Tarantino continues, “The worst-case scenario was, they weren’t into it, didn’t understand it, but were going, ‘Well, we can’t really lose money on it, and we don’t want to be the idiots that pass on his second film,’ so they’d make it anyway. I was prepared that if I got that vibe from them, to ask them not to make the movie. I’d say, ‘Look, let me go and make it somewhere else. I want the marriage to be right.’ So I told them, “We need you to say yes or no, right now, if we’re going to get it done in time to show it at the Cannes Film Festival.’ They thought about it and then they said no.”
Medavoy put Pulp in turnaround.12 Before going out with it, Tarantino’s producer, Lawrence Bender, gave it to Richard Gladstein, whom Harvey had hired as head of production. Gladstein read it, and passed it along to his boss, who was in L.A. about to hop on the plane back to New York. It was 160 pages long, and Harvey gave him a look that said, What the fuck is this? This is not a script, it’s a phone book. Gladstein exclaimed, “Please, just read it, it’s Quentin’s new script.”
“Is it good?”
“It’s great.”
“You think we should do it?”
“I think we should do it.”
“I have to read this on the plane tonight?”
“You have to read it on the plane tonight because we have a little window of opportunity before everyone else. It’s not a big window, but it’s a leg up. So let’s have the leg up.”
Three hours later, Weinstein called Gladstein. He had read the first twenty pages, he said, “Ohmigod, this is brilliant. The opening of this is unbelievable. Does it stay this good?”
“It stays this good.”
“Okay, don’t leave the office, I’m gonna keep reading.” Forty-five minutes later, he called back, and said, “The main character just died.”
“Right.”
“What happens in the end?”
“Harvey, just keep reading.”
“Richard, is it a happy ending?”
“Yes.”
“Ohmigod! He comes back, doesn’t he? I’ll call you back.” When he in fact called back a half hour later, he exclaimed, “Fuck it. We have to make this movie. It’s unbelievable. Buy the script, I’m making the movie.”
Weinstein couldn’t believe his good luck. “As opposed to many other people in this town, the Weinsteins trust their own opinion, work on a gut level,” says Tarantino. “Harvey is like reading it on an airplane and halfway through, before he’s even finished, he calls up and says, ‘Make the deal. We’ve got to get this.’ You can’t argue with that kind of enthusiasm.”
Compared to The Piano and The Crying Game, Pulp wasn’t that risky. As Hess puts it, “Everyone had said, ‘Goddamn, I wouldn’t have bought a movie where the chick doesn’t talk the whole damn movie, hats off to Harvey and Bob. I wouldn’t have bought a movie where the guy shows his weenie in the third act, hats off to Harvey and Bob. Pulp Fiction was different. Yes, it had an unusual timeline, totally nonlinear in every way, but it had sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll, and violence, and that’s something every studio would have [gone for].”
To bring in his pictures at a fraction of what a studio would spend to do the same films, Harvey had to convince actors to cut their rates. Everyone knew that indies were labors of love, and his attitude was, I’m doing God’s work, and stars ought to defer, work for scale, and/or share the risk, taking percentages of the back end, the way they did for Woody Allen and Robert Altman. Before the sale to Disney, he couldn’t afford not to. After the sale, when it became evident that Miramax was no longer really independent and could afford A-list prices, the fiction that it was independent became all the more important, a necessary shield to deflect the scrutiny of agents and unions. Hence, as Smith suspected, the acquisition of a film like Clerks. Agents, in particular, hated the Miramax co-chairman for talking actors into cutting their prices. “Harvey’s always wanted to own a talent agency, as a way by which he could control talent and talent prices,” says Safford. “I’ve been in meetings with him at agencies where he made the ugliest kinds of threats, saying he was going to start his own agency and walk out with half their clients.” But the agents kept coming to the table. Explains former marketing VP Marcy Granata, “Harvey’s power base is the talent. They will do anything for him. Hollywood may resent the deals he strikes, but nevertheless, a major star or director or writer has put them at that table based on their loyalty to Harvey. A lot of talent, especially the young talent, has to adapt their personas to Hollywood’s standards, and feel suffocated by it. So here’s a guy they don’t have to feel suffocated by. They don’t have to act through an evening with Harvey, they can just be themselves.”
