Thursday, January 31, 2013

19 MFing Years Ago?!

Vanity Fair has a brief but interesting oral history on the making of Pulp Fiction.

“I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in the movie,” Uma Thurman tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Mark Seal of Pulp Fiction. Thurman explains that it wasn’t just the obscenity, or her character’s drug habit—it was also the rape of her crime-boss husband. “Pretty frightening,” she says. Referring to the boarding-school environment she was coming from, Thurman says, “I was 23, from Massachusetts.” It took a lot of work on Tarantino’s part to convince her. “He wasn’t this revered demigod auteur that he has grown into. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, because I was worried about the Gimp stuff,” she adds, referring to the leather-clad character who emerges from a cage, set to have his way with the bound-and-gagged Marsellus Wallace. “We had very memorable, long discussions about male rape versus female rape. No one could believe I even hesitated in any way. Neither can I, in hindsight.”

Full article here.

5 comments:

Joe said...

Saw it with Jay twice in two weeks when it came out, and I don't think I've seen it all the way through since. Surely I have, though. My favorite part is still Harvey's pointing to the coffee cup and the "let's not start..." speech. I always want to bring that one when we win something at work, but I don't want to get fired. I guess that's why we like movies.

Jay said...

That is a great scene.

I'm not ashamed to admit that this movie completely blew my mind.

Eric said...

Love how the auteur had to fight studio management over the choice of Travolta!

Dave said...

Undeniable classic. Inglourius Basterds (or whatever) comes 'this' close for me.

Mike said...

Damn paywalled articles. What I could read was fascinating. More things to love about that film than I could list, but the dialogue was relentlessly perfect.