The Nineties Were Pretty Cool.
Featuring Tarantino, snack attacks & a Pakistani legend.
Not sure how but this week has found itself in a 90s tone. Partly because a cult favourite marks itself in our consciousness again, partly because a legend unexpectedly materialises from our rearview.
Either way, here you are now- lets entertain you.
Pulp Fiction is 30!: On the cult hit from the 90s.
Friday Find: Chomp Chomp, a romp.
Musically 90s: Nusrat, and Dave.
With: Chappals, Roblox’s deception, Attenborough & K-pop.
1. Pulp Fiction is 30!
Tarantino’s masterpiece, cult classic, bloody pop culture icon- call it what you will, the brilliant Pulp Fiction released this week in 1994. I share this milestone to ensure we all feel our age, and maybe prompt the desire to rewatch it.
Also, so we can look at some nice trivia. Here goes.
Tarantino wrote the first draft of the screenplay while living in Amsterdam- it was a stupendous 500 pages long (that’s ~8.5 hours of film!).
It was made on a shoestring (even then) budget of $8.5 million, with around $5 million on the cast. The average Hollywood budget at the time hovered around $50 million. The film went on to make over $200m worldwide.
The single biggest expense of the film though, didn't go towards a star, but to creating the ‘Jack Slim's Diner’ set- $150,000. (Travolta made $140,000).
Vincent drives a 1964 Chevy Malibu in the film. That actually belonged to Tarantino...and it was stolen after production wrapped! It was found almost 20 years later in Oakland.
One of the (many) wild bits was the syringe scene, where Vince has to stab an adrenaline shot into Mia’s heart. It looks pretty intense; they got it by filming him pulling the needle out of Uma Thurman’s chest, then reversing the shot.
The nail polish Mia wears in the film is Chanel's famed Rouge Noir. The movie’s popularity caused the ‘vampish red-black’ to sell out when it hit shelves in 1995.
Travolta's character Vincent Vega has a brother. What! Who? Its Vick Vega a.k.a. Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs (played by Michael Madsen). Tarantino conceived a spinoff (Vega Brothers? Las Vegas? V2?) that would serve as a prequel to both these films, but it never saw the light of day.
‘Big Kahuna Burger’, anchoring that great scene with Samuel L Jackon, is a fictional Hawaiian-themed fast food chain dreamed up by Tarantino. The burgers made their debut in Reservoir Dogs, then most memorably in Pulp Fiction, when Jules wolfs down Brett’s burger and slurps his soda before shooting him. It appears once more in From Dusk Til Dawn (which was written by Tarantino). How did a real-life ‘Big Kahuna’ chain never happen? I guess Tarantino is no Mr. Beast.
Jules has a wallet with “Bad Mother F**ker” on it. This actually belonged to Tarantino at the time of filming (it’s from the movie Shaft). The inscription on the wallet is a reference to the theme song of the 1971 film 'Shaft’. Samuel L Jackson would go on to star in the 2000 remake of Shaft!
The word “f**k” is uttered 265 times in Pulp Fiction.
I’ve known most of these over the years, but was amazed to discover that the Vega Brothers existed. Hey, we could have had a Pulpverse!
Vanity Fair put together a fantastic journey through the making and release of the film- from script to casting to shoot to Cannes to Oscar- featuring pretty much all the major players. Its a great read, and includes this gem from when an incensed, burger-carrying Samuel L Jackson walked in to ‘audition’ (again) for Jules- a part he thought he had in his bag. From the Executive Producer,
“Me and Quentin and Lawrence were sitting on the couch, and he walked in and just started sipping that shake and biting that burger and looking at all of us. I was scared shitless. I thought that this guy was going to shoot a gun right through my head. His eyes were popping out of his head. And he just stole the part.”
Here’s a lookback from this week on how the film still holds up.
Go on- revisit the film this weekend, or at least debate whether you consider a dog a filthy animal.
2. Friday Find: Chomp Chomp.
Eat or abstain?!
The Daily Grind is a breathless chomp romp through a day in the life of an Indian father, ricocheting from one intended bite to the next unintended one, with an interlude for a few casual crunches & munches. Basically, normal days with endless snack attacks, eventually brought to an end by sons who can’t bear the gorging anymore.
