The Making of Pulp Fiction: Quentin Tarantino's and the Cast's ...

?He called me two hours later and said, ?The first scene is fucking brilliant. Does it stay this good?? ? remembers Gladstein. He called again an hour later, having read to the point where the main character, the hit man Vincent Vega, is shot and killed. ?Are you guys crazy?? he yelled. ?You just killed off the main character in the middle of the movie!?

?Just keep reading,? said Gladstein. ?And Harvey says, ?Start negotiating!? So I did, and he called back shortly thereafter and said, ?Are you closed yet?? I said, ?I?m into it.? Harvey said, ?Hurry up! We?re making this movie.? ?

Disney may have seemed an unlikely match for Pulp Fiction, but Weinstein had the final say. ?As for [then chairman] Jeffrey Katzenberg, that was the first test of what I call autonomy with Jeffrey,? says Weinstein. ?When I signed my contract with Disney selling Miramax, with us still running the company, I wrote the word ?autonomy? on every page, because I had heard that Jeffrey was notorious for not giving it. When I read the Pulp Fiction script, I went to him 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.? ?

The script was sent out to actors with the warning ?If you show this to anybody, two guys from Jersey [Films] will come and break your legs.?

Anyone but 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.? Marred by a series of commercially successful but creatively stifling movies, culminating in the talking-baby series, Look Who?s Talking, Travolta?s career seemed past saving. So, when he was told that Tarantino wanted to meet with him, he went to the director?s address, on Crescent Heights Boulevard.

Tarantino recalls, ?I open the door, and he says, ?O.K., let me describe your apartment to you. Your bathroom has this kind of tile, and da-da-da-da. The reason I know this is, this is the apartment that I lived in when I first moved to Hollywood. This is the apartment I got Welcome Back, Kotter in [the TV series that made him a star].? ?

They talked until sunrise. Tarantino told him he had two films in mind for him. ?A vampire movie called From Dusk Till Dawn and Pulp Fiction,? says Travolta, who replied, ?I?m not a vampire person.?

Tarantino had planned on casting Michael Madsen, who played the ex-con sadist Victor Vega in Reservoir Dogs, in the role of the hit man Vincent Vega. But Madsen had already accepted a part in Wyatt Earp, so Tarantino called Travolta and said the part was his.

?Three times I had set trends,? Travolta tells me, referring to his early roles in Saturday Night Fever, Urban Cowboy, and Grease, which helped launch disco, cowboy chic, and greasers. Would his playing of Vincent Vega spawn a battalion of heroin-addicted hit men? He told Tarantino, ?I?ve never played a drug addict on-screen. Do I really want to shoot up and kill people??

?No, no, I?m cutting away a lot of that stuff,? Tarantino told him. Next, Travolta consulted his agent, his friends, and his wife, Kelly Preston. ?All were pushing for me to do it,? he says.

Everyone except Harvey Weinstein, who wanted anyone but Travolta. Mike 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.?

During a late-night telephone call with Simpson, the Weinsteins accepted all of Tarantino?s deal points except one?the casting of Travolta. ?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.

Simpson told him, ?You?re going to agree to it right now, or there?s no deal.? Harvey erupted, but Simpson held firm. ?We?ve got two other buyers waiting outside to get this,? he said. (Ronna Wallace, of Live Entertainment, which had produced Reservoir Dogs, had actually stormed William Morris security that night in an attempt to disrupt Simpson?s call with the Weinsteins.) ?You?ve got 15 seconds to agree to it. If I hang up, it?s over,? said Simpson. ?Harvey kept talking, arguing, and I said, ?O.K., 15, 14.? When I got to eight, Bob goes, ?Harvey, we have to say yes.? Harvey says, ?O.K., fuck it.? ?

Later, when the Weinsteins saw the finished film in Los Angeles, Harvey announced facetiously, 20 minutes into the screening, according to Gladstein, ?I?m so glad I had the idea to cast John Travolta.?

The movie had no bankable stars, however, until Harvey Keitel picked up his daughter one day at Bruce Willis?s house in Malibu. ?He mentioned that Quentin was getting ready to do another film,? says Willis. A rabid fan of Reservoir Dogs, Willis wanted to work with the young director, even if it meant taking a drastic reduction in the $5 million he had reportedly received for Die Hard. ?It was so far ahead of anything,? Willis still says of Reservoir Dogs.

Keitel invited Willis to a barbecue at his home, saying that Tarantino would be there. The superstar arrived, and, one insider insists, he wanted the leading role, Vincent Vega. But with Travolta already cast as Vega, there was only one possible part for Willis?Butch, the boxer?which Tarantino had promised to Matt Dillon, whom he?d had in mind originally for the role. ?Quentin was a man of his word,? says Simpson. ?So he gave Matt the script, 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.?

?And so Harvey Weinstein said, ?O.K., let?s put Bruce Willis in that role,? ? Simpson continues. ?He?s going to get Willis in the movie one way or another, right? And, of course, Bruce is ?What? I?m not going to play the lead? I?m going to be bound up by some hillbilly in a pawnshop so that John Travolta can be the lead?? ?

Willis recalls the deal more diplomatically, saying that when he was offered the role he immediately said yes. About the pay cut, he adds, ?There?s a term for it in Hollywood: I don?t think it was ever about the money for anyone.?

Except for Harvey Weinstein. ?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 Weinsteins recouped their $8.5 million investment before production even began by selling the foreign rights for $11 million.)

Michelle Pfeiffer, Meg Ryan, Holly Hunter, and Rosanna Arquette were all reportedly considered for the role of Mia Wallace, the sexy wife of a burly crime boss. But Tarantino had decided on Uma Thurman. ?Uma?s the only person he met with [by himself],? says Lawrence Bender.

Thurman?s agent, the late Jay Moloney, who committed suicide in 1999, knew the part was perfect for Thurman, but the actress wasn?t sure. ?I was 23, from Massachusetts,? she tells me in the New York restaurant Maialino, referring to the boarding-school environment she came from. Even today, after starring in two other Tarantino movies?Kill Bill and Kill Bill: Vol. 2?and becoming known as his muse, it takes Thurman a moment to return to the raucous role that made her famous. She says she was in a ?funny little slump,? after starring in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, when Moloney sent her Pulp Fiction. ?I wasn?t sure I wanted to be in the movie,? she says, explaining that it wasn?t just the obscenity, or her character?s drug habit?it was also the anal rape of her crime-boss husband. ?Pretty frightening,? she says.

Source: http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/03/making-of-pulp-fiction-oral-history

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