10. Honey Bunny And Pumpkin - Pulp Fiction (1995)
The preamble is such a well-known framing device that the affectionate nicknames no longer sound sickly. But the mild South London tones of Tim Roth (Pumpkin) and the nicotine-stained, middle-classn Amanda Plummer (Honey Bunny) sound as out-of-place in a downtown LA diner as British estate gangs might if they called their local police force the feds (rexcept that, well, they do that now dont they?). It isnt long before the cooing lovey-doveyness erupts into something feral: "Any one of you f*ckin pricks move and Ill execute every motherf*ckin one of you!" intones Ms Plummer, as the coffee-shop patrons cower beneath her waving handgun. Its a harsh prelude, both to robbing the joint via holding its patrons hostage and to Tarantinos classic '90s portmanteau movie. Its also American urban nihilism given form. In September 1968, a small-time bandit named Richard Lee Tingler had turned back after robbing $562 from an Ohio bar and announced to the six people inside: "What the hell, I aint got nothing to lose. Im gonna kill you all." (Tinglers crimes appear to have part-inspired Nick Caves song OMalleys Bar, on his Murder Ballads LP.) Its a statement that might have been the motto of the late-20th-century USA - randomly, meaninglessly violent and lacking any recognition of value in human life. In the real world outside QTs inter-textual movie-movie dimension, the Pumpkins and Honey Bunnies have laid waste to innocent strangers. That weve emotionally invested in them by the time the temporally tricky stories return, at the end of the movie, to the diner is a tribute to the king movie geeks dab hand at genre archetypes. Some iron-fisted handholding by a much cooler type (Sam Jackson as hitman Jules) allows them to flee the joint without either spilling blood or having their own blood spilled. Tarantino was well aware he was playing narrative games a dimension or two removed from the reality of violent crime, and even signposted it: in a refrain at the movies epilogue point, Honey Bunny (or, to give her distinctly non-Anglo character name, Yolanda) hollers, "Any one of you f*ckin pr*cks move and Ill execute every one of you mother*ckers!" Check it out against the prologue version above - its different and its no simple continuity error (if that was the case, why not just reuse the same footage?). The lowlife lovers reckless violence doesnt offend us because we know were watching self-conscious movie characters. For their more authentic inspiration, we have to go a little further back...
Paul Woods
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Writer/editor/ghost-writer transfixed by crime, cinema and the serrated edges of popular culture. Those similarly afflicted are invited to make contact.
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