I can’t quite tell when I want to eat some of that, and when I feel utterly put off!
And the point to all this showcased gluttony? Your teeth are overworked- give them a break and take care of them. The mundanity of a toothpaste ad (Colgate) is energised by entertainment, something the best spots always do.
Interestingly, they have created films in two settings, to appeal to ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ audiences. Watch the ‘rural’ spot here.
For those who don’t understand Hindi, sorry- you are missing out. The subtitles do a decent job, but the texture and cheek in the lyrics is delightful, especially on repeat viewings.
PS- I feel like these have a bit of a noughties Indian advertising feel /style/ verve to them (or even 90s), in a good way.
Directed by Amit Sharma · Music: Sidhant Mago & Mayank · Lyrics: Sidhant Mago · Produced by Chrome Pictures for Ogilvy ·
3. Musically 90s
A Rare Gift
Buried deep in a warehouse storage space at Real World Studios.
Discovered whilst the label was relocating its archive in 2021.
Analog tapes painstakingly restored then digitised.
Lo & behold, we have a new Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan album, 27 years after the great man’s passing.
Made up of recordings from 1990, the same time he recorded Mustt Mustt with Michael Brook, Chain Of Light released late September.
The qawwali legend is generally acknowledged as being almost singularly responsible for spreading the music of Sufism across the Western world. This from Peter Gabriel.
“I’ve had the privilege to work with a tonne of different musicians from all over the world in my time, but perhaps the greatest singer of them all was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. What he could do and make you feel with his voice was quite extraordinary and we were very proud to have played a role in getting him to a much wider global audience. It was a real delight when we found out this tape had been in our library. This album really shows him at his peak. It’s a wonderful record.”
Here is little video piece with the folk at Real World Studio about how this was unearthed.
Have a listen to the album:
I also learnt that “the definitive documentary film on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s life is in the making. Saiyna Bashir Studios, an Islamabad based company, will release their labor of love, Ustad at the end of 2025. The film will tell the untold story of one of the world’s greatest singers, featuring rare and unseen archive footage with contributions from a cast of close family, friends, collaborators and fans.”
An aside: that little multi-coloured tab- it has so simply been the trademark sign of The Real World Studio, remembered from obscurely procured CDs and tapes.
~ · ~
Crash
Dave Matthews Band really hit success with Crash, their second album way back in 1996. For many in my world (i.e. one outside the US), we discovered this later, and loved it later still. Here is an interesting- if dense- belated review on Pitchfork done in 2021, with the benefit of hindsight.
As rabbit holes go, this has much potential. But I leave you with two alleyways I did take from this piece.
One, “reclaiming the beauty and majesty of Dave Matthews Band’s 1996 hit “Crash Into Me”, a lovely reminder of how the biggest hit from the album is used in Greta Gerwig’s stellar Ladybird. “Gerwig cleverly takes the song’s mixed reputation to mark the moment her heroine begins finally to shed all forms of pretension.”
Another, amazingly, is a cover of the song by the lovely Stevie Nicks. It is quite clearly her version of it, but at the same time still very much the original song. A tribute to both?
5. Masala Peanuts
(where I share stories or tidbits I find interesting)
Look. PARI is the People’s Archive of Rural India. Here, their photographer and journalist Palani Kumar writes on the footwear he’s encountered in both life and work, touching on what stories they might tell of their wearers.
Read: Hindenburg Research dropped a report on Roblox last week. It was damning. This is, of course, the MO for Hindenburg that releases exposés as it also shorts the stock, standing to gain from the companies’ loss.
Know. German Jürgen Klopp, the hugely successful Dortmund & Liverpool coach, has traded the pitchside for a desk. He was unveiled as the new global Head of Soccer at Red Bull, to “oversee the company's international network of soccer clubs.”
Look/Hear. The trailer for BBC’s ‘ASIA’ with David Attenborough released. The interesting bit? K-pop band Seventeen perform the song. Check it out.
Off for my filter coffee! Have a nice day- listen to some good music, watch a good film, eat something yummy.