You are old. 20 years ago this very day (OK, yesterday to be exact), a 31-year-old wunderkind with only one previous film to his name stepped onto the Palais stage in Cannes to accept the Palme d’Or for his modest kitchen-sink drama “Pulp Fiction.” As momentous as that evening must have been for Quentin Tarantino, it’s hard to believe that even he, not exactly legendary for his humility, could have envisaged just how influential his film would be in subsequent years, and just how rabidly lesser talents would rush to try and replicate its success. Because, without wanting to overstate anything, “Pulp Fiction” changed everything.
The landscape of Hollywood was remade, the mini-major Miramax become the preeminent force in independent film (a major-mini-major?) and Quentin Tarantino was a household name overnight (and seemingly was handed a lifetime directorial carte blanche that very evening). But this wasn’t simply a marketing success or a coup for the industry. “Pulp Fiction” changed what was seen as viable in terms of storytelling, pushing envelopes all over the place: narrative structure (loosely connected but separate story strands); chronology (messed with); dialogue (non-naturalistic, verbose, pop-culture inflected, wildly profane); even casting (has-been John Travolta, Bruce Willis in a ball gag, ingenue Uma Thurman as a femme fatale etc., etc.). For any aspiring filmmaker at the time, hell, for a lot of critics and cineliterate observers, it was a heady explosion of joyously referential but irreverent filmmaking and it felt like anything was possible.
But so few Tarantinos come along in a generation (maybe for the better—how many more could we handle?) that in fact what did happen, despite the sense of wide-open potential, was that rather than necessarily being inspired to go off and do their own thing like Tarantino did, studios and fledgling directors took the path of least resistance and tried to make a movie like Tarantino’s. And so the film industry over the next decade and a bit became something of an echo chamber, as blackly comedic, multi-stranded, extremely violent, wordy crime flicks started to crop up, first one at a time, but pretty soon in whole batches.
We’ve assembled 17 of those slipstream films below, and some are of course better than others, but what’s interesting is to examine just which ones did manage to put their own twist on the formula, and which, well, didn’t. Because having now waded through an awful lot of copycat dross, we’ve gained an even higher respect for the film that started it all, and noticed a throughline in the worst efforts which seems to be that their writers and directors have simply assumed that by assembling something that is brash, amoral, slickly violent, peppered with n- and c-words (and liberally salted with “fucks”) and populated with male characters of a racist, homophobic and/or sexist, criminal bent, voila! you’ve got ‘Pulp.’ But Tarantino, and it’s something even we are sometimes guilty of forgetting, is much, much smarter than that, and underneath the glossy, slick surface of “Pulp Fiction” is an absolutely rigorous, even classical, adherence to the storytelling basics of character building and coherent plotting, the more effective for seeming so effortless, malleable and invisible.
So in celebration of the real deal, here they are: the knock-offs, the rip-offs, the me-toos and the also rans, all vying for a sliver of that “Pulp Fiction” magic but more often than not unable to escape the long, long shadow of the film that defined the ’90s, and beyond.
“Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead” (1995)
Playing something like a romanticized elegy for gentlemen gangsters, ‘Denver‘ fizzled in theaters, despite boasting Andy Garcia backed by a cast of notables and several Tarantino alumni. Garcia plays Jimmy The Saint, an ex-con forced into doing a final favor for a slumming Christopher Walken, who proceeds to assemble a team of That Guy Actors. The plan goes sour and Steve Buscemi is dispatched to stalk and kill the men. The echoes of Tarantino are heard far and wide—Buscemi’s contract killer is named Mr. Shhh, nearly every character bears a humorous moniker, the dialogue is akin to a mashup of sixty years of gangster movies, and the tone shifts between graphic violence and humor. You’d be wrong to write off the picture though, since all artifice aside, the filmmaking is hardly pedestrian. The actors deliver, in particular a gentle Christopher Lloyd and a certifiably demented Treat Williams, while Buscemi cements his presence without so much as a word. It’s stylized, artificial even, but there’s no denying screenwriter Scott Rosenberg (who also penned last year’s “Pain & Gain”) has a sense for the kind of tough guy talk that belongs on the silver screen (and only there). If nothing else, embrace the spoilers and enjoy this scene—the source of fan favorite line: “I am Godzilla, you are Japan!” [B-]
“American Strays” (1996)
If there’s one single element of Tarantino’s style that is most frequently copied across this list, and most frequently falls absolutely flat, it’s the snappy, digressionary, pop-culture-obsessed dialogue he wrote with such fluidity and wit in “Pulp Fiction.” “American Strays,” a direct-to-dvd film starring a direct-to-dvd cast of Luke Perry, Eric Roberts and Jennifer Tilly from writer/director Michael Covert, is a case in point. The characters snip and spar at each other over the benefits of 8-tracks over CDs, or “old” Aerosmith over “new” Aerosmith, without ever convincing us that they’re doing anything but reciting a lot of words that a young writer had thought would sound real cool all strung together. And the Tarantino love-in doesn’t end there: ‘Strays’ is a multi-stranded supposedly blackly comic, semi-parodic take on the desert/road movie, populated by oddball characters who have quirks instead of personalities (this old guy collects dolls! This suicidal dude has taken out a hit … on himself!) and who only collide in, what else, a big ol’ gunfight in the Oasis diner. Perry is extraordinarily wooden, and Tilly seems to have been playing the role of sociopathic sexpot forever, but Roberts is a minor redeeming feature of the film, cast against type as a family man who has lost his job. Still there’s nothing he can really do to rescue the shoddiness of the endeavor, with Covert’s movie right down to the prevalence of low angle shots, at best an example of ventriloquism. Unfortunately, we can see his lips move. [C-/D+]
“The Way of the Gun” (2000)
As great as ‘Pulp’ is, the majority of the films that tried to emulate it ain’t in the same ballpark, the same league, they ain’t even the same fucking sport. Some get closer though, as in this beautifully crass (for the first half at least) Christopher McQuarrie crime film. Sure, “The Way of the Gun” is hyper-violent and has a coterie of vulgar, bad people making up its cast of characters. It’s talky and very much “written.” But it’s not so much a knockoff of the QT style as that it shares a similar sensibility for dialogue and genre subversion. It’s even fair to say that McQuarrie was ahead of Tarantino here in terms of heavily aping spaghetti western tropes and style (“Kill Bill” came three years later). It’s a twisty, ‘70s throwback tale of two low-lifes (Benicio Del Toro and a gravelly-voiced Ryan Phillippe) who kidnap a surrogate mother to a rich couple in hopes of a big score. Things spiral out of control on the way to a brutal gun fight in a dusty old Mexican town. The characterizations and dialogue really sing, especially coming from the two leads and James Caan as a veteran cleaner of sorts, who puts on an acting clinic in ultimate grizzled old man badassery. There’s a lot of memorable moments, acting choices and sequences: the hilarious, vulgar opening scene sets the tone and establishes these “heroes”; Del Toro slapping a prostitute in the ass before a gun fight; and Phillippe unwittingly leaping into a pile of broken glass (goddammit anyway!), until it all comes way unmoored in the final act. The success of “Pulp Fiction” allowed for the existence of “The Way of the Gun,” but perhaps unusually for this list, its successes and failures feel mostly its own. [B-]
I think "Thursday" from Skip Woods is obviously missing on this list. i really disliked this movie. the dialogue is clearly a bad Tarantino rip off. It really was annoying and almost unbearable to watch. A lame story, horrible dialogues and all plot twists were totally predictable. And the rape scene, oh gosh.. so bad.
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.
Seven Psychopaths.
I can\’t believe you mentioned "Very Bad Things" without even uttering a single thing about the obvious influence it had on the "The Hangover," but I suppose that\’s a digression from he overall point of the article. However, here\’s a few I would have added to the list:
"Rules of Attraction" – Avery\’s influence again and Bret Easton Ellis\’ pop-culture inflected writing, but still, very post-Tarantino in style.
