Recalling Pulp Fiction

                When I was a young kid, my parents picked what movies I'd go see at the theater. I had input of course, but ultimately they would decide. They picked well. Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Dark Crystal, etc. At some point, at least with my dad, I started picking the movies. He knew I watched more about movies on TV than he did and so he usually ended up asking me what looked good. That's the way it went with Pulp Fiction. He asked me what it was about, I told him it had gangsters, John Travolta and Bruce Willis. He was sold and off we went one Tuesday night to the Bakery Center to watch a movie unlike anything we'd seen before. Right away we could tell this was not like any movie we were used to. The emphasis on the dialogue and the fractured storytelling added up to a movie that I can still remember being something that my dad and I talked about on the ride home and for days and months to come. 

                The cast is fantastic and I remember it being the movie where I first really took notice of favorites like Samuel Jackson and Tim Roth.  The soundtrack was one of the highlights for me and I remember going straight away to Specs and buying it on cassette so I could play over and over  Chuck Berry's " You Never Can Tell" and the remake of "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon" from Urge Overkill.  

             Scenes that still linger for me are the Christopher Walken scene where he tells the story of the watch (a classic for Walken fans) and the restaurant sequence with Travolta and Uma Thurman that left me wishing there was a place to go eat like that somewhere in town.  Of all his movies, Pulp Fiction has remained my favorite from Quentin Tarantino.  The pacing and the editing in this movie is perfect; whereas later films from him have become a bit self indulgent with the usual Tarantino tropes for my taste. Although it's not his first movie (Reservoir Dogs has that distinction), I've always believed this movie encapsulates Tarantino's style so well, making Pulp Fiction, not just the title for this movie, but indeed Tarantino's whole filmography. Pulp Fiction entertains with so much hilarious dialogue that I wish I could quote as easily as many other people I know.  Packed with memorable performances from a slew of favorite actors, this is a movie I'm looking forward to seeing again on the big screen very soon.