Today the Cultural Toolbox looked at the film that was both a critical smash hit and the indie that realigned the direction of mainstream cinema – the inimitable Pulp Fiction.

Shane Coleman and John Fardy went back over two decades to revisit Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 classic, and take a look at the legacy left by one of the most influential works in American cinema in recent decades.

Listen to The Cultural Toolbox: Pulp Fiction below

Following on from his debut Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino this time had an improved, but still modest, budget of $8m, and a growing level of expectation to negotiate. With a script that played with time as much as it dazzled with scintillating dialogue and shocked with unrestrained moments of violence, Tarantino vaulted any potential sophomore pitfalls, and led to seven Oscar nominations (including a win in Best Original Screenplay for the director) and the Palme D’Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.

The genesis

A modest budget wasn’t the only obstacle at the outset, as Tarantino had yet to become the director who could command the best and brightest talent without coaxing. While some stars fell at his door looking for a part. Uma Thurman, who plays the young Mia Wallace, wife of gangster Marcellus Wallace, was at first wary of the role and some of the darker territory it veered in to.

“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 told Vanity Fair.

Christopher Walken, and 'this gold watch'

Of those big names who did look for a place in the low budget production, perhaps the biggest were Bruce Willis and Daniel Day-Lewis. The pair both wanted the role of Vince Vega – but Tarantino insisted the box office action hero and Oscar winner were not the men for him – he wanted the then decidedly unfashionable, and seemingly washed up, John Travolta to take the part. Travolta at the time was “as cold as they get,” Tarantino’s agent Mike Simpson told Vanity Fair – and despite the protestations of producers the director stood firm. The role proved to be a resurrection for Travolta, as it landed him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Willis, a few years removed from the success of Die Hard 2, would eventually land the role of Butch, the fading boxer flirting with the idea of finishing his days taking a dive in the ring, easing producers’ worries as a big name was attached to the project.

The decision of the then bonafide action hero to step into indie films was also the first sign of the shift the film would cause in Hollywood between indie films and big budget mainstream studio work - just one of the many culture shifts Pulp Fiction would engender.

The impact

The impact of Pulp Fiction was profound - it was a legitimate cultural phenomenon, both lauded as a new dawn in cinema and derided as gratuitous violence and the poster boy of society's pre-millenial demise.

While it is one of the most universally popular films in post-70s Hollywood (and arguably of all time) it is decidedly nontraditional in its form and content. The chopping chronology stands out even now, but in 1994 revolutionary. The key to its popularity was, as John and Shane discussed on today’s Sunday Show, that while being almost impossible to describe succinctly – with its blend of gangsters, junkies, gold watches and gimps – it is overwhelmingly simple to follow when in the moment and while it chops and jerks, it never jars or wanes. As a 2007 article in The New Yorker – which credited Pulp Fiction as the root of a then Hollywood phase of non-linear narratives, said, the films three storyline are “three semi-independent narrative platforms, each one spinning on a magician’s stick.”

The Legacy

Legacy is something we discussed regularly The Cultural Toolbox, but while we might debate the lasting impact of TV shows and bands, with this film there can be little argument – it was a monumental moment in mainstream cinema, and shaped both film and TV in its wake.

The film simultaneously revived noir, commenced a flurry of non-linear storytelling, stylised cinematic violence in a way not seen before and forever altered Hollywood’s view of independent films. But they were just the immediate effects with Tarantino – the film fan who learned his trade from watching countless films as a video store clerk in the 80s – having seemingly come from the blue to redefine cinema.

Beyond the immediate, the legacy stretched to TV shows such as The Sopranos, with foul mouthed, razor sharp dialogue,  bleakly dark humour and over the top violence defining what has been generally accepted as the golden age of the small screen.

In 2008 it was ranked as the greatest film of the past quarter century by Entertainment Weekly, while Roger Ebert declared it “the most influential film” of its decade.

And we haven’t even mentioned the music...