Fortunately, Tarantino was so hot, and his script so cool, that actors were lining up around the block to work for scale. Underlining the affinity between the two men and their companies, the Pulp cast was shaping up to be a Katzenberg special: stars-in-trouble who needed career makeovers, like John Travolta and Bruce Willis; character actors, like Harvey Keitel and Samuel L. Jackson; barely proven up-and-comers, like Uma Thurman, and indie stalwarts like Amanda Plummer and Eric Stoltz. Tarantino rejected Daniel Day-Lewis for the role Travolta played, and Meg Ryan and Holly Hunter for the part that Thurman took, holding the budget down to a mere $8.5 million. Willis was coming off a series of big studio–busters like Hudson Hawk and The Last Boy Scout, and nonstarters like Striking Distance, but he was still a box office draw overseas, and on the basis of his name alone, Miramax sold worldwide rights for $11 million, putting itself in the black before Tarantino had a chance to yell, “Action!” As an index of how fast the indie world was changing, agent Cassian Elwes says that William Morris “packaged” Pulp Fiction. Morris clients included Tarantino, Avary, Willis, Travolta, Keitel, and Ving Rhames.
When he was going into production on Pulp, just into 1994, Avary was at the lab, CFI, supervising the color timing on his own film, Killing Zoe, when he was called to the phone. It was Tarantino’s attorney, “frantic,” according to Avary. He was faxing over a rider to Avary’s Pulp Fiction contract according to which Avary gave up his co-screenwriting credit in exchange for “story by” credit. He wanted Avary to sign it and fax it back immediately. Avary called his friend and with a note of disbelief in his voice, said, “Hold on a moment here, Quentin. You want me to sign a paper that essentially says that I’m forfeiting my writing credit on the film, and take a ‘story by’ credit?” According to him, Tarantino replied, “Well, yeah, I want the credits to end with a title that says, ‘Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.’ ” The reason for that, says Avary now, was that “when you’re positioning yourself to become a media star, you don’t want people to be confused as to who the star is.”
According to Avary, Tarantino tried to persuade him that this was a good deal, saying, “Yeah, but look, you’ll get ‘story by,’ you and me, and the writing’s for me, but the fact of the matter is, that middle story is yours, but this one attributes the whole story to you. That sounds really good.” Avary thought to himself, He’s very convincing. It’s just like the time when he persuaded me to keep that picture of me in the gay section of Video Archives, recommending movies. But there are all sorts of things peppered throughout Pulp Fiction that are mine. Avary replied, “No, I’m not going to sign it.” At that, Avary claims, “Quentin flew into a rage.” He yelled, “Okay, fine, I’m gonna rewrite the script, and write all of your contributions out of the screenplay, and you’re going to get nothing.” Avary was not a member of the Writers Guild, and Tarantino promised him the equivalent of Writers Guild residuals, and an adjustment of the back end participation in his favor. Avary had just put everything he had into Killing Zoe, was facing credit card debts totaling $10,000, and was behind on rent. He thought it over, said okay. He signed the document, faxed it back, and took the money.
“I bought my house off that film, so I’m not complaining, but that was the moment when the fissure occurred in our relationship. I resented the fact that th
e call came first from his attorney instead of from him. The way Quentin suddenly attacked me was more startling to me than what he was fighting for, the credit. It was like an assault. For me, that was the moment when the fun of being two young guys coming up together, and writing for each other, completely vanished. I love Quentin, but things were never really the same between us after that. In that moment I realized that the ’90s were no different from the ’80s or the ’70s. This business has a way of taking friendship and love and passion and excitement for just creating, taking that idealism, and just shattering it. What I want is for it to be the way that it was, and it’s not money that would make it the way it was, it’s just that I miss making movies for the love of making movies. And I just miss Quentin.”
Counters Tarantino, “The things that Roger thinks are betrayal are just the natural way that things change. I had said, ‘Let me buy ‘Pandemonium Reigns,’ I’ll do a first pass, incorporate it into my material, and then you can come in, and we can do another pass on it. Well, that second pass never happened, because I pretty much did it all in the first pass. There was no reason to bring him in anymore. ‘Pandemonium Reigns’ could never have been produced. I just liked the basic idea of it, and a couple of incidents, and threw the rest away.”
