SEE Photos: The Making of Pulp Fiction in Stills, Snapshots, and Script Pages
“I wasn’t sure I wanted to be in the movie,” Uma Thurman tells Vanity Fair contributing editor Mark Seal of Pulp Fiction. Thurman explains that it wasn’t just the obscenity, or her character’s drug habit—it was also the rape of her crime-boss husband. “Pretty frightening,” she says. Referring to the boarding-school environment she was coming from, Thurman says, “I was 23, from Massachusetts.” It took a lot of work on Tarantino’s part to convince her. “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 adds, referring to the leather-clad character who emerges from a cage, set to have his way with the bound-and-gagged Marsellus Wallace. “We had very memorable, long discussions about male rape versus female rape. No one could believe I even hesitated in any way. Neither can I, in hindsight.”
Thurman says that, of all the scenes she was nervous about, it was dancing with John Travolta that intimidated her the most, “because I was so awkward and embarrassed and shy.” Travolta also remembers the scene: “Quentin recommended the Twist. And I said, ‘Well, Little Johnny Travolta won the Twist contest when I was eight years old, so I know every version. But you may add other novelty dances that were very special in the day.’ He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘There was the Batman, the Hitchhiker, the Swim, as well as the Twist.’ And I showed them to him, and he loved them. I said, ‘I’ll teach Uma the steps, and when you want to see a different step, call it out.’”
In retrospect it’s hard to believe that Quentin Tarantino would have had trouble getting a script developed, but every major studio passed on Pulp Fiction. It was Harvey Weinstein, then running Miramax under Disney, who couldn’t close the deal fast enough. “When I read the Pulp Fiction script, I went to him [then chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg] and said, ‘Even though I have the right to make this, I want to clear it with you.’ He read it and said, ‘Easy on the heroin scene, if you can, but that is one of the best scripts I have ever read. Even though you don’t need it, I am giving you my blessing.’”
Casting proved to be one of the biggest challenges in making the movie. Harvey Weinstein was dead-set against giving the role of Vincent Vega to John Travolta. “John Travolta was at that time as cold as they get,” says Mike Simpson, Tarantino’s agent at William Morris Endeavor. “He was less than zero.” Simpson had given Weinstein a “term sheet” of Tarantino’s demands, which included final cut, a two-and-a-half-hour running time, and final choice of actors. “One of the actors I had on the list was John Travolta,” says Tarantino. “And it came back: ‘The entire list is approved . . . except for John Travolta.’ So I got together with Harvey, and he’s like, ‘I can get Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Penn, William Hurt.’” By then, according to Simpson, “Daniel Day-Lewis and Bruce Willis, who was the biggest star in Hollywood, had both gotten their hands on the script and wanted to play Vincent Vega.”
The negotiations for Travolta came down to the wire. “At midnight our time, three in the morning in New York, Harvey said, ‘Let’s just close the deal, and we’ll address that tomorrow in good faith,’” Simpson recalls. But Simpson told him, “You’re going to agree to it right now, or there’s no deal.” Later, when the Weinsteins saw the finished film in Los Angeles, Harvey announced facetiously, 20 minutes into the screening, according to Richard Gladstein, then head of production at Miramax, “I’m so glad I had the idea to cast John Travolta.”
Bruce Willis’s interest in the project relieved Weinstein’s concerns that the movie lacked bankable stars. With the main role of Vincent Vega already cast, the only option for Willis was Butch, the boxer—which Tarantino had promised to Matt Dillon. “So he gave Matt the script,” Simpson tells Seal, “and he read it and said, ‘I love it. Let me sleep on it.’ Quentin then called me and said, ‘He’s out. If he can’t tell me face-to-face that he wants to be in the movie—after he read the script—he’s out.’” So the role went to Willis. “Once I got Bruce Willis, Harvey got his big movie star, and we were all good,” says Tarantino. “Bruce Willis made us legit. Reservoir Dogs did fantastic internationally, so everyone was waiting for my new movie. And then when it was my new movie with Bruce Willis, they went apeshit.”
The role of Jules Winnfield proved difficult to cast, mainly because Samuel L. Jackson was under the impression the part was his, until he found out he was in danger of losing the role to Paul Calderon. Jackson flew out to L.A. for a last-ditch audition with Tarantino. “I sort of was angry, pissed, tired,” Jackson recalls. He was also hungry, so he bought a takeout burger on his way to the studio, only to find nobody there to greet him. “When they came back, a line producer or somebody who was with them said, ‘I love your work, Mr. Fishburne,’” says Jackson. “It was like a slow burn. He doesn’t know who I am? I was kind of like, Fuck it. At that point I really didn’t care.” Gladstein remembers Jackson’s audition: “In comes Sam with a burger in his hand and a drink in the other hand and stinking like fast food. Me and Quentin and Lawrence were sitting on the couch, and he walked in and just started sipping that shake and biting that burger and looking at all of us. I was scared shitless. I thought that this guy was going to shoot a gun right through my head. His eyes were popping out of his head. And he just stole the part.” Lawrence Bender adds, “He was the guy you see in the movie. He said, ‘Do you think you’re going to give this part to somebody else? I’m going to blow you motherfuckers away.’”
