Rebels on the Backlot (13 page)

In truth, Katzenberg was less than thrilled about the lack of
bankable stars in the cast, but given the relatively modest budget, he deferred to Weinstein (besides, he was busy making
The Lion King).
“Make sure you keep the United Kingdom rights,” he told Weinstein—good advice, because Tarantino was even more popular in Great Britain than he was in the United States.

T
ARANTINO HAD
J
OHN
T
RAVOLTA IN MIND EARLY ON FOR THE
part of Vincent, the hit man. There were many actors from the past, stars of yesteryear, whom the director idolized—almost fetishized—and Travolta was one of them. When Tarantino was working in Europe, Cathryn Jaymes found him one of his first decent apartments in Hollywood. To convince him to take it she pointed out that Travolta had lived there when he was a star on
Welcome Back Kotter.
(Travolta visited Tarantino after signing on to
Pulp Fiction
and was surprised to realize he knew the apartment.)

Once the script to
Pulp
was finished, Tarantino flew to Florida, where the fallen movie star—at this point best known for his talking baby movies,
Look Who’s Talking
—lived. Tarantino told Travolta that he’d written a lead role in his next movie for the actor. At first Travolta refused to believe such a thing could be possible. “Why are you torturing me?” he insisted. Tarantino finally convinced him, but Travolta still refused to believe it could ever happen. “No studio will ever let you cast me,” he told the director. He was almost right, of course.

The problem with casting Travolta was not just financial.
Pulp Fiction
had already gone out to every talent agency in Hollywood, and agents everywhere wanted their clients for the half-dozen juicy roles the story offered. Both Bruce Willis and Daniel Day-Lewis wanted the role of Vincent Vega. Weinstein favored Day-Lewis, a huge star at the time after winning an Oscar for
My Left Foot
and starring in
The Last of the Mohicans
and
The Age of Innocence.
The actor complained that Weinstein didn’t send him his best stuff. As for Travolta, Weinstein said, “I didn’t see how he’d play a hood.” For the role of the boxer, Avary had always wanted Matt Dillon, but Tarantino was less convinced. So, apparently, was Dillon, who
asked for a day to think about starring as Butch Coolidge. Too long; by the time Dillon called the next day to say he wanted the role, it was too late. Tarantino had just met Bruce Willis at Harvey Keitel’s house on the beach in Santa Monica; they took a walk, during which Willis recited much of the dialogue from
Reservoir Dogs.
He was soon cast as the boxer.

Then there was the part of Jules, the Ezekiel-quoting hit man, which Tarantino had written with Samuel L. Jackson in mind. Jackson, who knew the role had been written for him, came in and read for the part, thinking the role was already his, which it was. But, as Weinstein heard, Jackson “gave the worst audition in the world,” and Tarantino continued to audition actors. An unknown actor named Paul Calderon blew him away. There was no contest; he was better than Jackson. Lawrence Bender called Jackson’s agent to give him the bad news. Weinstein says he got wind of the imminent casting change and asked Tarantino to hold off, then called Jackson. “You are about to lose this role,” he warned the actor. “You’re gonna have to audition. And you’re gonna have to blow his balls off.” Jackson claims he never thought he was auditioning the first time, and called his agent to deliver this message: “Was I supposed to have been auditioning? Now I’ll blow you away.” He flew in from New York to audition for Tarantino, Bender, and Richard Gladstein. This time he delivered the goods. Calderon got a bit part instead.

Meanwhile, a lot of women were being considered for the part of Mia, Marsellus’s girlfriend. Meg Ryan and Michelle Pfeiffer were being pitched by their agents. Rosanna Arquette tested for the role, and Holly Hunter was a candidate. Uma Thurman’s CAA agent, Jay Moloney, called Lawrence Bender to pitch his client for the part; the producers turned him down, saying they didn’t think she was right for it. Moloney was undeterred; he turned around and called Tarantino’s manager, Cathryn Jaymes, and said, “I’m calling to follow up on a meeting with Quentin to set up a meeting with Uma.” Jaymes, who didn’t know otherwise, set up the meeting. By the time Tarantino told Jaymes that he had had no intention of scheduling a meeting with Thurman, it was too late to call Moloney and cancel without insulting him.

So Tarantino met Thurman and decided she was precisely what he had had in mind for Mia after all. Moreover, he decided she was the muse he’d been looking for. Thurman then turned down the role. Tarantino had to call and beg her to reconsider, which finally she did.

