Educated: Mainly in a Manhattan Beach, Calif., video store
Profile: Lantern-jawed wunderkind of the movie biz; after “Reservoir Dogs” (1992) his “Pulp Fiction” (1994) won Palme d’Or at Cannes; “Pulp’s” cost: $8 million; gross so far: $57.6 million; brilliantly jumbles pre-MTV sensibility with filmic homages, and when did he figure out Amsterdam?
In America, you know, we’ve got a bug up our butt about something and we just want a change. All right, but what always happens when the change happens is, nothing f–n’ happens. It doesn’t change, all right? And so what happens is they clean slate, make this big move for change and get completely impatient and completely mad when things don’t change in two years.
You know there’s all this talk that the majority of Americans are conservative, OK? I find that suspect, I really do, and I am not talking like a baby, because I know Los Angeles is not America, New York is not America, neither is Chicago, the big cities are not America. Actually, it’s funny because “Pulp Fiction” did well all over America, except for like the really small towns.
“Pulp Fiction” is the antiformula, yet it’s not anti by being esoteric. It totally delivers on the spills and the chills and the laughs and everything, but you can’t determine what’s going to happen until it happens. I don’t feel it takes place in the fantasy world at all. I mean part of the fun of it is, it’s a depiction of the mundane, right, in the criminal world.
My mom never went to the movies that much, in the last 10 years, but now she has video, she’s seen everything that’s released, all right? She just see it on video. Her favorite actors are like Peter Weller and William Petersen. I could talk to my mom about any movie, as long as it’s been released on video.
You know, that is always the most exciting time in Hollywood, when they don’t know what works anymore. Then they take a chance. First they’ll hold on for as long as they can to these old dinosaurs. And then you have a “Pulp Fiction,” a film that doesn’t play by the rules yet finds its audience.
“Reservoir Dogs” did so fantastically overseas that it’s like we never sweated America. America was just another market, which was really great. What we did on “Pulp” was we opened it in Japan, in America and the next week in the U.K. The next week in Italy and France. The next week, Germany. Actually we got a little premiere in Korea, of all places. I knew we were going to do great in Europe, you know?
And like, all right, with cable TV, with foreign, with pay TV, free TV, the 500-channel thing and the theatrical market and video, all right, they’re monsters that need to be fed. You’ve got to be sort of dopey to lose money.
What I learned about France, I learned from watching French films. And when I did go to France, I didn’t feel like I was in a time machine; I felt I was walking around in a French movie, you know?
I always kind of feel that an audience as a collective are genius. As individuals they can be idiots, you know? I don’t care specifically what they think, all right? I want to watch the movie with an audience and I know exactly how they fell when they’re watching and I don’t need to find out specifics.
I think the lines [between “high” and “low” culture] have become blurred and I think part of the reason is television is a major part of it, all right? Because you know, this group might go to the ballet and this group might go and see “Demolition Man.” And they all watch television when they get home from work.
The “Roseanne” show, that is great television. It seems to be the hardest thing that you could ever possibly do, even more than brain surgery, would be to make good episodic television, week in, week out, year after year after year after year. And they just seem to not be able to make bad episode. And when work of that quality gets such a large acceptance that always makes me feel good.
Something else that I’m completely annoyed by, all right, is call waiting. I won’t have call waiting. And then they go “Well, yeah, but like, you know, what if it’s an emergency?” Well, what if somebody died? They’re going to be just as dead when I hang up the phone, all right? You know, you get a call like 4 in the morning. So and so died. Well, I’m not going to pick the phone. If someone did die, they’ll be dead in the morning when I wake up. They’ll still be dead.
I don’t want to spend my time reading scripts. I want to read books.