"In Bruges" and "Seven Psychopaths" – Later in the game, but still quite evident, especially the latter.
"Hard Eight" – Sure, PTA does his own thing but I can\’t imagine this movie would have been made or seen without the success of "PuLp."
"Clay Pigeons" – Maybe more post-Fargo than post-Pulp, but it certainly was marketed as a gen-x-er crime comedy in the vein of Pulp.
Tarantino is in love with the bad movies he ate up as a kid, so now he regurgitates them as equally bad new movies. All he did with Pulp Fiction is to show that there are critics and moviegoers who also liked those bad movies.
Sorry, but the best was Heaven (1998). And it toke this kind of film a little bit further because we are making the puzzle of how it really happened, and in the end we discover that it didn’t happened in the order we thought it did, but in a completely new order. It’s like if you could make two different imagens prom the same pieces of a puzzle.
Very bad things should more aptly be noted as a noir precedent for the Hangover series. And it was much better than you say it was..
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Check it out.
I\’d add Rules of Attraction
Theres no bigger borrower then the movie Thursday. With Thomas Jane and Erin Eckhart. Awesome movie that few have seen. But the formula is mimicked in that film like bo other.
Tarantino is a legend in his own mind. His box office record sucks.
So in summary, basically to Tarantino fanboys, all movies after Pulp Fiction are Pulp Fiction ripoffs.
You Forgot Truth or Consequences, N.M. it really had that that reservoir dogs feel with the infiltrated cop and the sick musical torture scene with Martin Sheen. Totally captured the Q.T esque feel of the 90\’s.
Red Rock West.
Destiny Turns on the Radio, with QT in the titular role. Ouch.
Tarantino is great to be sure, but the main person being "copied " here is Sam Peckinpah. So many if not all character driven action movies (esp about bad man) were done first and much better by "Bloody Sam". Hateful Eight will have lots of Sam in it, you can be sure of it, Tarantino loves his work
what about truth or consequences, nm
Pulp Fiction was based on a film called Black Sabbath which features 3 none linear stories.
"You are old. 20 years ago this very day (OK, yesterday to be exact)".
Oh wow.. this article was written May 22 this year. My birthday is May 21 and I am exactly 20 years old. Huh.
Wasn't innaritu's primary influence krzysztof kieslowski? Chance and destiny etc? Even the image of the model on the billboard was a homage to that famous image in three colors: Red. Never thought it was directly Tarantino influenced. Now I see it though. Kewl.
I haven't seen a few of those.
My favorite has to be Denver.
Treat Williams, Buscemi, Walken, everybody was great and pulled their weight in that one.
Didn't care for Anwar, but Fairuza made up for that.
Out of the proto-pulp fictions, Kalifornia is 10x what Stone did with NBK.
It would have been interesting to see what Tarentino would have done with his own script though.
Wild at Heart was another Proto-Pulp Fiction that Tarentino seemed to borrow from almost as equally as Goodfellas.
Layer Cake was pretty good.
But I can never really get into British Gangster movies.
Maybe because that accent is almost exclusively marketed in america for its fussy sophistication to peddle political agendas, documentaries and goofy products in infomercials that it just never seems intimidating.
Love and a 45 had moments.
Young and skinny Rene Zelwegger looking amazing probably chief among them.
One film that I didn't see on this list was Milcho Manchevski's Before the Rain. Released the same year as Pulp Fiction. Manchevski, who both wrote and directed, breaks down and plays with the story's three acts much the same way QT did. They where both writing their stories at the same time presumably without knowing much about what the other was doing. A lot more serious than QT's, though I love them both, Before the Rain is a film that flew under the radar and was missed by a lot of people. Watch this film guys.
A little more recent but the mention of Very Bad Things reminded me of how much The Hangover lifted from that film and how it has a very Tarantino-esque style (drenched in cans of Keystone Light) to it.
I only see two movies that resemble pulp fiction the first one the foreign movie about the dog amorres something same time structure and the movie go that one really had the pulp fiction thing the story titles on screen as well, and the whole time structure that's what really makes go seem like pulp fiction that was awesome I loved the movie go. Pulp fiction is my number one favorite movie.
