The Rest Is Entertainment - Free Bonus Episode - 30 Years Of Pulp Fiction

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

** This is a free taste of a bonus episode only available exclusively to AAA members of The Rest Is Entertainment Club. For more episodes like this as well as ad-free listening, early episode access, book discounts and a link to join our new chat community go to www.therestisentertainment.com or sign up directly in the Apple podcasts app ** It's been 30 years since it Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction reshaped independent cinema and burst onto the box office. How did the film come to be made? What made Tarantino fight for John Travolta? What role did Danny DeVito play? Join Richard and Marina for a deep dive into a seminal movie that created memes before memes, posters than adorned student rooms the world over, and continues to influence future generations of film makers. To listen to more bonus episodes like this, as well as enjoying ad-free listening, early access to the Q&A, plus joining our new chat community and book discounts go to www.therestisentertainment.com or sign up directly in the Apple podcasts app. Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to a special edition of the Restors Entertainment that we're giving to you for free. This is usually only available for our AAA members. And I'm here too Marina. Oh sorry, hello. No listen, it's absolutely okay. You remember me. Yeah, it is familiar but you're going to have to place yourself. No, the tall guy, he used to do that quiz. Oh, of course. Icky. Now Now yes, this is a special episode which we recorded

for our members celebrating Quentin Tarantino's classic pulp fiction. And this is just a taste of the bonus episodes you can enjoy as a AAA club member. We've done all sorts of nonsense. When you join, you can listen to the entire backlist. There's episodes about creating hit quiz shows, Marina's favourite books on Hollywood. And of course, I was delighted to finally be able to do the deepest of dives on my love for Stephen Seagal. And after listening, I am now happy to profess my love for Stephen. Certainly my interest in what's going to happen to him next.

Either way, first name terms. With Stephen? Yep. Yeah, of course. Me, him and Kim, by which I mean Kardashian, not Il Jong. Join the Rest is Entertainment Club at therestorsentertainment.com for bonus episodes, ad-free listening and early access to our weekly Q&A and extras that we've just added to the membership offer. We also have a brand new chat community hosted on Discord where you can natter about your favourite shows and films, plus ask questions for the show.

Make sure you go to our newsletter each week as we're partnering with the independent bookshop Coles to offer AAA members a 10% discount on any of our book recommendations. Now, if you're listening on Apple, you can now subscribe directly in the app or at therestisentertainment.com. That's the restisentertainment.com. We are this week talking about a movie which is 30 years old this year. There's a number of big movies came out in 1994. Schindler's List was 94, Four Weddings in a Funeral was 94, Lion King, Mrs Doubtfire, if you're looking for a deep dive into any of those. We are not currently doing it, but listen, at some point we could do a deep dive into any of

those. I do have Mrs Doubtfire deep dive. It would be fascinating. Hold on, let's do that. Do we know enough about that yet? But we are actually talking about a movie that won the Oscar for best screenplay. It was the second movie of a particular director and it is Pulp Fiction. We are talking about Pulp Fiction, which came out in October 1994 and thus is 30 years old which makes us crazily old. Very very old. So if you are the same age as us, we'll be talking about a film you know well, if you

are a great deal younger than us this will be one of those movies, this would be a movie like to my daughter who was born after this movie came out. This would be like me hearing about you know To catch a thief or North by Northwest but I actually don't okay I don't think it is the most influential movie of the 90s because I think the Matrix ends up being the most influential movie that's interesting I've never seen the Matrix have you not no what do you think about that oh well you haven't been red pills have you what exactly I refuse to watch it yeah okay because should I tell you why? Because I'm a free man. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think that ends up being the most significant. But

this has got a strong claim to be the next most significant for reasons that we will definitely get into. Reservoir Dogs comes out in 1992 and I saw that and that is a sort of made on a much lower budget. And we all fancied ourselves as like film lovers, we knew it was coming out and we went to see it and it was a big sort of thing. But it was, it's the last time I really remember like posters for a film coming out and everyone saying oh I'm going to go see this thing, this completely new movie by a completely new director. There were people in it that you knew but no one kind of massive, you know Michael Madsen