Perhaps coincidentally, at around the time Tarantino was casting the film, he broke up with Sher at her apartment, right after she read
Pulp Fiction.
It was hard for him to ignore that he’d become the hottest thing in town, and it seemed as if he needed a cooler girlfriend; he soon took up with Uma Thurman (though that didn’t last long, either). Sher is philosophical about it. “Like any [Hollywood] relationship, a big white light shined on it,” she reflected. “I knew too much, there were too many people kissing his ass. I thought I was ready to have a serious relationship.” Early on, they needed each other. “I believed in him. He believed in me. We were in love.” She knew Tarantino well enough by that time to understand that he kept searching for strong mother and father figures, and that the instability of his childhood was continually replayed in his relationships.

When Tarantino’s stepfather Curt Zastoupil left his mother, Connie, Tarantino felt he lost the only stable father figure he had known. Sher, who supported him through the straits of early success, felt that “We had [had] a child together; it’s called
Pulp Fiction.
It’s the product of our relationship.” As for Connie, she thought Stacey was the one who got away. “That’s the daughter-in-law I wanted. She’s Jewish. She knows how to treat a mother. Gentiles didn’t get it right,” she said.

B
Y ALL ACCOUNTS THE SHOOT OF
P
ULP
F
ICTION
WAS A RELAXED
affair, with Tarantino skipping around the set like a kid at an amusement park. “His excitement was contagious,” recalled producer Richard Gladstein. A
Vanity Fair
writer encountered Tarantino in situ in a stained Speed Racer T-shirt and baggy jeans, looking “as if he hasn’t shaved or bathed in days, possibly weeks,” which given Tarantino’s personal hygiene habits was entirely possible. Tarantino and Eric Stoltz, who played the drug dealer Lance,
wore their bathrobes for days at a time to give them a lived-in authenticity, with Tarantino telling his interviewer, “I did everything in that bathrobe. I ate. I drank. I masturbated in that bathrobe.”

Tarantino used a handheld camera for the first time during Travolta’s famous dance scene, and didn’t use a video monitor to watch the action. “You need to be there, not the back of your fucking head across the room buried in the monitor,” he told the magazine. Of course, there were limits to such dedication. Ving Rhames had to chasten Tarantino when the director lay down on the ground, under the camera, during the anal rape scene, as Rhames shot another character in the groin. “I had to say, ‘Look, cut. Uh, Quentin, don’t do that. You’re destroying my concentration,’” the actor recalled. But the Miramax executives were impressed. Harvey and Bob Weinstein came to the set and were so taken by the footage that they offered Tarantino and Bender an overall two-picture development deal.

Though Tarantino wasn’t talking to his old friend Craig Hamann anymore, he wasn’t above calling and asking for a favor. Hamann was a recovering drug addict, so Tarantino asked for help in counseling Uma Thurman on how to act when she snorted the heroin. Hamann, ever willing, told her not to go limp right away, but to respond to an initial rush, and only after a few minutes to collapse in a state of drugged unconsciousness. Hamann also came down to the set at Quentin’s request to counsel John Travolta on one of the signature scenes of the film, when Travolta as Vincent jams a syringe of Adrenalin directly into Thurman’s heart to bring her out of an overdose. Hamann had overdosed as a teenager, and though he’d been revived with a syringe of salt water to a vein, he’d seen plenty of others overdose and be jolted with Adrenalin. The lines from the scene (“You’re giving her an injection of Adrenalin right to her heart…”) spoken by Lance were actually Hamann’s verbatim instructions to the actors.

Stoltz remembers Tarantino flopping around on the floor in rehearsal for the cast. “I remember Quentin saying something like, ‘It’s like when you shot a panther or trap a tiger and they go berserk before they calm down.’” They did take after take, with Tarantino riling up Travolta, Thurman, Stoltz, and Arquette; the
needle scene was actually filmed backward, starting with the needle in Thurman’s chest, then Travolta pulled it out, with the camera whipping upward.