Amores Perros is a rip-off only because the "three interlocking stories that see characters occasionally cross over; a criminal element; harsh violence", those are mere similarities, Tarantino did not invent the structure of hyperlink cinema nor stories with characters that "cross over", those were invented way before he was even born, in fact he hasn't invented anything. Plus Amores is a drama, Pulp is a black comedy, not even the same genre, unlike most of the other real rip-offs. I'd put Amores Perros with the other "The Not Really Rip-Offs". Do us a favor, please do some research before vomiting.
1 -THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOURE DEAD andy garcia
2 -AMERICAN STRAYS eric roberts
3 -WAY OF THE GUN ryan phillipe
4 -GO katie holmes sarah polley timothy olyphant
5 -THE BIG HIT mark wahlberg
6 -2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY charlize theron
7- AMORES PERROS gael garcia bernal
8- GET SHORTY travolta
9- BE COOL travolta
10- SUICIDE KINGS christopher walken
11- 8 HEADS IN A DUFFEL BAG joe pesci
12- PALOOKAVILLE vincent gallo
13- VERY BAD THINGS cameron diaz
14- THE BOONDOCK SAINTS willem dafoe
15- INTERMISSION colin farrell cillian murphy
16- REINDEER GAMES ben affleck
17- PHOENIX ray liotta
Your review of "Boondocks" was perfect and hilarious.
What about the underrated "Lucky Number Slevin"
The fact that this "entertainment journalist (haha)" has absolutely no ability to appreciate some of the flourishes that does in fact distinguish Boondocks from other films of the genre regardless of your feelings of the film, speaks volumes of the authir's shortcomings. It also ignores (or simply isn't aware of) some obvious entries that only an actual film fan would include (Thursday with Tom Jane and Aaron Eckhart, Best Men, and Truth and Consequences N.M. Directed by Kiefer Sutherland spring to mind). Although many on this list are pretty weak (although how can you not admit that Vaughn and The Rock were so funny in the otherwise horrific Be Cool together it should have just been about them and nothing else) there are a number of flicks here that may not be Oscar calibre but are entertaining in their own right (Reindeer Games and even the sometimes very funny 8 Heads, which is far better than Gone Fishin…..you realize that right?). It was good to see Denver get some good nods and especially Way of the Gun. In general it does seem like the author needs to get himself a Netflix membership and get a better number of films under his belt before he attempts another list.
This article and the comment section proves that some people just try way to hard to compare films with one-another just because plots feature black comedy and intertwining and non-linear narratives, a lot of curse words, and violent crime.
Going by the logic this article uses, Pulp Fiction is merely a copycat of a novel called "Trainspotting" (not the film), which was written and sold in 1993, a year before Pulp Fiction. This novel is not only non-linear like Pulp Fiction (with about 8 different narrators) with intertwining plots, but it is also darkly comedic almost in the same vein as Pulp Fiction. The novel is also pretty graphic as well. The dialogue has its own electric style. The first page has three instances of "c%%nt", one of "f!!ck" and one of "f!!ck!ng". So the curse words are there too. Furthermore, Trainspotting draws on a lot of pop culture of the 1980s. So that's there too. There's also a lot of quotable passages.
This is just one novel that came out before Pulp Fiction. Using this article's logic, Tarantino created a copycat film that spawned from Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting.
Nothing by Elmore Leonard should be on this list. Indiewire = teens with laptops.
i like Very Bad Things & Reindeer Games. sorry.
"Feeling Minnesota"
"The Immortals" (1995)
"Blood Guts Bullets and Octane"
"Thursday"
"Destiny Turns On the Radio"
"Albino Alligator"
"Truth or Consequence, N.M."
"Fall Time"
"Love & a .45"
"Freeway"
"Smokin' Aces"
Don't forget TWENTY BUCKS as an impressive predecessor.
