“Ma, that’s just how the movie works”: When Samuel L Jackson’s mother issued a searing critique of ‘Pulp Fiction’
Quentin Tarantino’s second feature, Pulp Fiction, wasted little time in becoming embraced as a modern classic when it seized the zeitgeist in 1994, but one person who wasn’t immediately won over by the director’s post-Reservoir Dogs film was Samuel L Jackson’s mother.
Even though he’d been a hard-working actor for decades by that point, it was his charisma-dripping turn as Jules Winnfield that made Jackson a star, and he only ended up with the part after Laurence Fishburne had decided to decline the role written specifically for him by Tarantino.
That wasn’t the last time the two powerhouses would end up orbiting the same gig, either, and it was ironic it was Jackson’s post-Pulp Fiction popularity that saw him drafted into Die Hard with a Vengeance at the last minute when Fishburne had already been told the part of Zeus Carver was his, with the star ultimately earning a settlement after threatening legal action.
One of the most iconic visuals in the history of the Academy Awards is Jackson doing absolutely nothing to hide his disdain for the fact he wasn’t named ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for his contributions to the labyrinthine masterpiece that completely altered the complexion and landscape of independent cinema for better or worse, but matriarch Elizabeth Harriett was probably wondering what all the fuss was about.
In the aftermath of Pulp Fiction, interconnected stories of cops and criminals being tied together by way of a nonlinear narrative and fragmented story structure quickly became the norm to the point of ubiquity, which is exactly why Jackson’s mother had such a hard time trying to follow what was going on in the biggest movie of her son’s career at the time.
In the Not the Usual Mindless Boring Getting to Know You Chit Chat documentary included on the home video special edition, Jackson explained his mother’s negative assessment of Pulp Fiction, deciding that convention was merely another tool in Tarantino’s arsenal to be played with in a time when the overwhelming majority of mainstream American movies started at the beginning and finished at the end.
“I remember my mom saying, ‘Why didn’t they put the movie together right? It was jumping all over the place, back and forth, you’re dead, you’re alive, you’re back, you’re here,'” Jackson revealed. “I said, ‘Ma, that’s just how the movie works. Everybody can watch it, apparently you can’t.'”
In fairness, she would have been in her early 70s when Pulp Fiction first arrived on the scene to become one of its era’s most influential movies, and that type of storytelling was hardly commonplace. It was a creative and artistic decision that worked wonders for Tarantino and his sophomore flick at large, but Jackson’s old dear was left decidedly unimpressed.
