pulp fiction

[seal!]

why is it called this, i heard that it was something to do with a comic, but i wasnt really sure.

[andy hughes]

The phrase 'pulp fiction' refers to cheap lurid novels which were published in America after the war, and through the 50's and 60's. The books were very cheap, usually sold in drug stores, and designed to be disposable. To keep the costs down, they were printed on very rough cheap 'pulp' paper which kept the costs to a minimum. the phrase 'pulp fiction' now means anything lurid and sensational - and fictional.

[gazzawazza]

I seem to remember my sister telling me about an interview which Quentin Tarantino gave around the time of the film's release. 

He said he was an avid reader of the pulp fiction books Andy mentions which were complete stories in themselves, i.e. they weren't to be taken as part of any grand plan, just little bits of peoples' lives illustrated in a book.  But in the film he wanted to convey several little "pulp fiction" stories which are all somehow interlinked to provide a bigger tale.

[ann_h]

You'll notice that the scenes in the film take turns around the different sub-plots, gradually converging, just like the chapters in a book. A film storyline is normally sequential (with maybe flashbacks, but of the same storyline)