I just want to let whoever wrote the bit about "The Boondock Saints" know that I am still standing and applauding. I hate that movie so much that I can't even come up with something intelligible to say about it other than "**** that movie."
Magnolia is definately Pulp-esque, and David O. Russell has a lot of strong similarities to Tarantino.
I've never seen this, but wasn't Boondock Saints a giant cult hit?
Pulp Fiction is one of the most overrated films ever. Fact.
Very bad things should more aptly be noted as a noir precedent for the Hangover series. And it was much better than you say it was..
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Very bad things should more aptly be noted as a noir precedent for the Hangover series. And it was much better than you say it was..
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In terms of intertwined narratives, i can see the influence of Pulp Fiction in both Magnolia and Playing by Heart. Oh, and Crash too, to be honest…
American Hustle was like a Tarantino movie without the action. If even one head had exploded, it would have been on this list.
Just a thought: Joe Carnahan's BLOOD GUTS BULLETS & OCTANE (1998)
Requiem For A Dream
Thursday
Keys To Tulsa
I think 90s was indie film bonanza. I loved many indies for that era.
So, no one was really influenced by Robert Rodrigues?
You left out the horrible THURSDAY, a Siskel & Ebert's bete noire.
You left out the horrible MAD DOG TIME, by Joey Bishop's kid.
I might be the only one but I though the Brazillian film City of God had a Pulp Fiction feel to it.
Go rocks. Very overlooked.
the female assassin genre movie "Domino" with Kiera Knightley, Christopher Walken, and Tom Waits? "Broken Arrow" with Travolta. "Face/Off" with Travolta and Cage. "Con Air" and "The Rock" with Cage. "Crimson Tide"'s uncredited Tarantino rewrite. "Plump Fiction" the lame parody movie. Every direct to DVD "From Dusk Till Dawn" sequel. "The Rules of Attraction" by Roger Avary name drops Tarantino, as do "Die Hard with a Vengeance" and "Captain America:The Winter Soldier". "Destiny Turns on the Radio" starring Tarantino. "Curdled" with the character Angela Villalobos. "Romy & Michelle" had a Big Kahuna Burger. "Space Jam" had a Pulp in-joke.
I always dug PALOOKAVILLE and WAY OF THE GUN. Also? BIG TROUBLE!
How could you forget Boogie Boy w/ Mark Dacascos, Karen Sheperd and Frederic Forrest? Advertised as from the producer of Pulp Fiction, Roger Avary. Yeah, right!
I love The Way of the Gun. Why it landed Christopher McQuarrie in director's jail for ten years still mystifies me. Ryan Phillippe is particularly outstanding as "Parker". I thought for sure it'd make an A-lister out of him. I'd still very much love to see McQuarrie's original 2.5 hour cut of the film.
Big fan of Way of the Gun.
"Ringo Lam's "City on Fire" (which he appropriated large swaths of for "Reservoir Dogs") "
Wait I just read the rest of the article. Another clueless idiot who has clearly never actually bothered to watch City on Fire, just repeats a movie nerd trivia thing he heard on the internet once.
What on earth are you talking about with Way of the Gun? The third act is almost entirely a great gunfight (even better than Heat's) that the film had been building toward and half the "memorable moments" you listed are IN IT. Are you remembering it right?
2 Guns from last year with Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg felt like it had Tarantino written all over it.
It had all the hallmarks of a Tarantino ripoff – the long speeches, the explosions of violence, etc.
Happy Palookaville got a good notice. It's solid. Much like "Bottle Rocket" in the bumbling crime/comedy vein. These other films are mostly trash (aside from Amores Perros, good grade there too).
Um, Tarantino is a copycat (just a very good one), but this article seems to make him out like some kind of original that others immediately followed. But really what happened is Pulp Fiction blew up and so all these scripts and ideas people already had been wanting to do in a similar tone suddenly got greenlit and found financial backing from people wanting to strike on the Pulp Fiction train.
How about Things to do in Denver when your dead(1996). It even has Walken.
If you were really interesting you would list the films Tarantino ripped off making Pulp Fiction.