Everyone knows that “Pulp Fiction”, Quentin Tarantino's beloved and acclaimed 1994 film, is told in a distributed, non-linear narrative in which the stories connect with each other in completely unexpected ways. But apparently the original idea was completely different.
In a comprehensive oral history of film in Variety commemorating the film's 30th anniversary, Roger Avary, who co-wrote the story with Tarantino, said the project initially had a completely different format. “The original idea for Pulp Fiction was that we would make three short films with three different creators. I'll make one, Quentin will make one, and we'll hit up a friend, Adam Rifkin, who was going to make one. I wrote a script called “Pandemonium Reigns” and along the way my short film developed into a feature script called “Reservoir Dogs” which Adam just never wrote “Pulp Fiction” was something that wasn't going to happen for a while.
They eventually signed Danny DeVito, who eventually worked as an executive producer on “Pulp Fiction” and had a larger contract with TriStar Entertainment; As the “It's Always Sunny” actor recalls, he wanted this version of “Pulp Fiction” to get going pretty quickly. “After about six minutes of talking to Quentin, I said, 'I want to make a deal right now,'” DeVito said. “There was a short pause and he agreed. And I made a deal with him. I haven't seen 'Reservoir Dogs' yet because the movie was still in production.”
The success of Reservoir Dogs delayed Pulp Fiction… and somehow changed the entire project too
As Roger Avary tells it, after the premiere of “Reservoir Dogs”, everything changed in Quentin Tarantino's life… and in the process, the writer-director decided that he wanted to approach “Pulp Fiction” a little differently. “And then Quentin records “Reservoir Dogs” and gets all kinds of offers to do really cool studio projects. But he actually came back and called me one day and said, “I keep thinking about 'Pulp Fiction' and I think I want to make it as one movie and direct it myself.”“
What happened to the part of Avary's script that you remember was titled “Pandemonium Reigns”? As Avary said, the two writers “took my script (for 'Pandemonium Reigns'), put it back together, and then went to Amsterdam and did all the scenes we'd ever written that hadn't made it into movies yet.” Pulp Fiction was eventually published. Years later, Tarantino was working on a two-part film with Robert Rodriguez (“Grindhouse” consisting of Tarantino's “Death Proof” and Rodriguez's “Planet Terror”), but the multi-story project he originally conceived with Roger Avary was clearly not meant to be.
Quentin Tarantino brought on a lead producer for Pulp Fiction, sending a very long script
As executive producer Danny DeVito recalled in a Variety article, he had the opportunity to read the final draft of the “Pulp Fiction” script and loved it, although he was a bit shocked by its length. “I talked to (Tarantino) this year, checking in, and I said, 'How's everything?' Is everything going according to plan? ». And then the doorbell rang and there was a package, a manila envelope with 155 pages in it,” DeVito recalled. “I swear to God, I always like to think it's still warm. And on the front page it said: “Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Definitive Edition.”
DeVito sat down to read it and immediately agreed, although the length definitely bothered him. “I lay down on the sofa with a cup of tea and laughed until I cried,” said the actor, director and producer. “I liked it from the very beginning to the very end. The most important question was that it was 155 pages long. I worked with this woman, Wilma, who was my script supervisor and she set the schedule for me. Typically a page per minute, the final running time of the film was 154 minutes. DeVito was luckier in not having read an earlier version of Tarantino's Oscar-winning script; apparently one of them was about 500 pages long so he got lucky.
