Very, very meta. So I mean, I'm not going to go through every detail of the scene because it's a lot of back and forth where pumpkin and honey bunny are sticking people up and telling people to give us your wallets and the manager comes out and he says that, you know, I'm just a coffee shop manager, which I did read, the coffee shop manager says I'm just a coffee shop and then Pumpkin kind of holds him down to the table and because he never said coffee shop manager, they edited his credit. So instead of coffee shop manager played by Joe Smith or whoever,
it just says coffee shop:Joe Smith, which is very funny.
Mel:Wow.
Jackie:So he's the whole coffee shop. Jules decides okay, that whole divine intervention thing. Like, I guess that's not happening right now because people's lives are in danger. So, you see him slowly cocking his gun under the table and he lores pumpkin over to the table with this suitcase and I have to ask you, Mel, what do you think is in the suitcase?
Mel:Oh, the suitcase? Well, I...
Jackie:I have no idea, I'll be honest.
Mel:I know what literally was in the suitcase, they put an orange like light bulb that was like, electrically rigged with an orange light bulb and that's why it looked really golden when everybody would open it, but the thing that was supposed to be in it sort of story wise was never revealed. There's just all these theories out there. And some people say that it was like Marcellus Wallace's soul that he had traded to the Devil or whatever or sold to the Devil. And I honestly thought that it was just a bunch of gold.
Jackie:Yeah.
Mel:That's the most mundane answer anybody could ever think of.
Jackie:I like truly thought we were going to see it, which I guess, it's funny and I don't know about you, but I was never intrigued by what was in this suitcase at all until this scene.
Mel:Exactly.
Jackie:Yeah, we don't know what's in there, huh?. You know, we have no idea. So, I couldn't tell you. I'm wondering if it's just something super bizarre, like the head of the silver monkey from "Guts" or whatever that game show was. I can't think of now from the 90s. But I truly don't know what it is. Clearly, nobody knows what it is. So, Pumpkin is infatuated. He is just enamored with this thing and says "Oh, is that?" and he said "yeah." And then Jules pulls him down and is going to shoot them and make them sit down. And then we see kind of the conclusion of this movie. Vincent shows up in the middle of all of this, and just kind of immediately cocks his un, because that's what Vincent oes and he's ready. He doesn't now what's going on, but he ust knows that he's ready to s oot who
Mel:Amanda Palmer is freaking out because she does a really good freakout lady.
Jackie:Yes.
Mel:She's just like, unhinged and I love her a lot. And also I
Jackie:Oh my god.
Mel:Because she went to UC Santa Cruz. want to point out that Vince is wearing a UC Santa Cruz banana slug shirt. It's the exact same shirt that my wife had.
Jackie:I love that.
Mel:Until about like five or so years ago when it was so holey that we had to throw it away, but it was just funny to see him wearing the shirt that she had and like completely forgot that that was the case.
Jackie:Yeah, that's amazing that it's an accurate shirt and it is made...That's an amazing fact that you're not going to find on the internet, but that's a real shirt. I love it. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. So, I have to quote one of I think the quotes that made me laugh the hardest in this movie and truly, it probably wasn't even written to be that funny, but Jules pulls Pumpkin down and makes him sit down and points the gun at him and he looks at him deadpan and he says "You happen to pull this shit while I'm in a transitional period." and I could not stop laughing. I thought it was the funniest thing.
Mel:That's because Samuel L. Jackson is an amazing person.
Jackie:He's wonderful. Like he's...
Mel:He's way too good for this movie even.
Jackie:He is. He is. He did a great job all the way through, but this was the cherry on top for me where he basically said "I'm done with this. I could just shoot you right now, but I'm trying to be a better person so instead I'm just going to hold you at gunpoint and threaten you with your life." It's amazing.
Mel:I think that my favorite thing to think about Samuel L. Jackson is that in, so this came out in 94, right? Didn't Jurassic Park come out the year before? It's like two really good Samuel Jackson movies and I honestly think that his better role was in Jurassic Park.
Jackie:Ooh, another hot take.
Mel:I know.
Jackie:Interesting. I guess, I mean, hmm, I'll have to think about that and get back to you. I have not seen Jurassic Park in a very long time so I need to get back to you on that, but I mean, anything he does is very, very good and funny and I appreciate all of his very deadpan moments, which are just perfection and this was the most perfect of all of them, in my opinion. But this is basically the end of the movie Jules kind of says "Listen, take the $1500 in my wallet, get out of here, don't come back and he gives his Bible quote, shepherd thing again and that's kind of the end of the movie, which is an odd ending because you kind of, right at the end of that movie, figure out, oh, all the timelines and wait, we watched them in completely out of order and then you have to reassemble them in your brain, which, admittedly, I don't think I've yet done but we basically watch all these people fumble through life in a world of drugs and violence.
