Quentin Tarantino and Philosophy (32 page)

Complicating this realization, however, is the fact that we hear the music start before Jackie gets in her car. Is the music truly diegetic, or does Tarantino make Jackie seem “magically” to hear the extra-diegetic soundtrack?

Aristotle,
Poetics
, translated by Ingram Bywater [god, I love that name], in
The Basic Works of Aristotle
(New York: Random House, 1941[a very bad year]), lines 1451a30-34.

Some of you will say that I am gratuitously picking on the French in this essay. I may be, but I am not the one who built a cryptic critique of French cinema into
Pulp Fiction
. Watch it again, and watch for all things French, and see whether you think this was my idea or Tarantino’s. Pay close attention to Fabienne’s conversation with Butch about why she has not properly valued his father’s watch. That’s Tarantino telling you that French cinema has lost its sense of film time, and if Fabienne will ever just get on that damned chopper, she might learn a thing or two about how important time is in a movie. Otherwise she will make us all late for the train. To put it more plainly, the French have forgotten the
audience
, and are wasting their time. You may not believe me now, but watch it again and ask yourself “why, in this story, is Fabienne French?”

Say, you know what they call a “monkey wrench” in France? They call it “clé anglaise.” “Clé” means “key,” and I think you know what “anglaise” means. Sour grapes from Waterloo, I’d guess.

Here is a case where the Aussies pulled one over on
us
. Ask an Aussie if he or she likes Mel Gibson’s films. See if you don’t get an evasion, with just a hint of a wry grin that says “he used to be our problem, but he’s your problem
now
.”

I know that his name sounds French, but he was born in England, his parents were Polish and English-Irish, and the attitudes of the French are not Bergson’s fault. They regard themselves as too hip to read Bergson now, even though he wrote in French and won the Nobel Prize for literature. Oh, and his coolest books are
Time and Free Will
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1910 [1889]);
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic
(New York: Macmillan, 1913); and
Creative Evolution
(New York: Holt, 1911 [1907]). The part where he talks about the film projector and its relation to time is in Chapter 4 of
Creative Evolution
. Another French philosopher (who wasn’t very French in my opinion) named Gilles Deleuze wrote a book on Bergson called
Bergsonism
(New York: Zone, 1988), and then applied the theory to cinema in a very cool book called
Cinema One: The Movement Image
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986). You really should check out the Deleuze. I know Tarantino isn’t an avid reader of philosophy, so I’m not saying he read this, but if you want to understand how he does what he does and why it has the effect on you that it has, it’s pretty hard to beat Deleuze’s theory.

I have sometimes wondered whether commercial movie theaters run the film through the projector at the appointed clock time even if no one buys a ticket. I’ll bet some do. I’m sorry, but that’s just weird.

Of course, Tarantino’s and Avery’s script was already presented “out of sequence” so that even the actors never saw it “in sequence,” which is perhaps why even the actors couldn’t really answer the question as to what the movie was about in interviews. Each of them had digested his or her character’s
perspective
on the events, but even the actors would have been hard pressed to identify the “main” character. So it isn’t really that the film was just edited out of sequence, it’s that Tarantino and Avery had already conceived of it
in
sequence, varied it in their imaginations for the anticipated effect (on the audience
and
the actors) and then edited the script to reflect the temporal choices they settled upon.

No one calls Vincent Vega “Vinnie” in the movie. This is by design, I suspect. Tarantino knows we will think of him as Vinnie Barbarino from
Welcome Back Kotter
in any case. I am calling him “Vinnie” because that’s who John Travolta is and will always be.

I would like to point out that when you say the alphabet in French, the last letter of the alphabet is pronounced “Zed.”

It may seem like only one continuous day, but Tarantino makes clear in a number of places that the story of Jules Winnfield’s exit from the hit-man profession happens on one day, that Vinnie’s date with Mia is not that same night, but the next night. An indeterminate amount of time passes between Vinnie’s date with Mia and the night that Butch wins the fight he was supposed to throw; Butch’s exit with Fabienne is the morning after his fight. The coffee shop stand-off is on day one, and that day includes the visit to Jimmie’s house and Monster Joe’s Truck and Tow, and also the scene at the bar where Vinnie first encounters Butch. How that evening passes we are not told. The next thing that we see is day two, beginning with Vinnie’s visit to Lance the drug dealer, before his date with Mia. The third day is indicated because Mia has recovered from her overdose and Marsellus is back from Florida by the time of Butch’s fight, so it may be a few days later, but since Marsellus is still wearing the mysterious bandage on the back of his head, it is not long enough for a minor wound to heal. The interesting events in the back of the Pawn Shop store unfold the following morning. If you don’t just love the character of The Gimp, you just aren’t quite playful enough to be in this tree house. I mean was The Gimp gratuitous or what? I admit I haven’t figured out why he’s in the script, but I’m working on it.

This is the term Hitchcock used to describe the object of desire that motivates the plot’s action—something that has to be retrieved for some reason.
The Maltese Falcon
is the classic example. It makes no particular difference what the McGuffin is, so long as there is
something
the characters want, simply
must
have. It can be a lot of fun to look for the McGuffin in a film—there can be more than one, and they are often quite revealing. See Thomas E. Wartenberg, “Ethics or Film Theory: The Real McGuffin in
North By Northwest
,” in
Hitchcock and Philosophy: Dial M for Metaphysics
, edited by David Baggett and William A. Drumin (Chicago: Open Court, 2007), pp. 141-155.

The bar is called “Sally LeRoy’s.” LeRoy is a French name.

