The only actor who got their scenes cut from ‘Pulp Fiction’: “It’s the one I almost kept in”
Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction is one of cinema’s most perfectly cast movies, with every character in the sprawling ensemble, from its leading players to its one-scene wonders, making their mark on the audience.
Samuel L Jackson’s Jules Winnifield, John Travolta’s Vincent Vega, and Uma Thurman’s Mia Wallace became instant icons, and even though their screentime paled in comparison, everyone from Phil LaMarr’s Marvin and Harvey Keitel’s Winston Wolfe to Frank Whaley’s Brett and Stephen Hibbert’s Gimp got their chance to shine.
The game-changing thriller ran for over two and a half hours in its finished form, making it inevitable that Tarantino left several scenes on the cutting room floor. For the most part, he didn’t need to compromise his vision when piecing Pulp Fiction together in the editing suite, but one unfortunate actor was removed from the film entirely.
Most of the excised footage was comprised of extended or alternate takes, but when push came to shove, Dick Miller’s Monster Joe was discarded entirely. It was a sore one for Tarantino to take, with the filmmaker admitting that if there was one scene he agonised over removing from the final cut, it was Miller’s.
Julia Sweeney’s Racquel was the daughter of Monster Joe, and while she got to share the screen with Keitel, her fictional father wasn’t as fortunate. “It was just too much at that moment,” Tarantino explained. “We want to hurry up and get to the diner by this time and see John and Sam do their thing, so there was too much.”
In the scene, Monster Joe, whose name was an affectionate ode to The Howling and Gremlins director Joe Dante, with whom Miller had worked on almost all of the director’s movies, was the owner of the junkyard where poor Marvin’s body was disposed of. “I always had a big fondness for it,” Tarantino admitted. “Of all these scenes, it’s the one that I almost kept in right down to the wire.”
It was a painful sequence to trim from Pulp Fiction, especially when the auteur had written the part specifically for Miller to play, calling him “one of my favourite character actors” and celebrating his decades-long associations with both Dante and Roger Corman, but when push came to shove, indulging himself left a little too much fat on the film’s bones.
Tarantino acknowledged that “it was an honour to put him and Harvey in the same frame together,” even if viewers had no idea Miller was even in the picture until the deleted scenes were released on home video. Sadly, Monster Joe was one character too many. Everyone else featured in the scenes that didn’t make the theatrical cut had speaking roles elsewhere, leaving Miller as the odd one out.
If anything, it was admirable restraint from someone like Tarantino, who has a tendency to massage his filmic ego more than most, but sacrifices needed to be made. Monster Joe drew the shortest straw, but at least his fleeting contribution to Pulp Fiction hasn’t been completely lost to history.
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