Mel:That's so true. It's true. It's a really weird ending. I was trying to think why they ended it that way and I think it's because of Jules' character arc and I am giving Quentin Tarantino more credit than I want to give him, but it's going against my DNA at this point, but you know, he starts out doing this Bible quote which he does like three times and he kind of says that he's a different person in the quote each time and then at the very end he had his moment of clarity. He says that he thinks he's actually just like the evil man or that...I forgot what the quote is so it was like he was realizing some heavy truth about himself and decided to go on his walkabout and then we never see him again. I at least appreciate that he lives in this movie.
Jackie:Absolutely. And so maybe to your earlier point, maybe this is a movie about Jules?
Mel:Maybe.
Jackie:I mean, it's buried under like Uma Thurman and John Travolta going dancing, but it is an interesting character arc to watch.
Mel:It is.
Jackie:He definitely has the most transformative story.
Mel:You know, I feel like we we didn't talk about the Wolf as much as I thought we were going to when I was watching the movie.
Jackie:Oh, you know, tell me all your theories,
Mel:So, I don't have any theories. Maybe some hot takes? So, my thought about the Wolf is, first of all, he got to that guy's house in nine minutes or whatever.
Jackie:Yep.
Mel:And that's physically impossible. I don't care where he was in the valley. He did not get to Toluca Lake in nine minutes. It's in Palm...
Jackie:He drives really fast.
Mel:No, that's not it doesn't matter. If you're in a helicopter, maybe? Yeah, so that's my hot take. I think LA people will back me up on this. And I love Harvey Keitel just because he's always that same guy like every movie.
Jackie:Mhm. And I'm fine with him type being typecasted into this role of like, the mobster gangster. I'm going to solve all your problems. Don't worry about it kind of vibe. Yeah, I'm down.
Mel:So, quick sidebar. Did you watch that show Shrill?
Jackie:No.
Mel:Oh, it's on Hulu. It's so good. It's really, really good. At least I liked it and I highly recommend it, but the gal who is working at the junkyard is actually the mom of the main character on Shrill. And I love that there's some, I don't know, that I recognized her in that because it was kind of amazing. I know, she's much older, but like, I love her.
Jackie:Goodness. They're all over the place. Well, we got a lot of hot takes about California geography and I love that. Thank you so so much for bringing that to the show.
Mel:No problem. For somebody who hasn't left their house in about four months, I can tell you all about driving around places.
Jackie:It's just something you dream about now because of COVID.
Mel:Yeah, it's a distant memory.
Jackie:Well, Mel, we went through this Quentin Tarantino journey together. Thank you for holding my hand and getting me to the other side. I normally try to summarize for folks that have not yet seen these movies like, the talking points that will allow them to sound like they've seen this movie, but that's really hard to do.
Mel:There are so many parts of this movie that you could just drop. And some people would be like, oh, yeah, you saw Pulp Fiction, right?
Jackie:You absolutely saw it. I mean, the F word, the N word. Those are two very commonly used words in this movie. You could talk about the dance competition with John Travolta and Uma Thurman and how weird that was. You can talk about the drug overdose scene where John Travolta had to pretend to stab Uma Thurman, but instead it was movie magic. You can talk about Bruce Willis being in this film. You can talk about the watch. There are so many things you can talk about.
Mel:You could talk about Bruce Willis' 90s like guy jeans.
Jackie:Absolutely you can.
Mel:And then you'd sound really knowledgeable.
Jackie:That is very true. I think we've prepped our listeners for this movie.
Mel:I have no doubt anybody listening to this is just ready to talk about Pulp Fiction like they've seen it and you know, I'm really glad that you brought me on this journey. Thanks for letting me go with you, Jackie.
Jackie:I loved every minute of it, Mel. Hopefully we'll be able to drive through California together at lightning speed someday.
Mel:It's doubtful.
Sean:Jackie Watches Stuff is supported by our listeners. I'd like to thank our supporters in the academy on Patreon for their generous ongoing support of the show. Paul H., Briana S., Jared S., Thomas S., Linda V., Missy V. If you'd like to join the esteemed ranks of the academy and get a shout out for supporting us, among other cool benefits, visit patreon.com/jackiewatchesstuff. You can also support the show by submitting a review on your favorite podcast player or by sharing us with your family and friends. Jackie Watches Stuff is hosted by Jackie Vetrano and produced by me, Sean Flynn. Find me on Twitter @wxgeek or on Instagram @arcadefuncomplex. Jackie Watches Stuff is available wherever fine podcasts are sold or listen online at jackiewatchesstuff.com. You can also send us your thoughts on Pulp Fiction on Twitter. We're @JackieWatches. Thanks for listening. Join us next time when we watch all three original Star Wars movies. Yep, all three. May the Force Be With Us.