and Tim Roth are not massive. You only knew Harvey Keitel if you were into kind of Scorsese and other things like that particularly. You know, you weren't necessarily thinking this guy's a mega movie star. But the buzz around it was absolutely huge and people loved it and we talked on the last bonus episode of Steven Seagal about Under Siege and when you have a huge hit, what do you do next? And that's often the most defining thing in people's careers. But in 93 we should also say True Rom romance, which I absolutely love, which is written by Quentin Tarantino. And by that stage, because Reservoir Dogs had been such a sort of cult thing,

just the fact he'd written true romance may, and that's directed by Tony Scott, but just the fact he'd written it made it a huge sort of draw. And people were already thinking, I'm going to go and see a movie this guy has written, which by the way, is not something that happens every day. No, exactly. So that's a weird sort of blip in the Tarantino timeline because he was offered all sorts of films to direct, which we'll talk about. But in the meantime, yes, he had a screenplay and someone else says, I'm going to take this.

So true romance was made and it's sort of a Tarantino movie and it certainly has the DNA of a Tarantino movie. He doesn't hate it like he hates Natural Born Killers because Oliver Stone took that and he hates what he did with it. There's a brilliant book about Natural Born Killers written by one of the screenwriters just about the whole process of making it, which I really recommend.

One of the many, yeah, because there's a lot of screenwriters in the end on that. There was one to start with going to Tarantino, and then there's quite a lot by the end. So he's had this huge hit with Reservoir Dogs, put True Romance to one side for a moment, because he sells that to Tony Scott, which any of us would do if Tony Scott wants to buy your script. He has offered such a huge amount of movies.

He's offered Men in Black, he's offered Speed, all of these things. And he says no to all of them, which again, this is just the absolute thing. You've had a hit. What do you do next? And he could have done Speed and he could have turned into one of those directors, he can knock out that kind of stuff, but people didn't want him to make his own things. He wanted to make his own movie. He'd had an idea with Roger Avery, who was another screenwriter who Tarantino worked in the video store with originally, worked in a video store, video archives. And that's famously the sort of the legend of Tarantino. He's a video store clerk who becomes

a forever telling you his origin story. Yeah. although he also worked in aerospace recruitment and stuff like that. So he was... Listen, he was... He edits all of that out. Yeah. But he always says there's some line that I didn't go to film school, I went to films. It's a good line. The guy can write. To be fair, he decides he wants to make pop fiction. And listen, it was easier to make movies in those days, but it wasn't easy. The doors were open, which are currently not open, but he was able to put his foot down and said, no, I'm not gonna do these movies you want me to do.

He went to Amsterdam, wrote pulp fiction. Him and Roger Avery had an idea of like a portmanteau film where three of them all wrote different episodes of it and then put it all together. And he sort of took that idea and smooshed everything together into pulp fiction. It's three very different strands in pulp fiction. One of them was originally written by Roger Avery, one Tarantino.

The other was going to be another friend of theirs, which came to nothing. He smushes them all together and goes, this is the thing I want to make. It's interesting because it's not in chronological order. So there's something kind of postmodern and weird about that, which you don't normally see. Certainly not in a film that becomes a figures hitters as this one does. They're sort of interwoven tales, kind of hard boiled crime, you know, pulp fiction. Pulp fiction, exactly that.

But yeah, an incredibly interesting structure. Yeah. Where the beginning is not at the beginning, the end is not at the end. It's both somewhere in the middle and vice versa, which is very, very impressive. And you can tell it's a guy who knows what he's doing and loves what he's doing and loves film. He'd had a meeting with Danny DeVito. Danny DeVito is so often the hero in Hollywood stories without you ever knowing it.

You know, you just think, oh, what, the guy from Twins? No, Danny DeVito has made some unbelievable choices in his career, almost all correct. From marrying Rhea Perlman to making Pulp Fiction to... Some incredible limoncello. Oh, did you do limoncello? Yeah, I've had some of that.

