Why I Was Wrong To Hate ‘Pulp Fiction’

Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction was released on October 14, 1994, and its impact on independent film and Hollywood still resonates 20 years later. Decider is celebrating the film’s anniversary with a week’s worth of appreciation for the gangster classic. Click here to follow our coverage.

I didn’t see Pulp Fiction when it was released 20 years ago this week. I was, after all, just 11. But I was desperate to see it, and I had begged my parents to let me watch it when they rented it on VHS a few months after it picked up Best Original Screenplay at that year’s Academy Awards. (Even though I hadn’t seen it, I was furious that it lost every other Oscar for which it was nominated.) My parents refused; my mother, especially, was shocked by how violent the film was and definitely wasn’t going to let me watch it. Naturally, I was angry, and it would be years before I finally managed to rent the movie by myself when I was 17.

In the six years between the time Pulp Fiction was released and when I finally saw it, numerous films had attempted to replicate its sensibility. There were the long-titled movies like Things To Do in Denver When You’re Dead, 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, and Two Days in the Valley. All had dark themes and light tones, played with violent imagery, and featured quippy dialogue and meandering plot lines. The were also movies like Out of Sight, The Limey, The Usual Suspects, Natural Born Killers… all movies about crime told with an attention to style and particular aesthetics that definitely took a page out of Quentin Tarantino’s book.

Then there was Doug Liman’s critically acclaimed Go, the most obvious (and best) film to use the Pulp Fiction formula and craft a multi-narrative crime thriller. It featured a younger cast, which, naturally, appealed to a younger audience. (It also had a pretty kick-ass soundtrack.)

I had even seen Tarantino’s follow-up to Pulp Fiction, the incredible caper film Jackie Brown, which still remains my personal favorite of his films. Tarantino had toned down the violence and the cinematic trickery, but he still incorporated his incredible ear for dialogue as well as his love for convoluted, non-linear storytelling. Through imitations, parodies, and Tarantino’s own follow-up, Pulp Fiction felt extremely familiar by the time I had finally seen it. I was jaded enough to shrug it off, thinking, “Well, it’s not as good as I had expected.”

I happened to watch it again recently, just a few months ago, and having more of an understanding of its place within the context of ’90s cinema completely reshaped how I looked at the film. It was almost as if I were watching it again for the first time — the film’s technical feats, which became oversaturated by the end of the decade, were suddenly feeling more fresh and groundbreaking. Pulp Fiction revolutionized contemporary cinema in an incredible way, serving as a radical catalyst that influenced other filmmakers in a manner not seen since the ’70s. It also completely changed how we view, and engage with, independent films.

I can’t help but laugh about my initial reaction to Pulp Fiction, and how my reaction to it being too familiar and unsurprising proved how influential it really was. It’s a common problem for those who come to experience radical forms or art years after their release; with books, music, theater, and film, there’s a trickle up effect. Low culture is appropriated as it becomes more and more popular and, in turn, is watered-down to be easily sold to the masses. The Pulp Fiction effect happened swiftly and intensely, but it’s hardly the first or last time cinema has been affected by one single film. Just look at how Christopher Nolan’s somber Batman Begins influenced the current string of Very Serious Superhero films. Or the granddaddy of all cinema, Citizen Kane; by the time I finally saw it, I was underwhelmed by the plot, having seen it parodied in various forms (most memorably, for me, in an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures).

A film’s ubiquity can sometimes work against it in terms of its legacy. It’s the ironic effect of a film’s popularity — if something becomes too popular, too approachable, it loses its power and cred. I don’t think it’s happened with Pulp Fiction yet, and I hope it doesn’t, because there really isn’t a film in the last two decades that was as subversive, revolutionary, and brilliant.

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Photos: Miramax / Everett Collection