Release Year: 1994

Genre: Crime, Drama

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Writer: Quentin Tarantino, Roger Avary

Stars: Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Uma Thurman

Quentin Tarantino. Ever heard of him?

He's the guy who scalped Nazis in Inglourious Basterds and spilled gallons of blood in Reservoir Dogs.

And in 1994, he unleashed upon the cinematic world a small, independent film that he made for just $8 million bucks. Yep—just. It's earned $200 million.

Not bad.

On board for the wild ride were some actors you may have heard of: John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Ving Rhames, and Samuel L. Jackson. Yeah, them. The resulting film, Pulp Fiction, caused a critical uproar, changed the way people thought about independent films, and spawned scores of Tarantino-cool wannabes.

Pulp Fiction has three interlocking stories, told out of chronological order, about a crime boss, his two hitmen, and an aging boxer hired to throw a fight. In the process, an informant accidentally gets his face blown off, the crime boss' wife nearly dies of an accidental heroin overdose, a bunch of young drug dealers are non-accidentally executed, and the boss and the fighter are kidnapped by a duo of deranged rapists.

As a bonus, we learn what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in France.

The critical response? "The King Kong of crime movies," "the most influential film of the decade," "the indie that changed cinema," "a touchstone of cool."

Yowza.

Tarantino had some success with his first release, Reservoir Dogs, but no one was ready for the big splash that his crazy Pulp Fiction characters and their crazier predicaments would make. This little film ended up winning a whole heap of accolades, like Oscar nominations for Best Screenplay (a win), Best Picture, directing, acting, and editing. It revived the flagging careers of John Travolta and Bruce Willis and shot Samuel L. Jackson into super-stardom. The fact that you can't believe that the careers of Willis and Travolta were ever flagging is probably because of Pulp Fiction.

You might be asking: isn't $8 million what Bruce Willis would make for a Doritos commercial? Yeah, but Tarantino and Avary's script was so good that all these big deal actors took some big deal pay cuts just to be part of it. (The marquee players made about $150,000.)

In the end, Tarantino became the "it" guy of the '90s and beyond largely from his success with Pulp Fiction. It was an immediate cult classic, and decades after its release, it's still watched, debated, quoted, and analyzed to death by film critics and fans alike.

Oh, and that French Quarter Pounder with Cheese? It's a Royale with Cheese.

You're cool, we know.

Our guess? You probably watch a lot of independent films. Because of its blockbuster level of success and profit, it's easy to forget that Pulp Fiction was just an indie made on a tiny budget by a director still relatively unknown to the public. But it goes to show that you don't need a hundred million dollars to create something worth watching.

In fact, Pulp Fiction changed the way people thought about the independent film industry. Before Tarantino came along, it was filled with a bunch of college grads and snobby elitists trying to share their unwanted (and probably self-indulgent and depressing) vision with the world. But Pulp Fiction let everyone see the power of the indie while also showing Hollywood that maybe not every viewer wanted another formulaic blockbuster.

Because he wasn't tied to a studio's demands to make a crime film with non-stop action and gore (we <3 you Liam Neeson!), Tarantino was able to give the audience criminals who talked. In fact, they never shut up. This kind of character- and dialogue-driven movie inspired films both great and terrible. Without the success of Pulp Fiction, we probably wouldn't have Amores Perros or Get Shorty. OTOH, we wouldn't have had The Boondock Saints.

Indiewire reminds us that lots of directors thought they could write a brash, violent film with lots of f-bombs and a chopped-up story line, and—just like that—have another Pulp Fiction. But "underneath the glossy, slick surface […] is an absolutely rigorous, even classical, adherence to the storytelling basics of character building and coherent plotting, the more effective for seeming so effortless, malleable and invisible" (source).

Oh, but, uh, Tarantino's a copycat, too.

He's been called a "cinematic kleptomaniac" for the way he lifts characters, images, and even dialogue straight from every film genre and pop culture category you can think of. So if you're yawning about studying the film based on its artistic merits or film history importance, you can still have fun watching and trying to identify the scores of films, TV shows, singers, movie stars, and junk foods mentioned in the film.

If you can find more than 25, we'll give you your own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

We promise.