Tuesday, June 3, 2014

The bloated Pot in Pulp Fiction...

At this point, I have seen Pulp Fiction an unbelievable amount of times. I can turn my head and close my eyes and see each scene by dialogue alone. I can recite it with only minor mistakes and I can watch it anytime, anywhere and with anyone. The movie is flawless...or nearly flawless. Pulp Fiction is truly one of those movies I can watch over and over again, finding new little details that make me love it more and things that always bother me. Butch's dad dying of dysentery while have that uncomfortable hunk of metal stuck up his ass...and then Chris Walken's character took the watch and shoved it up his ass. I cringe every time I hear that. Or  how about how Eric Stoltz's drug dealer is out of balloons and puts the heroin in a baggie which in turn leads to Mia thinking the heroin is cocaine and she snorts it leading to her near death experience. The subtle nod to that scene when Vincent meets up with Mia and Marcellus later in the movie.

Yet there is one ginormous moment in the movie where you just sit and wonder what the hell happened to this movie. There is very little overall point to it. You'll find the video for that scene below. The scene is boxed between two great scenes. It comes immediately after the brilliant Christopher Walken  describes to a small child how his father shoved his gold watch up his ass so he could eventually give it to his son and how after his dad dies, Christopher Walken's Captain Coons, out of respect carried that hunk of metal up his ass for two more years. The scene is shocking and funny. Poignant and gross. Immediately after the scene below is the bring out the gimp scene which is arguably one of the most disturbing and most intense scenes in movie history. I know that, for me, that scene makes the entire movie for me. Wraps up a loose thread and leads into the next tale. 

And yet, for about 10 minutes screen time, we come back to a hotel scene which my friend says he won't even watch. Fast forward through it and you literally miss nothing except a slight background on Fabienne (she wants a pot belly and oral pleasure), a slightly cruel shower scene where you nearly see all of Bruce's Willis while he mocks his wife/girlfriend with a slightly offensive mongoloid voice, and finally (thankfully) the knowledge that Fabi forgot to grab Butch's father's watch off the kangaroo in their apartment and Butch has to go back for it which brings us into the next fabulous sequence of the movie. It is a seemingly worthless sequence and yet I have to wonder if there is a hidden meaning, a critical point, to the Fabienne the mongoloid/I wanna pot belly scene. And what was the point of having it in this moment of the movie? There is so much intelligence behind the rest of the movie that to just have this scene in there because...well just because... it doesn't make sense. Is it to show me what Butch has to lose if he dies? If so, why do I care if he dies and Fabi the mongoloid has to make due on her own? Is it to have the eventual Willis in the shower wangtastic scene because we all wanna see Willis wang? Is it about the blueberry pancakes that she ends up not getting? Is it just a short interlude to allow the watcher to catch his breath? As far as I can tell, the scene makes no sense. It is a worthless scene with no visible redeeming quality and it has bugged me since the first time I saw the movie at the matinee special with the 20 or so senior citizens who had no clue what they were getting into (indeed half of them left the theater shortly after the Ezekiel 25:17 scene). The scene is not worth the time it takes out of the movie and it completely blows the pacing of the movie. Why? Why is this scene in the movie?

Tell me. Give me your thoughts. Feel free to email or tweet them to me... because apparently comments are broken on my blog. No other reason why I am not swimming in comments weekly. I will update with any theories you may have, giving full credit and continue this discussion. Give me your thoughts internet!

Email: MrUnhappy1331@gmail.com
Tweet: @MrUnhappy1331

Until then...Mr. Unhappy sez: Pulp Fiction is a great movie. Fabi the Mongoloid...not so much. Still it is like the family fucking circus... I hate it but am inexplicably drawn to it.

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