Does he? De Vito? Yeah. Okay, I would like anything he does. Yeah, it's delicious. Yeah, and even saying yes to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I mean, come on. One of the most extraordinary casting choices of all time. Yeah. I mean, he rarely puts a foot wrong. casting choices of all time Yeah, I mean he rarely puts a foot wrong

so he meets some Tarantino says yeah, listen, I'll be a producer of that He says I remember the day the script turns up for pulp fiction Tarantino have been in Amsterdam Writing in old-school exercise books and sends it over to Danny DeVito and he gets it. It's a hundred and fifty five pages long Which is too long for a movie. A page a minute we normally think of in scripts. Yeah, yeah. And he just said, look, this is, I just knew it was unbelievable. So they shop it around to everybody. Everybody passes on it.

Because it's so violent. It's so violent. And it's just that it wasn't the sort of, it had a violence that wasn't normal for the era. There's a certain type of violence that, you know, the Steven Seagal type violence that was acceptable, but this was very brash and very bold and very real. And so everybody says no, except for, so if Danny DeVito is the hero of so many Hollywood stories, the villain of so many Hollywood stories

comes in Harvey Weinstein. Harvey Weinstein and his brother Bob, who have a company called Miramax. And this is actually the first full Miramax, it ends up being the first full Miramax film. Is that right, it's the first one? Yeah, the first full thing that they have. And they make it for 8.5 million dollars which is not too terrible. They've had this dream, those two brothers, and obviously we know how the story ends, but they have had this dream, those two brothers, and obviously we know how the story ends, but they have had this dream that they're going to make incredibly commercial art movies. So it's

like art house stuff, but for a multiplex audience. That's what Robert Redford, by the way, always felt could be done. You know, the whole Sundance Film Festival, all the things that those things that were set up to kind of try and push independent film to say, hey, these stories are amazing and they can be big. They just don't get enough play or they don't get whatever. But we believe that ultimately the audience, if you put these films in front of people, audiences in a place they can see them, are you multiplexed or wherever, rather than some kind of cool little theatre in New York. Lots of people will want to see films like this. And they did have that weird kind of commercial plus art belief that both

could be together and that actors and directors would want to come and work because rather than feeling that they had to do these kind of commercial movies for the studios and then they could go off and do a project that no one really saw but was their favourite thing that they'd done in three years, you didn't have to have that. You didn't have to do one for me, one for you, one for me, one for you. You could do all for yourself all the time and lots of people would go and see it. And Tarantino is the perfect partner in crime for that because that's exactly his aesthetic as well. He's a guy who's grown up watching every type of movie ever. You know, monster pics, black exploitation

pics, just everything and he loves it and he wants to show that to people but he wants to show it. He has a commercial heart so he knows every single trope of every single one of these films. He knows every single storyline of every single one of these films. He knows every single storyline of every single one of these films. Everyone is acted in all of these films. But he has a commercial sensibility. So when it gets sent through Quentin Tarantino's filter, the thing that comes out is this extraordinary movie full of things where people go, oh my God, the imagination here is incredible.

And to think of that, and listen, he has incredible imagination, but also he's taking so much from the history of cinema, which he felt hadn't been seen by other people. So he's not copying. And skewing it like, oh, it's gangsters, but it's not the mob, because we'd seen all that, but it was different. They are gangsters, but they're not the gangsters that we kept seeing for the 70s and 80s and what have you.

And so Tarantino has said, I'm not going to make Speed, I'm not going to make Men in Black, I'm going to make my own movie. Decision one that he got absolutely right. Decision two he gets right is teaming up with Danny DeVito because Danny DeVito's deal at that time was that he had absolute final script approval on any of his projects and he had absolute creative approval on any of his projects. That's the thing that DeVito had signed off with. Presumably that deal was worth less money than other people's deals because that's the

thing that he wanted. And the clever thing that De Vito did is he made it so that that clause also covered any project that he bought and got involved with. So instantly Danny De Vito's clause of absolute creative control gets passed on to Quentin Tarantino and Pulp Fiction, much to Harvey Weinstein's disgust. An example of what we mean by that would be Weinstein immediately says, I want Daniel Day-Lewis in this, Daniel Day-Lewis has just won the Oscar for My Left Foot. And, you know, he's huge. Daniel Day-Lewis for the Travolta role? The Travolta character. Absolutely.

