Scene selection — Geoff Carter: ‘Pulp Fiction’: Look at the big brain on Quentin

Friday, Aug. 30, 2002 | 9:22 a.m.

Geoff Carter is a Seattle based free-lance film critic and entertainment writer. Reach him at carter@pre2k.com.

My friends memorize movie dialogue the way you've memorized the songs from "Grease." We can have entire conversations in "Caddyshack," "Repo Man," "This is Spinal Tap," "Touch of Evil" and, needless to say, "Pulp Fiction."

Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary's Oscar-winning script boasts one smash hit after another: "Royale with Cheese." "Five-Dollar Shake." "Bring Out The Gimp." "Brain Detail." Sing along; you know the words.

If the two-disc Miramax Collector's Edition DVD set (Miramax Home Entertainment, $29.99) had the quality of a Rhino Records archival re-issue, we'd be in business. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

While it stands head-and-shoulders above the previous DVD edition of the film -- a movie-only disc -- there's not enough interest-generating collateral material on these two discs to justify the set's price tag.

I'll be the first to admit that "Pulp Fiction" is a masterwork and that Tarantino is a sharp filmmaker. (His post-"Fiction" output -- the schizophrenic "From Dusk 'Til Dawn," the slight "Jackie Brown" -- more or less stripped him of the "genius" status that the watershed film earned him.)

But come on: Do we need all these documentaries telling us how smart Tarantino is, how revolutionary the film was? Is Quentin that badly in need of a hug?

Forget a director's commentary. I've heard Tarantino speak in person, and the last thing you want him doing is trying to describe something to you; he could take six weeks elaborating on marshmallows. But "Pulp Fiction" wasn't just about Tarantino: It boasts a career-best performance by Bruce Willis and a star-making turn by Samuel L. Jackson; it provided John Travolta and surf guitar legend Dick Dale with second careers; it put Miramax's Weinstein brothers firmly on the front lines.

I find it hard to believe that none of the aforementioned currently have nothing to say about "Pulp Fiction." There are interviews on the second "Fiction" disc, but they're eight years old, or filled with slavish praise for the director. You find out nothing you couldn't have learned by reading "Fiction's" trivia page on the Internet Movie Database.

Worse still is an endless string of pats on the back, in the form of Tarantino's acceptance speech at Cannes, a Charlie Rose interview, a Michael Moore interview, and most useless of all, an episode of "Siskel and Ebert at the Movies" in which the two film critics wonder aloud whether Tarantino is going to have a lasting influence on filmmaking. It's not informative; it's grossly self-serving, and a bit much for a director with three proper films to his credit.

What true "Pulp Fiction" collateral material exists, in the form of half-a-dozen outtakes and a few minutes of behind-the-scenes footage, is being hyped as a find as revolutionary as the discovery of Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil" memo. Don't buy the hype, and unless you're madly in love with the sound of a man selling himself, don't buy this set, either. Be content to sing the movie's praises with friends.