The Weinsteins were so infatuated with Tarantino or so convinced that Pulp was going to be a hit that they allowed him to flout what had become the First Rule of Miramax: “Thou Shalt Obey the Cards.” 13 Says Tarantino, “It was a big, big thing when we made this deal, a make-or-break point, that I would not allow cards or focus groups or questionnaires. Basically, when I showed the movie to them, it was like, ‘This is how it is.’ When you hand out these stupid cards, and they say, ‘What scenes did you like the most? What scenes did you like the least? Fill in the fucking blank.’ You ask any director on the fucking planet who watches a movie with an audience and he knows where it’s slow, where it’s not funny, where they’re confused. I’m not gearing it toward their opinions, anyway. I don’t give a fuck what Mr. Hockenmayer thinks. I want to know what he feels!”
Harvey was a big believer in the publicity value of face time: personal appearances, interviews, what-have-you, and he exploited the potential Tarantino had exhibited at Cannes two years before. As director Alex Rockwell put it, “Quentin was born to be a celebrity.” The protocol for a sneak preview is for the director to arrive after the film has started and lurk in the back or the lobby so as not to prejudice the audience. But Tarantino couldn’t contain himself; he loved nothing more than stunning an audience of rubes in Nowheresville, Iowa, by appearing unannounced and putting on a show.
There was a screening in Portland, Oregon, at a sizable theater. The Pulp gang arrived, and was told that a theater functionary was going to introduce the movie. Tarantino said, “I don’t want this fuckin’ asshole to do that, I’m going to do it myself.” Gladstein objected: “No, Quentin, you can’t go in there and introduce the movie.”
“Whaddya mean I can’t?”
“Quentin, if you introduce the movie, you’re gonna get this whole drama going, and you’re not gonna get a real reaction.”
“Richard, you mean, if I go in and introduce it, they might like it a little bit more? God forbid that were to happen!”
“We’re already not doing cards—don’t you want to see what they really think?”
Bob, who was watching them argue, broke in, said, “Fuck it, Quentin—you want to do it? Do it.” Tarantino strode down the aisle, planted himself in front of the screen like he owned the place, and announced, “Okay, I want to make sure if I got the right audience here. I want to ask you a question. How many of you have seen Reservoir Dogs?” A third of the house raised their hands. He said, “Good.” People were starting to realize, this was the man himself, Quentin Tarantino. You could feel the excitement coming off the house like heat lightning. Pacing back and forth, he said, “Wait a minute. I have another question. How many of you people out there have, lemme see a—raise your hands, how many of you have seen True Romance?” Half the hands went up. The place was abuzz with whispering: “It’s Quentin Tarantino!” Looking out over the audience, he said, “Oh, wow, that’s really, really good. But one last question before I go, How many of you liked Remains of the Day?” A few people shot their hands up eagerly, thinking they were going to get a pat on the head. He went, “Get the fuck outta here!” and strode up the aisle. The whole audience broke into wild applause, cheering, and screaming. The room went dark, the crowd went silent, and Pulp Fiction was screened for the first time.
Before Pulp opened, The Crow gave Miramax a taste of things to come. In May, Bob’s Dimension opened Alex Proyas’s film starring Bruce Lee’s son Brandon, who had been killed during the production by an improperly loaded stunt gun, leaving his scenes unfinished. No one would touch the film but Bob, who bought and finished it. Says Foley, “In the first weekend, it grossed $12 million. They’d never gotten that much money in months, let alone in a weekend. That was the beginning. [Dimension] broke the glass ceiling. Instead of looking up at it and wondering, What goes on up there? they found out. They love money. It was, Oh my God, isn’t this wonderful. And it came in so fast it was mind-altering.” The Crow went on to gross $51 million and put Dimension on the map.
A week or so later, the brothers went to Cannes. In the old days, when they were on the run from the repo man, they wore figurative hard hats there, bulletproof vests, to protect themselves from their creditors. After the Disney deal, and Harvey’s twin Palmes d’Or, he was born again as the Emperor of Cannes.