I mean, the haircut, I guess is similar. Uh, but so that's what he wants and that's how movies get made and you get the big stars. By the way, nobody wants Travolta because he is coming out of a very fallow period. Yeah, I mean he was nowhere at this point, John Travolta, but Quentin Tarantino understands movies and he understands actors, so he's not interested in any of that and he goes, I want to get Travolta and I want to get Travolta because- There's a kind of kitsch Americana vibe of like people down at heel down on their lark. And you know he had been huge and you know he'd done Grease and all that kind of stuff but even Travolta said

when this script came through he said you know the last hit I'd had was Look Who's Talking. Yeah. He said you know that's the you know the the the thing. I'm playing the voice of a baby. Exactly that and so he's thinking is this me forever now and he's thinking back to the days when he's in Saturday Night Fever and he's a proper kind of indie actor and he has always said I will remain grateful forever for being considered for this because it absolutely relaunched my career in a direction. After this he's doing Get Shorty, he's doing like working with John Woo doing Broken Arrow, Face Off, I mean it changes everything. And again the decision is one of those interesting things. As you say, it is sort

of kitsch, it is surprising, but you watch Travolta in that movie and he's brilliant. That's the thing that Tarantino understands. He understands that I've got this guy who is undervalued, but also is brilliant. So I get everything because everyone's going to go, that's a weird bit of casting and then they're going to watch it and they're going to have this incredible actor. So Harvey Weinstein cannot have Daniel Day-Lewis in this movie. John Travolta is in the movie and that comes down essentially to Danny DeVito. So Harvey Weinstein cannot have Daniel Day-Lewis in this movie, John Travolta is in the movie and that comes down essentially to Danny DeVito. So they make it, as you say, the budget. This surprised me actually, eight and a half million, it was eight million I think in the end, and it looks like, you

know, I was going to say it looks like a million dollars, it looks like 30 million dollars. I mean it looks big budget this movie, but it's very, very cheap. And that's why, again, the creative control was easy for them to have. But they keep the salaries down and they keep, you know, there's not lots of special effects. It's about the dialogue and it's about the situations and the scenarios. So in some ways, it is inexpensive. But Bruce Willis, they need Bruce Willis because they have to have someone that is going to be quite near the front on the posters so people think, oh right, you know, because if you do want to, as they say, sell

art as a business, people think, I know that guy, I'll go and see this film because otherwise they're not going to go and see it from seeing Samuel L. Jackson and probably not Travolta on the poster. Well, that's the thing, looking back, if you, again, if you, if this was not, you know, you weren't around at the time, you would think, well, yeah, but you've got John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in this movie. Hard to underestimate how little of a draw that would have been at the time. Samuel L. Jackson, who now by some measures is the highest-grossing movie actor in history. But at the time, this was a huge breakout role for Samuel L. Jackson.

He'd been in all sorts of things. He'd been in Die Hard, in Die Hard 3, as he teams up with Bruce Willis in that. But this was, this is definitely the breakout. He's obviously been in various other things, but this is the breakout. And Travolta, as you say, down on his luck. So those two as a pairing were like, no one else would have put them together. So Bruce Willis is very important. And you're selling Bruce Willis like, oh, he'll be on the poster. Well, he's not on the poster, because the poster itself is so iconic, which is Uma Thurman lying on her tummy and smoking.

And that itself is a sort of like, Oh, I see. And it's made to look like a pulp feature. Yeah. Yeah. And Bruce Willis, they got, cause he was best friends with Harvey Keitel, who of course Tarantino had worked with in, um, Reservoir Dogs and Keitel had taken the script, he said, look, Bruce, I know there's this thing, you know, I've seen some movie Reservoir Dogs and Quentin has got this thing.

