Jordan Fitzgerald

1/27/2020

Screenplay Analysis 1

Pulp Fiction

Between the iconic guitar intro, the punchy dialogue, the nonlinear story structure, and

his unmistakable style Tarantino managed to create a classic which has often been emulated and

rarely rivaled. Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino gives us excellent insights into how structure

and dialogue can be used to develop character and about how the central point of a movie can be

about more than the sequence of events it contains. Often, and this is certainly dependent on

genre, a screenplay is about or revolves around the central plot. Heroes must thwart the villain to

save metropolis, the detective must catch the killer, the guy must win back the girl. These

“quests” are often wrapped up in the pursuit of figurative or literal objects and objectives. Pulp

Fiction is much less about what happens and much more about who things happen to and the

thematic connection that draws this otherwise loosely connected nonlinear anthology together.

Tarantino makes this work by leaning into a nontraditional story structure and the strength of the

movies unusual dialogue. The result of these two choices a story of characters and their

redemption, or lack of it.

One of the most interesting choices in the screenplay is its nonlinearity. Pulp fiction

intertwines 4 stories that are only loosely connected, but when taken together are seen to have

similar themes. One of the most prominent themes in the movie is morality and redemption. The

most obvious example of course resting on Jules and Vincent, two hitmen with very different

views on life, their jobs, and on miracles. While both start the movie as hardened criminals, over
the course of an exceptional and very violent couple of days Tarantino strips them of the sense of

control and power they have in the first scenes and forces them to choose to be better or stay on

their paths. Jules makes the choice to change his ways and get out, Vincent stays an in the

moment loose canon killer. Vincent dies and Jules lives. In order to see their full arc however

and to drive home the idea that this screenplay is about the choices these characters make and not

their sequence, Tarantino disrupts the normal sequence of storytelling. The scenes in this

screenplay begin in medias res with little to no exposition. We are here to watch the journey, but

the effects of the film only go as far as their effects on the characters. Tarantino doesn’t waste

time transitioning between plot points or introducing us to a setting/plot with expositon; rather,

whether inspired by or drawing from, in the spirit of short films he starts many scenes at or just

before the moment of highest and often violent tension, open with a robbery, cut to a murder, cut

to a crime boss, cut to a drug deal, then we get slight break as he builds tension during Mia and

Vincent’s excusion, cut to overdose, cut to chase scenes and violent sex crimes, end with another

a robbery. The movie is full of hectic energy, violence, and crimes that are only loosely

connected in causality and hardly in chronology but rather by characters facing similar decisions

to embrace the violence of their world or do the right thing. This hectic energy is maintained and

was a clear goal of Tarantino’s, his instructions are often as graphic and violent as the scenes

they’re about. “From here on in, everything in this scene is frantic, like a Documentary in an

emergency ward with the big difference being nobody knows what the fuck they’re doing.”, “a

wad of cash that could choke a horse”, he swears in his scene directions and is clearly aiming at a

theme of intensity and violence. But despite the consistent theme he throws many traditional plot

elements out the window, and there is a lot of things thrown out windows in this screenplay from

Antwan, to Butch’s escape, to a TV. For example the classic McGuffin, while most screenplays
waste precious minutes attempting an explanation at what the object of interest is, in Pulp

Fiction we just know that Marsellus Wallace wants it so Vincent and Jules are going to get it.

We never learn what the McGuffin is because it isn’t important. We never see Butch Box despite

him being a boxer, we don’t see how he meets Fabienne, or how Jules and Vincent end up

together, we don’t even see the full consequences of any of the plots like where Butch or Jules

(the characters who chose to do good) go with their freedom. We aren’t shown these things

because while they are important to the chronological sequence of events that describes these

chracter’s lives, they aren’t important to their moment of highest tension, to their decision to be

good or bad. During the screenplay we are dropped literally into the middle of scenes without

context just as much as we are dropped into the lives of these characters without broader context,

because a broader context would have been distracting. The most important decision in the

movie is Jules deciding not to kill Pumpkin and Yolanda during their robbery. The screenplay

opens with this manic couple robbing a diner and at the beginning of the film it seems intense

and crazy. But after over a hundred pages of drug overdoses, organized crime, murder, and even

sex dungeons, when the movie ends in this scene we see armed robbery as relatively nonviolent.

The Jules we are introduced to at the beginning of the movie, the cold badass, must now choose

whether he will keep his word when he said he was done with “the life”. Tarantino literally

presents two potential futures: The first is Jules killing Pumpkin; the second is Jules talking his

way through the situation, going so far as to give up his own hard-earned cash to the robbers,

allowing them to go free. By introducing the robbery and the miracle up front at the beginning of

the movie, then moving forward in time to see how Vincent handles the event (no change in

attitude) and his resulting death versus how Jules handles the event (changes his ways and keeps

his word) Tarantino highlights the important of the decision, rather than the outcome. We know
Vincent dies and Jules lives when the final diner scene begins, the scene isn’t to show us what

happened but why. By mixing up traditional structure and focusing on moments of highest

tension Tarantino undermined classically important elements and was able to tell a story whose

theme wasn’t tied to its own conclusion.

The characters and the story in Pulp Fiction are both carried by the somewhat

nontraditional dialogue. In real life people don’t give long winded explanations about their past

or their motivations, they talk about the here and now and they do so imperfectly. Tarantino

manages to write dialogue that feels like real conversation and this reality grounds otherwise

unrelatable circumstances and characters. From the classic el royale conversation, the five dollar

shake, to the debate about the ethical/sexual nature of foot massages its fair to say that the

characters in pulp fiction talk about a bunch of seemingly random stuff. Just like real people.

even conversations about more plot driven topics, like Pumpkin and Yolanda’s talk about how

robbing banks is easier than liquor stores is full of interruptions, anecdotes and jokes. Tarantino

cared a lot about the delivery of dialogue, whether that is the instruction for Pumpkin and

Yolanda to talk in “rapid His-Girl-Friday” fashion, or for Butch and Fabrielle to “speak in baby

talk like giggling lovers”. The dialogue is the foundation of the screenplay, its less there to

progress the story and more there to add depth to the chracters. Because much of the dialogue

sounds like the kind of thing you would talk about with a friend, it almost makes you feel like

one of the friends, it draws you in to care about a world or hardened drug addicted criminals by

making them normal.

Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is screenplay that has stood the test of time. From the order

presented, to the vivid and swear heavy language in his scene directions, to the clear emphasis by

both quantity and directions on dialogue the screenplay reflects Tarantino’s emphasis in this
story. It employs many nontraditional elements like its story structure and the banterydialogue

heavy script. Tarantino emplys these techniques not for their novelty, but to progress the true

point of the film, the characters and the world’s effect on them, not their effect on the world.