Endlessly quotable and full of iconic characters: Although the story of Pulp Fiction does not follow a conventional dramaturgy, let alone a chronological narrative, the film seems to be cast from a single source. Quentin Tarantino’s unmistakable signature runs like a common thread through the entire film.
In fact, the original plan for Pulp Fiction called for a completely different concept: instead of three stories that would be cleverly woven together, first three Pulp Fiction shorts are created, which are ultimately put together in the form of a classic episodic film à la Four Rooms.
Pulp Fiction was supposed to consist of 3 short films by Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary and Adam Rifkin
On the occasion of Pulp Fiction’s 30th anniversary, Variety spoke to various people involved in the film. This includes Roger Avary, who shares a “story by” credit with Tarantino in the film’s end credits. The director, screenwriter and producer explains how this came about in an interview.
Avary says:
The original idea for Pulp Fiction was that we three short films with three different filmmakers wanted to rotate. I’m going to do one, Quentin is going to do one and we have a buddy, Adam Rifkin, who wanted to do one too. I wrote a script called Pandemonium Reigns, and over time my little short film became a full-length script. Reservoir Dogs became a full-length screenplay. But Adam never wrote his, and so Pulp Fiction didn’t happen for a long time.
However, the success of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino’s first real feature film (he had previously made the amateur film My Best Friend’s Birthday, of which only 36 of the original 70 minutes remain) would change everything. Before Avery knew it, Pulp Fiction was picking up steam again – as a major film.
And then Quentin does Reservoir Dogs and gets all sorts of offers for really cool studio projects. But one day he called me and said, ‘I keep thinking about Pulp Fiction, and I think I want to make it as a film and direct it myself.’ So we took my script [zu Pandemonium Reigns] and folded it back up, and then we went to Amsterdam and took all the scenes that we had ever written that hadn’t been filmed yet. And finally Pulp Fiction came out. The episodic approach of Pulp Fiction can still be found in Quentin Tarantino’s films today
Looking back, it seems almost unimaginable that the film that would finally cement Tarantino’s reputation as one of the most exciting filmmakers of the 1990s only a third would have been written and directed by himself. For many film fans, Pulp Fiction is the epitome of a Tarantino film.
What the director and screenwriter has retained to this day is his penchant for episodic storytelling. True, it is not always as pronounced as in Inglourious Basterds, which is divided into five clearly defined chapters. Nevertheless, story and character groups can always be identified in his films.