That scene became one of the most talked-about moments in the film, included on a list of
Premiere
magazine’s “100 Most Memorable Movie Scenes”—and no wonder. At the opening screening of the film at the New York Film Festival in September 1994 a man seated in the orchestra section keeled over in a dead faint when he saw the syringe plunge (though later there was some question as to whether Harvey Weinstein had had the moment staged). “I thought that someone had had a heart attack or something, and I was quite anxious,” said Eric Stoltz later. “I was sitting next to Quentin, and I said, ‘What if this guy dies from seeing this scene? I feel kind of responsible.’ And Quentin leaned over and said, ‘You know, Eric, when they screened
Jaws
a man had a heart attack and died, and they told that to Steven Spielberg and he said, good, that means the movie works.’ I wasn’t exactly reassured.”

Typically, Tarantino never thanked Hamann for his efforts—much less paid him—nor did he acknowledge his contribution in the movie’s credits. Bad manners had become a real habit with Tarantino.

O
N
M
ONDAY
, J
ANUARY 17, 1994, AN EARTH-QUAKE
measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale struck the densely populated San Fernando Valley in northern Los Angeles. The earthquake, while relatively mild, caused a shocking amount of damage, killing fifty-seven people and injuring another one thousand five hundred. Freeways collapsed, thousands of homes and businesses were left without electricity for days, and thousands of residents were left homeless. Cathryn Jaymes was sitting amid the rubble of her living room in Studio City when the phone rang. It was Quentin Tarantino. She braced herself; three days earlier Tarantino’s business manager, Mark Friedman—whom she’d hired—had called to peremptorily fire her after ten years of managing Tarantino’s career.

Jaymes’s house was a mess; broken glass was everywhere. Her refrigerator had slid across the floor and crashed through her kitchen window. Jaymes thought Tarantino was calling to see how she was, or at least to apologize for not calling her himself the previous Friday. She felt it was the least she could expect after she’d worked so hard for his success all this time. But not at all; Tarantino wasn’t calling to apologize, and he never even mentioned the earthquake.

“I’m calling to ask you a favor,” said Tarantino.

“How dare you?” demanded Jaymes. “You just fired me. No more favors. And in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s been an earthquake.”

He attempted conciliation. “I want you to know you were a terrific manager,” Tarantino explained. “I appreciate it. But your job is done. I don’t need you anymore.” He paused. “You know I’ve always been selfish. I don’t need to pay a manager anymore, I have an agent. I am not going to get another manager. Look, I can get kings and queens on the phones now. I don’t need you. What makes you think I’d stay with you anyway?”

Jaymes was stunned. “Because you promised you would,” she said.

Tarantino replied: “Promises are made to be broken. Nobody keeps their promises. Nobody has to keep their promises.”

Not in Hollywood, anyway.

Tarantino’s spokeswoman Bumble Ward says that the director believes he did not betray Jaymes, saying that he stayed with her for two years longer than he felt he needed her, “Cathryn is a great person, but she didn’t get me the jobs. Therefore it wasn’t necessary for me to have a manager,” he said through Ward. “I didn’t betray Cathryn. I like Cathryn.”

P
ULP
F
ICTION
DEBUTED AT THE
C
ANNES
F
ILM
F
ESTIVAL IN
1994. Harvey Weinstein had refused to show it before the festival, ratcheting up curiosity. On the day Tarantino arrived in the south of France, his movie stars in tow, somebody remarked that it
seemed like
The Wild Bunch
had hit the Croisette, the promenade along the beach. The stars were here for Tarantino, and this time Cannes was waiting for him. They remembered
Reservoir Dogs
, and the word was that
Pulp Fiction
was the festival film not to be missed.

You could hardly miss Tarantino. He appeared in the southern port unshaven, his lanky, overcaffeinated frame slouching toward the Carlton Hotel. He hadn’t slept in weeks, and had finished the film in the days before the festival. Behind him, stepping out of an armada of black liveried festival luxury vans, came Bruce Willis, with his shades and fabulous smirk, John Travolta, eyeing the crowd with a hungry charisma, and Uma Thurman, a drowsy-eyed goddess who, for the next several days, would be the princess of pulp.

Miramax had set the buzz machine in motion. Before the official screening they showed the movie to a group of influential press at Cannes—
Chicago Sun-Times’s
Roger Ebert,
Time’s
Richard Schickel, the
New Yorker’s
David Denby—and the signs were good. Comments were beginning to trickle out: Tarantino was “a poet of violence”; his movie was “a smartly intoxicating cocktail of rampage and meditation.” Tarantino fairly seduced Janet Maslin of the
New York Times
with his mix of high energy and low-rent charm, gabbing his way to her heart over a four-hour tête-à-tête lunch. They talked; they bonded; they went shopping.