And Bruce Willis, it turned out was obsessed with Reservoir Dogs and could quote the whole thing and loved it. Lawrence Bender the producer said we went for a walk on the beach he said and by the time we got back to Bruce's house he was in the movie. And the Bruce Willis role had originally been written for Tim Roth who obviously was you know in the Reservoir Dogs but I think even Tim Roth understands at some point you can't just have the same cast you need you need that big marquee name. And that's Bruce Withers. And of course, Tim Roth is in. And Travolta was going to be Michael Madsen, but Michael Madsen was involved

in Wyatt Earp or something like that and therefore couldn't do that role. But he makes them brothers. So there's in the Tarantino extended universe, Vince Vega and Vick Vega. Travolta's character in Pulp Fiction is the brother of Michael Madsen's character in Reservoir Dogs. By that stage they realized they had something pretty amazing and special. But first what they do is they take it to Cannes Film Festival. And the first screening of this thing, they don't know anything much about it.

It's at 8.30 in the morning. And it is a sensation even at 8.30. And by the way, we know as we said before on the podcast, they'll clap for 10 minutes if you open the back of the chalice, it can, but however, it will get a huge standing ovation and it wins the palm door, which is the most prestigious price. So by that point, they know that they've got something really, everyone thinks it's extraordinary and new and fresh and amazing. Miramax think this is the one that's going to be the thing that we want our company to

be about. And so they wide release it. That means they don't just put it in a couple of theatres and they kind of build it gradually. It goes in something like 1,100 theatres the first weekend. It is up against The Specialist, which is a terrible movie. I've seen it literally three times. It's got, which is Sylvester Sloan is an explosive expert and it's got like Eric Roberts and Sharon Stone and Rod Steig. Anyway, it's very bad. Pulp fiction beats the specialist and it ends up grossing $200 million worldwide. And by the way, changes everything for indie films.

It's interesting how it changes things for Tarantino. It makes him the star. And we have one person nowadays working like that. And that's Christopher Nolan, who is the biggest piece of the jigsaw. When you're buying a movie you're thinking I'm buying a Christopher Nolan movie. Maybe Matt Damon is going to be in it, you know, maybe Caleigh Murphy, it doesn't really matter. Tom Holland recently signed up to Christopher Nolan's new movie and they said well what is it? He said I don't know. But he just said would you be in it? And of course I want to be in it. And Christopher Nolan opens movies, even though he's the director.

This is what Tarantino became, okay? But in some ways I think it opens the door to a bit of a detour decade for him. It should be his Imperial. He does one more movie, he does Jackie Brown in 1997, but he hosts SNL. He does loads and loads of cameos because he still quite likes acting. I remember going to see a movie called Sleep With Me in the theatre, some kind of slacker thing, I can't now. He does loads and loads of cameos because he still quite likes acting. I remember going to see a movie called Sleep With Me in the theatres, some kind of slacker thing. I can't remember anything about this movie except I knew that there was a cameo by Quentin Tarantino so I went to see the movie. Again, I can't tell you anything about it other than it's a slacker movie. And he's in an annoying house party and he's in the kitchen. He's the guy

you don't want to get stuck with in the kitchen house party explaining and misquoting Top Gun to explain why it's a gay movie is the role that he plays in it. Which is very Tarantino. Yeah but the sort of egotist in him to some extent takes over and he's on talk shows he's people are saying can you put your name to a chain of restaurants can you you know and he gets seduced by the celebrity nature of it a lot. I mean funnily enough Reservoir Dogs was part funded again this is origin story so it's not really true but it's sort of true um he played an Elvis impersonator in an episode of the Golden Girls uh and he got you know with