The original script has Jules imagining the bloody outcome and then snapping back into the present. Tarantino did shoot the daydream segment, but wisely left it out of the final film—it disturbs the stand-off too much. But of course, he put it in the out-takes on the DVD, as he knew he would when he made the final edits, so he knew we would still get to see what we wanted to see, which is really whether anyone would do us the kindness of shooting Amanda Plummer (who is most annoying).

Aristotle,
Poetics
, line 1448a4.
¹⁵
I think you still doubt me about this concealed critique of French cinema. Okay, explain this: why does every important character, except Butch, have a French name: Jules, Vincent, Marsellus, Mia, Lance, and most of the minor characters, Maynard, Raquel, Roger, Brett (which means someone who is a Breton, the French invaders of 1066 included Bretons) . . . the list goes on. You will say, “Ah, but it is just a coincidence, what about Butch?” Well, Butch tells us, and I quote: “I’m an American. Our names don’t mean shit.” By implication, Tarantino is trying his best tell us to pay attention to what the non-American names mean. Why, pray tell, do Butch and Esmerelda have a conversation about the meanings of names? You have to pay
attention
if you want into the tree house. Now, Quentin, this part of the footnote is just for you, when you read this: You’re thinking that “Yes, he got the French thing, but he missed the Spanish thing.” Not so. I certainly caught the Spanish names—Yolanda, Ringo, Esmerelda, and I certainly noticed when Butch says good night to Esmerelda, he says “
bon soir
” and she replies “
buenas noches
.” And I know Sergio Leone shot
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
in Spain, so I do know the “true” identities of Esmerelda’s three slightly toasted Mexican men. And, yes, I even watched the Spanish subtitles under the French dialogue on the DVD, just as you hoped some of us would. Hilarious. But someone else will have to write the essay on your Spanish subplot. I just don’t have the time.

Bonnie is a French name. And since when is “Jimmie” spelled with an “ie” at the end? Oh, wait. I think I do know of a language in which they spell “Jimmie” that way. . . .

You don’t want to play “Marvin” in a Tarantino film. Marvin was the police officer who got his ear cut off by Vic Vega in
Reservoir Dogs
, and then met with a pretty bad end. By the way, “Marvin” is a French name.

They’re all bad people, except maybe Marvin, and that was
definitely
an accident.

I don’t guess I really have to point out that not only is Fabienne French, she whines
because
she is so very French. And she wants blueberry pancakes because she isn’t terribly well-connected to the way things really are; she’ll have to settle for buttermilk pancakes, since this is an American movie.

I know very well that you already looked it up. I mean Ezekiel 25:17. No, it does not quite say what Jules says before he “caps someone’s ass,” but it’s not that far off. Call it
license poétique
. Here is the passage in French: “J’exercerai sur eux de grandes vengeances, En les châtiant avec fureur. Et ils sauront que je suis l’Eternel, Quand j’exercerai sur eux ma vengeance.” Ha.

“Lava,” from “laver,” the French verb for “to wash.” It’s a French soap.

Aristotle,
Poetics
, lines 1451a-35.

All dialogue quotes from
Pulp Fiction
are from Quentin Tarantino,
Pulp Fiction: A Quentin Tarantino Screenplay
(New York: Hyperion, 1994).

For a fascinating look at some of these, I’d recommend Joe Nickell’s
Looking for a Miracle
(Amherst: Prometheus, 1993).

David Hume, “Of Miracles,”
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
, edited by Tom L. Beauchamp (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999 [1772]).

United States Patent and Trademark Office,
Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP), Eighth Edition
, August 2001, Latest Revision August 2006, subsection706.03(a),
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/0700_706_03_a.htm#sect706.03a
, accessed 4/12/07.

Hume’s argument is limited to mere testimony, but can be extended to include physical evidence.

Hume, “On Miracles,” p. 173n23.

An argument for the existence of God along these lines has been defended by the contemporary philosopher Alvin Plantinga in Part Three of his book
Warranted Christian Belief
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Hume, “On Miracles,” p. 174.

Hume makes the point with regard to the quality of testimony in “On Miracles,” p. 171.

Richard Swinburne, “For the Possibility of Miracles,”
Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, Fourth Edition
, edited by Louis P. Pojman (Belmont: Wadsworth, 2003), p. 272.

Hume, “On Miracles,” p. 170.

Hume, “On Miracles,” p. 186.

I don’t mean to suggest that only ex-convicts find themselves in these scenarios, but, at least in Tarantino films, ex-convicts tend to be involved.

These probably aren’t the real names of these charges, but since I’m not involved with law enforcement nor am I a lawyer, I’ll just continue to fake it.

This holds for two-person scenarios. In scenarios where there are more than two persons, the person who shoots first is virtually assured of being seriously injured or killed, because the person they shoot at is not the only person who has a gun pointed at them.

Tarantino wrote, but did not direct
True Romance
(it was directed by Tony Scott in 1993).

It seems clear that Karen must have an interest in the well-being of Beatrix’s unborn child or she wouldn’t give up her interest in assassinating Beatrix. Evidence for this lies in the claim that Beatrix has to convince Karen that she is in fact pregnant.

In a Sunday
New York Times Magazine
interview, for example, Tarantino admits to having fallen “hopelessly in love with Tatum O‘Neal” when he saw
The Bad News Bears
. He then proceeded to write an ABC “Afterschool Special” about himself and Tatum O’Neal. “I called her Somerset in the script,” he says, “and I did what I could never do in real life.” After that, he says, “that’s all I could do in school, just write new scripts.” “Screenwriters are (Obsessive, Creative, Neurotic) People, Too,”
New York Times Magazine
, November 9th, 2003, p. 82.

Quotes from the film are taken from the
Kill Bill
script:
http://tarantino.webds.de/tarantino/movie/killbill/script/killbill-script.htm
. Alternate spellings and poor use of punctuation are to be found in the original.