‘Pulp Fiction’: a movie that stagnated the American independent scene of the 1990s
It’s always been the way of the movie business that whatever works for somebody else will instantly be seized upon, lead to a slew of thinly veiled imitators, and swiftly be run into the ground. It might be a fad more synonymous with blockbuster cinema, but for the American independent scene of the 1990s, Pulp Fiction was the catalyst.
Already marked out a filmmaking wunderkind after Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino became a household name when his staggering sophomore feature hauled in over $200million at the global box office, won an Academy Award for its screenplay, and secured a further six nominations, including ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’.
It was an instant classic, quite possibly the coolest film of the decade, and ultimately one of the most influential. With the rest of Hollywood casting envious eyes at Tarantino’s nonlinear narrative, fractured timeline, rapid-fire banter, endlessly quotable dialogue, and criminal misadventures, the floodgates suddenly opened to the point it felt as though every second or third indie movie to arrive in the next few years was a Pulp Fiction clone in one way or another.
That’s not to suggest that independent film, in general, was in danger of stagnating in the 1990s when there were plenty of classics to emerge during that time, but the weight of Tarantino’s second film became so overbearing that what had been fresh, inventive, and original in 1994 was ubiquitous to the point of oversaturation by the turn of the millennium.
Suddenly, it became almost impossible to turn around without bumping into an unconventionally-structured crime caper packed full of eccentric characters, populated by an ensemble cast comprised of stars, unknowns, and fading favourites, needle-drop soundtracks, overwrought monologues, pop culture references galore, and bursts of graphic violence.
Tarantino even co-starred in 1995’s offbeat heist comedy Destiny Turns on the Radio, while Things to Do In Denver When You’re Dead, Palookaville, and The Immortals were all marketed on the back of disparate bickering personalities planning big scores, and it may not be a coincidence that Get Shorty escaped development hell around the same time Pulp Fiction hit big, with Elmore Leonard one of the auteur’s biggest inspirations.
2 Days in the Valley, American Strays, Big City Blues, and Suicide Kings were all crime thrillers that carried at least one of – and in some cases far too many – of Pulp Fiction‘s trademarks: unconnected stories that eventually tie together, sharp-suited gangsters taking care of business, hit men trading offbeat barbs, kidnapping, extortion, murder, and borderline self-indulgence. That’s without even mentioning Mark Wahlberg’s The Big Hit, Joe Pesci’s 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, or Ray Liotta’s Phoenix that read from the playbook and threw oddities, idiosyncrasies, body counts, and blue language into the mix.
Cult favourite The Boondock Saints, Doug Liman’s Go, Matthew Bright’s Freeway, and Skip Woods’ Thursday had all arrived by the end of the 1990s as well, to turn the Pulp Fiction obsession into something that closer resembled an addiction, and it was inevitable the bubble was going to burst eventually.
In what proved to be fortuitous timing, Hollywood found its next shiny toy right as the decade was drawing to a close. Suspiciously, there was instantly less interest in crafting the next generation of Tarantino knockoffs when The Matrix arrived to change the face of cinema yet again, with the focus now placed on bullet time, leather, and gun-fu. It was a brief craze, sure, but for a while, it was nauseating.