residuals and stuff you got sort of ten thousand dollars or something for that and he always said oh that you know that really helped fund Reservoir Dogs I think oh I don't I don't know but it's sad listen it sounds great but yeah he's always acted always acted and he is a better director than he is an actor. But you know, if he wants to act. But he likes all that stuff. It's a bit like when pop stars become really famous and they start going through the opening of any envelope because they're like, oh my god, I'm on the scene. I'm going to be that person. He is on the scene for definite. Well, he's a star. And that's the thing, because he can open movies. So he's a star in a way that funny enough, Christopher Nolan isn't, he's just a filmmaker. And Tarantino was a

big name on campus. But even a bigger name on campus is someone like Harvey Weinstein, because he calls Miramax the house that Quentin built. And Tarantino says, I'm their Mickey Mouse. And he gets these great deals, but it's a calling calling card but it's also a vibe. It says we make these incredibly commercial but very very cool pictures, you can take pay cuts to be in it and it gives Harvey this power to say to agents if you don't give me that client for this movie then I'm going to pull Quentin from you and he's going to go over to one of the other agencies or whatever it is and he uses it like that quite a lot.

It's interesting because Tarantino has talked a lot, of course, about Weinstein and, you know, he was dating Mirosolvino and Mirosolvino said to him, you know what, I had this encounter, very uncomfortable encounter with Harvey Weinstein and Quentin was furious and went and confronted Harvey Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein apologized. You think, okay, that's interesting, but then exactly the same thing happened with Uma Thurman. Uma Thurman said, I've had this very uncomfortable thing with Harvey Weinstein and Tarantino again. I said, I'll go and talk to Harvey and he said, lay off Harvey. There comes a point where you've heard it twice that you might think, okay, maybe this hasn't just happened randomly to two people I'm very close to. Maybe this is a...

Come on. I genuinely think he's contrived it I genuinely think that you know he says well of course you know I should have understood it more but um yeah there's this and there's questions to answer there yeah absolutely 100% but it's it's so sort of mesmerizing for everyone to then suddenly watch the rise of independent film but in a weird way that, oh, you can be involved in these commercial independent films and Harvey Weinstein will put them all together and they'll do amazing business. It created new whole new sort of different ways of campaigning for

awards, all sorts of things. And people felt they could do it. But then the studio started buying up all these indie distributors because they thought, well, why not? It's so much cheaper and less. One of the biggest expenses on any studio is development. And they thought well why not it's so much cheaper and less one of the biggest expenses on any studio is development and they thought we'll get these guys to do it and we'll buy it all up and so you're thinking oh well you know this rising tide it must lift all boats but it doesn't actually it sinks quite a lot of them and very quickly the stars want the same salaries to be in these films so the budgets get much bigger and also they become unlike movies that could grow as I say and those small releases theatrical releases start to get to more and more screens

now everyone kind of has to beat the specialist on week one and it's sort of never happened before but now it's happening and you're only going back now to something like a 24 which is with that independent spirit where films start and then they build you sort of had to go in at number one or you're only going down. And so the immediate high water mark in some ways. I was gonna say, with a football analogy, doing a pop fiction is like doing a Leicester City,

which is, well, if they can do it, okay, that's the new thing that we need to be able to do. So pop fiction, the incredibly exciting thing was a film has not done this for many, many years. This is great. This is like a new dawn. And immediately that new dawn is the new reality which is okay your indie movie now has to break like pop fiction and so as you say it should have changed

everything but actually consolidated everything which is often the way and this terrible man suddenly has this immense power immense power Weinstein not Tarantino and Tarantino's because I think pop fiction really holds up I watched it again in the summer. There are bits of it that don't, there's language in it that you think, come on man, which has often been his issue. He writes beautiful dialogue, he has a laxness with it, which you wouldn't get away with these days, which again he's defended many times. But you watch it, I don't need those words in there, I just don't, you know, I don't need it. However much Spike Lee has had a huge kind of beef with him over the years about some of the language that he uses

