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Chapter One The Big Faint
Mr. Pink:Holy shit, did he fuckin' die on us? So, is he dead or what?
Mr. White:He ain't dead.
Mr. Pink:So what is it?
Mr. White:I think he's just passed out.
Mr. Pink:He scared the fuckin' shit outta me. I thought he was dead for sure. --Reservoir Dogs, 1992
On the night of September 23, 1994, Pulp Fiction opened the 32nd New York Film Festival. The opening night is a coveted spot for a movie; it has the highest profile of any selection and it can set the tone for the rest of the prestigious two-week event.
Although the big party is traditionally held later that night at Tavern on the Green, those with tickets to Pulp Fiction milled around Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall for more than an hour before the movie, schmoozing, drinking, getting into the mood for a movie that was not for the faint of heart.
By the time the lights went down, the audience was keyed up--if not largely drunk. Pulp Fiction had won the Palme d'Or at Cannes to great acclaim but had remained a tantalizing mystery in the U.S. Director and screenwriter Quentin Tarantino was brought onstage to introduce his film and cast, and trooped them upstairs to the second-tier box seats traditionally reserved for the opening-night filmmakers. Along with Quentin and the cast was Harvey Weinstein, head with his brother Bob of Miramax Pictures, the company that had taken an $8 million chance on Pulp Fiction when every major studio passed. Harvey watched over Quentin like a proud if anxious father; he had grown fond ofsaying that "Miramax is in the Quentin Tarantino business."
The movie unspooled, and then it was time for The Scene: John Travolta, fearing Uma Thurman will die from an accidental overdose of heroin, is about to plunge a hypodermic needle of adrenaline into her heart. The camera shifts from the sweat on John's brow to the froth trickling from Uma's mouth to the glistening drop on the tip of a very, very long needle. Just as in Cannes, the audience went wild from the sheer audacity of the scene. They splayed their fingers before their eyes, feeling both sick and euphoric with anticipation. Eric Stoltz gave the countdown: "One . . . two . . . three!"
At the very moment Travolta plunged the needle, a man in the orchestra keeled over onto the carpet in a dead faint. There were screams and calls for a doctor. No one knew which was more exciting, Quentin's world or the real world.
"I thought that someone had had a heart attack or something, and I was quite anxious," Eric Stoltz recalls. "I was sitting next to Quentin and I said, 'What if this guy dies from seeing this scene? I feel kind of responsible.' And Quentin leaned over and said, 'You know, Eric, when they screened Jaws, a man had a heart attack and died, and they told that to Steven Spielberg and he said, good, that means the movie works.' I wasn't exactly reassured."
The movie stopped. The lights came up. Two of the first people on the scene were Miramax honcho Harvey Weinstein and Pulp Fiction producer Lawrence Bender.
Ten minutes later, an announcer's voice was heard over the public-address system. "The victim is okay!" His choice of words made everyone queasier. The implication was not only that Tarantino was an exciting new filmmaker, but a dangerous one too. Perhaps his movies could kill.
The "victim," a diabetic, had either gone into insulin shock or had simply fainted from the familiar sight of a needle writ large. He sat out in the lobby to catch his breath, then came back into the theater to finish the movie, which had rewound back to the overdose scene so that the audience could be treated twice to the movie's most talked-about moment.
It was such a perfect way to introduce a Quentin Tarantino film, it was almost . . . too perfect. Later, few people believed the incident was on the level.
"I was sitting behind that guy, and you could practically see the SAG [Screen Actors Guild] card sticking out of his pocket," says one skeptic in the audience that night. "No way was that real. I saw him slumped over, being carried out by friends, and by the time he had reached the exit door he was standing and walking and talking, like his scene was over."
Who would pull such a stunt? All fingers point to Harvey Weinstein, the modern-day equivalent of such grand old movie showmen as William Castle, who in the fifties wired theater seats to give patrons an extra thrill during The Tingler.
"I did not do that," Harvey says, but he laughs, pleased that anyone would give him the credit. "In light of how some folks responded to the violence in Reservoir Dogs, that would have been the wrong cue on this movie, because as I was saying to Quentin, Pulp Fiction is fun, not violent."
And how did Harvey, a physically substantial person, get from the second-tier box to the main aisle of the orchestra in time to race to the twentieth row and be the first person on the scene?
Instinct, says Harvey. "In my other life, from the time I was nineteen to age twenty-four, I produced two thousand concerts. I had a pretty good track record at handling those situations. I know that in a situation like that there's always potential for a riot, or the person's health, if a decision isn't made quick enough. I've seen 168 kids faint from heat exhaustion at an outdoor concert with Genesis in Toronto. So for me, any time there's an incident in a theater, my adrenaline goes back to when I was twenty-four."
Whether or not Harvey staged The Big Faint, it proved one thing about Quentin's work. "Expect the unexpected," says Harvey. "That's why people love him."
Quentin Tarantino. Copyright © by Jami Bernard. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
