Big Picture: Pulp Fiction (1994)

Movies don’t need to be musicals to take music seriously. Music has been a vital component of the movie-going experience since before the films themselves had sound. For this month, Big Picture is going to celebrate a different way of using music in movies. We’re happy to present three titles that incorporate popular music, either the actual music being listened to by the characters in the film or music representative of the time and situation, in a particularly memorable way. FILM SYNOPSIS: 2h 34m / R / Crime, Drama Let’s talk about the music of Pulp Fiction. Tarantino, coming off of Reservoir Dogs, knew music could work magic.There’s no score in the conventional sense, but the songs Tarantino chose lead the movie. Many of the most memorable scenes pop to mind with just their titles. “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon.” “Son of a Preacher Man.” “Misirlou.” The soundtrack album went triple platinum, back when albums did that. And the dance scene. You know the dance scene. It’s Quentin Tarantino’s thesis statement; it contains everything you need to know about him as a filmmaker. A fake Marilyn Monroe and a fake Ed Sullivan, a reference already lost on half the audience thirty years ago, stand up in the middle of a corny, incoherently themed hamburger restaurant and announce a dance contest. There’s a trophy and everything. Uma Thurman (as Mia Wallace), dressed like someone cut up a Bande à part poster with a razorblade, a look so iconic it feels instantaneously familiar, insists she and her date enter. And so John Travolta (as Vincent Vega), who the audience knows as formerly one of the biggest dance stars in the world, whose career has most recently traveled through Look Who’s Talking, Look Who’s Talking Too and the even-worse-than-the-last-one Look Who’s Talking Now, stands up with a weirdly unconvincing swagger, takes off his shoes to reveal a pair of cheap gold-toe socks, and changes the course of Hollywood for the next two decades.

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