but those first two movies Reservoir Dogs and Pop Fiction I think are and you see in bands releasing their first couple of albums this is a guy who spent ten years thinking about every single movie he ever wants to make you know and also knowing that other people were getting it wrong just knowing in his heart and that if he's ever given the opportunity and the money and have his eye behind the camera, he knows what he wants to do. Reservoir Dogs absolutely does that and wonderful heist film, but Pulp Fiction is probably the one where you just go, he is throwing everything he knows at this. He's throwing every bit of casting he understood. He's throwing every storytelling thing he knows. He's showing every single bit of

filmmaking he knows at this one film and just saying, this is the film you should all have been making all of these years and I know people are going to love it. And it absolutely felt like that when you watched it and it still feels like that now, I think. And that nothing is beyond the remit of art house as it were. Like, yeah, you can have gangsters in art house, why not? It doesn't have to all be these small interior stories. It sort of blows everything up in an exciting way But actually the pieces settle with lots of power accrued to Harvey Weinstein Tarantino on this slightly celebrity Trajectory that takes him in my view, you know, kill Bill is a hot Is it almost a decade away and he does Jackie Brown, which is less successful perfectly?

But it's less successful and he does get kind of seduced by the life. Yeah, which by the way, who wouldn't fair enough? I mean, honestly, he spent 10 years thinking about it. He did it. You know, he actually did it. And most people don't. And you think, all right, take 10 years off. And then he gets back to actual moviemaking. Your favorite Tarantino movie? Would you say? Reservoir Dogs. Reservoir Dogs. So the movie I love by Tarantino is Inglorious Basterds. Oh dear, yes. I really think it's a great film from the very opening scene with Christoph Valtz to the end and this sort of revenge tragedy thing.

I think that's a brilliant film. Hateful Eight, I didn't love. No. Django and Trinidad. Again, it's, but you know what? He can do what he wants, is the truth. Because, you know, he really did do something extraordinary. He did sort of blow up an industry. You know, he did follow his instincts. He did follow the thing that he loved. He did cast people.

You know, Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction was one of the most iconic performances of the last 30 years. And they weren't going to cast him. Cause he'd come in and done an audition and Lawrence Bender phoned his agent said, Oh, sorry, I think we're not going to call Sam. Someone else did an amazing audition. Uh, and Samuel L. Jackson is such a small name at this point. The agent said, Oh, sorry, I didn't know it was an audition.

He thought he was just coming to help you out and read. He didn't know it was an audition. Uh, I didn't know that. And he goes, so he goes, I'm going to send Sam back. I'm going to send Sam back to you now and tell him it was an audition. Uh, and Lawrence Bender So he goes, I'm gonna send Sam back, I'm gonna send Sam back to you now and tell him it was an audition and Lawrence Bender says Sam comes in and does that, you know, amazing speech of just giving it everything he had and he got that part and you know all of those decisions that they made, all those correct decisions

that you make and it takes an awful lot of correct decisions to make a good movie and you know his have been accrued over the years, over years and he absolutely did it at least every time one of his movies comes out you know it's gonna be interesting you're gonna have a view on it you know he's gonna try something and do something different and something original and so you know for me with some like in glorious bastards it really comes off and no one else could make that film and listen he says he's gonna quit after ten films but you know Elton John quits every two years But he's got he's got views and he's a talker and he's you know

I love those people in the culture who will say he will say all sorts of different things I mean, he's very disparaging about things like Marvel movies. I sort of love him being out there to remind people that yes Directors can be these kind of powerhouse figures who have things to say and don't just tell people in tights where to stand. Yeah and on that bombshell. So yeah do you have a rewatch of it if you've not seen it for a while? It genuinely stands up and if you've never seen it before definitely have a look at it but I hope this gives a bit of context to what the culture was like at the time and the environment in which that film came out and quite what a huge deal it was for Travolta and Jackson. And independent film and the environment in which that film came out and quite what a huge deal it

was for Travolta and Jackson. And independent film and the industry. Yeah, exactly. For ad-free listening, bonus episodes and access to our chat community, sign up to the Rest is Entertainment club. Visit therestisentertainment.com or, if you're listening on Apple, sign up directly in the app.