If the Weinsteins used to go to Cannes as small-time buyers, now they were not only big-time buyers, but sellers as well. They showcased three other films besides Pulp—Fresh, Picture Bride, and Clerks—and brought over two dozen or so Pulp actors and friends, plus the Weinstein entourage. Smith and Scott Mosier, who didn’t want to go, preferring to stay in Red Bank, first saw Pulp Fiction at a special friends and critics screening Weinstein arranged at the Olympia Theater before the premiere. The film was running two hours, forty minutes. “We were blown away, we knew we had seen something huge,” recalls Smith. “Pulp Fiction was just effortlessly cool, a movie you had to see and tell people to go see, and felt like you were in on something seeing it. But I said to Mosier, ‘It’s great, but who’s gonna go to see this besides the five people who saw Reservoir Dogs?’ When Miramax said they were going to go out on a thousand screens—which at that time was unheard of for an art house film—people were giggling, ‘Oh my God, they’re going up against a Stallone movie too, The Specialist.’ ”
Cannes was starved for celebrities that year—the only other picture with a star was Joel and Ethan Coen’s The Hudsucker Proxy with Paul Newman—and the fans and paparazzi went mad over the Pulp bunch. Tarantino was already a festival favorite, and seemed to have as much of a following as the actors. Dogs had played at the Utopia Theater in Paris every night for a year, and it was still running.
Pulp premiered on Saturday night late, at 12:30 A.M. Festival officials closed down the Croisette between the Carleton, where Tarantino was staying, and the Palais, where the premiere was being held. A caravan of two dozen or so limos containing the Pulp gang, Miramax folk, Jersey Films’s people, and assorted hangers-on snaked through the street. Crowds four deep lined the sidewalks, grabbing for the cars, chanting, “Quen-tin, Quen-tin, Oo-mah, Oo-mah.” Observed Tarantino, who notices these things, “Out of any group there was like fifteen people there for Bruce, and nine people there for John and four people there for me.”
Once again, on award night, the Pulp parade made the trip to the Palais, seated themselves in the plush seats. As the prizes were ticked off, Harvey, seated next to Tarantino, whispered loudly, “Okay, Best Screenplay, you think you’re going to get that?” Tarantino replied, “Yeah, I’m gonna get Screenplay.” But the award went to Michel Blanc for Grosse Fatigue. Tarantino was beginning to get uneasy, but he thought he had a shot at Best Director since he was convinced Krzysztof Ki
eslowski’s Trois couleurs: Rouge, also a Miramax film, would win the Palme d’Or and he knew that the winner of the Palme d’Or could not take both. But Nanni Moretti took the Director’s Prize for Caro Diario. He thought, Oh wow, that’s off the board. It’s any man’s game now. Finally, the only prize remaining was the Palme. Weinstein, who was hopping up and down in his seat like a walrus on a trampoline, barked, “Oh my God, you won the Palme d’Or. You’ve won the fucking Palme d’Or!”
“Harvey, shut the fuck up. No, we haven’t won the Palme d’Or.” Tarantino imagined there was going to be a special prize for the actors, thought, I’m gonna have to go up and accept an award for Bruce and John and Sam. This is the in-between award. Eyes riveted to the stage, he watched as Clint Eastwood strolled out and announced, “The next award is the Palme d’Or, and the winner for 1994 is Pulp Fiction!” Slicing through the thunderous applause like a knife was the voice of a female member of the audience shrieking, “Scandale!” “Fasciste!” Tarantino gave her the finger.
When Tarantino won the Palme d’Or, his old friends worried. Rockwell tried to have a heart-to-heart with him. He said, “Believe me, they’re going to descend on you like wolves on meat.” Tarantino gave him a blank look, as if to say, “So? What’s your problem?” Rockwell thought, What a schmuck, meaning himself, because his friend’s evident incomprehension made him feel like Mr. Paranoid, New York, versus Mr. That’s a Great Opportunity for Me, L.A. Doggedly he went on, explained to Tarantino how important it was to protect his integrity, said, “You’re a great filmmaker, don’t compromise your vision. It doesn’t matter how many people see the films. Just make great films.”
“No, no, I can do both,” he replied. “I can be the next . . .”
Rockwell recalls, “I saw his eyes glaze over when I was talking about artistic integrity. I felt, My God, the guy’s gonna sell out. Look at the ’70s. Really great films were made by those directors. And then all of a sudden, they aren’t rebels anymore. They are the system. People stopped being friends, people lost their artistic vision. A lot of my energy is ‘Fuck you’ energy. You know, if I was accepted, who am I gonna say fuck you to? Myself? We have to be rebels. But I felt it was almost as if I was speaking a foreign language to Quentin.”
Down and Dirty Pictures Page 26
