The one actor Quentin Tarantino refused to cast in ‘Pulp Fiction’: “It won’t add a dime”
While Reservoir Dogs put him on the map, it was Pulp Fiction that transformed Quentin Tarantino into a cinema icon, proving that the wunderkind who’d taken Sundance by storm with his debut feature wouldn’t be remembered as a one-trick pony.
Sure, there were similarities between the two in that they were sprawling crime stories with a labyrinthine narrative populated by an ensemble of offbeat and eccentric characters, but Tarantino’s first two features provide completely different experiences.
Whereas the cast of Reservoir Dogs was cobbled together with whatever money the filmmaker could scrape together, which turned out to be more than he’d initially envisioned when Harvey Keitel came on board as a star and co-producer, Tarantino had the leeway to handpick his own roster for the follow-up.
He single-handedly reinvigorated John Travolta’s career, gave Samuel L Jackson the role that turned him into a star, convinced Bruce Willis to forego his usual multi-million dollar salary to play a supporting part, and elevated Uma Thurman into Academy Award-nominated territory.
The roles of Pumpkin and Honey Bunny had been explicitly written for Tim Roth and Amanda Plummer, with Terry Gilliam providing an inadvertent assist when the former turned up as the latter’s plus-one for the premiere of The Fisher King and told Tarantino he’d love to make a movie with the latter.
However, as often tends to be the case with high-profile productions, the studio had different ideas on how the Pulp Fiction cast should look. The writer and director knew exactly who he wanted for each significant character, only to find himself butting heads with executive Mike Medavoy.
Because he was a bigger star and more known quantity, Medavoy suggested Johnny Depp for the role of Pumpkin. Although Tarantino had no issues with the actor on a personal or professional level, he had no intentions of deviating from his plan to give it to Roth.
“Do you think Johnny Depp playing the role of Pumpkin in this movie, which is the opening scene and the closing scene, and that’s it, do you think that will add that much to the box office? Him playing that role?” he asked. Medavoy replied by saying, “It won’t add a dime, but it would make me feel better.”
Tarantino has a point: would Depp bookending Pulp Fiction have made a real difference to the film’s bottom dollar? After all, as popular as he was, it wasn’t until a decade later in the post-Pirates of the Caribbean era that he was considered bankable.
Meanwhile, he’d scripted the part for his friend and collaborator Roth and was confident enough to believe that Pulp Fiction would be a success based on the strength of the movie, not the people who appeared in it.
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