Pulp Fiction: Surfing and Twisting…and the Son of a Preacher Man (Superb Soundtracky Saturday)

A rather long sounds-like-day-to-day discussion goes between Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer) about robbing a bank, robbing liquor stores, how someone did a robbery just using a phone call, and the “prospect” of robbing dinners. Then Pumpkin places a gun on the dinning table, followed by a passionate kiss between the young couple.

Honey Bunny: I love you, Pumpkin.
Pumpkin: I love you, Honey Bunny.
Pumpkin: [Suddenly standing up on his chair with a gun in his hand.] All right, everybody be cool, this is a robbery!
Honey Bunny: [Standing from her chair while pointing her gun around in the dinner. Screaming from the top of her lungs.] Any of you fucking pricks move, and I'll execute every motherfucking last one of ya!

Then Dick Dale’s awesome surf rock guitar sound blasts just at the right moment. "Misirlou" comes with just the right pace and tone of hecticness (if that’s even a word) to open the title. And at that moment, you’ll know for sure that it is not your regular movie.

A footage from the opening dialog and an awesome live performance of Misirlou

In Pulp Fiction, Quentin Tarantino throws a bunch of efficient, often hilarious, and witty dialogues, especially between Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson). Other than that, and the perfect casts, and the unconventional plot, there is one more thing that makes this film as good as it is: the music.

Just like most of his movies, there’s no special arrangement written specifically for this movie. Instead, Tarantino chose a mixed-bag of music from various genres that he thought would “enhance” the scenes he created. And he’s right. Some of the most memorable scenes from Pulp Ficion come with perfectly matching songs. Besides the previously mentioned opening scene, another memorable scene, which for some is even considered as the trademark of the movie, is the Jack Rabbit Slim’s Twist Contest. Mia (Uma Thurman) and Vincent Vega do a cool, fun twist dance. As the background, there’s a groovy Chuck Berry rock ‘n’ roll track, "You Never Can Tell". It could be the cast, or the dance, or the song, you can’t tell. But it’s clear that the combination of those three makes you wanna watch this twist dance scene again and again.

The famous twist dance and Chuck Berry's "You Never Can Tell"

There are sixteen tracks in the album Music from the Motion Picture: Pulp Fiction. It’s a mix of the best dialogue clips, surf rock, pop, rock ‘n’ roll, soul, and “Ezekiel 25:17.” It seems that Tarantino has a certain thing for surf and rock ‘n’ roll music. Almost every film he’s made includes one of those two. In this particular soundtrack album, besides the two mentioned above, other notable tracks include a groovy funk number by Kool and the Gang, "Jungle Boogie"; "Bullwinkle Part II", another surf rock track by The Centurions; Urge Overkill’s cover of Neil Diamond’s "Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon"; and another surf music, "Bustin’ Surfboard", by the Tornadoes. A rather calm, slow track is a version of “Son of a Preacher Man” by Dusty Springfield. This fabulous soul-blues song was originally released in 1968 as a single and in 2004 Rolling Stone magazine listed this song at #240 in their 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. And I think this song will also be a good closing for this week Triple-S post. Enjoy and see ya!

As a closing and cooling down song, a beautiful performance from Dusty Springfield

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