Hmm, Marsellus Wallace is the king, which means that what happens to him happens to the land. That explains a lot about Southern California.

-j

Posted June 20, 2003 3:39 PM by J Greely

Funny. I always thought it was gold, because of Tarantino's love of evoking images or lines from past movies he idolized (in this case, Kelly's Heroes). But I could be wrong on that one. Teresa's theory is pretty imaginative, too. And not beyond Tarantino, who I think is an excellent filmmaker.

Posted June 20, 2003 4:27 PM by John Farrell

Would that mean John Travolta/Vincent Vega is Lancelot, the trusted servant come from a foreign land attracted to the forbidden fruit of Uma Thurman's Mia Wallace/Guinevere?

Posted June 20, 2003 4:27 PM by Seth Johnson

Naah: it's the rear-view mirror off the '63 Chevy Malibu we saw shooting into hyperspace at the end of "Repo Man". Either that, or it's one of the three dead aliens from the trunk.

(Back when John Glenn was making plans for his return to space in 1999, quite a few friends made noises about how everyone should show up to the landing site at Edwards Air Force Base in ape suits. I disagreed, seeing as how his fellow astronauts would be too busy looking at the huge black monolith on the moon or sending him into the cargo bay to look for the shuttle's cat. Besides, he had enough to deal with when he came home and found that Malibu in his garage...)

Posted June 20, 2003 4:29 PM by Paul Riddell

> Tarantino's love of evoking images or lines
> from past movies he idolized (in this case,
> Kelly's Heroes).

And also, if not moreso, the Mickey Spillane movie "Kiss Me Deadly," which also had a glowing-suitcase MacGuffin.

Posted June 20, 2003 4:32 PM by Christopher

Are you sure it isn't just a grail-shaped lantern?

Posted June 20, 2003 4:48 PM by Kevin Marks

A friend of mine made a working model of a lightsaber, which he had with him when we went to see Episode I at the Chinese. Tarantino approached him and asked if Crosby (my friend) would make him a lightsaber.

Crosby: "Under one condition."
Tarantino: "What's that?"
Crosby: "What was in the suitcase?"
Tarantino: "Oh, man, that's not fair! I can't tell you that!"
Crosby: "Sorry. Guess you'll have to find your own lightsaber."

(Me, I liked the theory that it contained Marsellus' soul.)

Posted June 20, 2003 4:51 PM by Rachel Heslin

It can't be the gold out of Kelly's Heroes because everyone talks about it as it, a single thing, not divisible the way the gold would be. If it were gold, people wouldn't be struck with wonder; they'd ask whether it's real. And if it were gold, the weight of it would rip the handle right off the briefcase.

Also, there's the matter of the fourth man, the one in the bathroom with the .357 Magnum, who empties his gun at Vincent and Jules at can't-miss range but doesn't hit either of them. This is the dialogue immediately afterward:

JULES: We should be fuckin' dead!
VINCENT: Yeah, we were lucky.
Jules rises, moving toward Vincent.
JULES: That shit wasn't luck. That shit was somethin' else.
(Vincent prepares to leave.)
VINCENT: Yeah, maybe.
JULES: That was...divine intervention. You know what divine intervention is?
VINCENT: Yeah, I think so. That means God came down from Heaven and stopped the bullets.
JULES: Yeah, man, that's what is means. That's exactly what it means! God came down from Heaven and stopped the bullets.
VINCENT: I think we should be going now.
JULES: Don't do that! Don't you fuckin' do that! Don't blow this shit off! What just happened was a fuckin' miracle!
VINCENT: Chill the fuck out, Jules, this shit happens.
JULES: Wrong, wrong, this shit doesn't just happen.
VINCENT: Do you wanna continue this theological discussion in the car, or at the jailhouse with the cops?
JULES: We should be fuckin' dead now, my friend! We just witnessed a miracle, and I want you to fuckin' acknowledge it!
VINCENT: Okay man, it was a miracle, can we leave now?

Posted June 20, 2003 5:04 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

well as to the Marcellus's soul theory then Ringo in the cafe later asks: "Is that what i think it is?" and Jules affirms it is, so Ringo, he's really after Marcellus' soul? theory kaput.

holy grail could still do it of course, I always figure it was supposed to be gold, although what caused it to glow I don't know. However I don't think it glows in the cafe does it? It just glows in the kitchen, doesn't it?

Posted June 20, 2003 5:07 PM by bry

Bry: Having coincidentally just finished watching this film a few hours ago, I can confirm that it glows in the cafe.

My first guess was that it was some sort of holy drug. Like ambrosia, (which I think had some special effects on humans) but probably in a sort of powdered wafer. Given that Pulp Fiction clearly occurs in a very different universe, perhaps this drug is an archetypal drug, lifting one entirely from the amoral Pulp Fiction plane into some sort of higher state. Hence the effects of Jule's exposure to it - he discovers morality.

I'm not sure about the Grail theory. Most representations of the Grail I've seen have been too large for the width of the briefcase.

Posted June 20, 2003 5:39 PM by Skarl

The theory that the thing in the briefcase is the Holy Grail has been floating around ever since the movie came out; I remember reading about it on rec.arts.movies way back when.

Personally, my favorite explanation is Paul Riddell's, except it has to be the license plate and not one of the aliens, since no one who looks into the briefcase gets vaporized.

Posted June 20, 2003 6:06 PM by Josh

What else could it possibly be?

Marcellus Wallace's soul.

Extracted from the base of his skull, as is, apparently, traditional -- or so says a lit. professor friend of mine. Thus the Band-Aid you see covering the exit wound on Marcellus Wallace's neck when he's viewed from the back. Arguably the camera dwells on this fact of the Band-Aid more than once, though there are certainly other things going on in those shots (if I remember right). This would equally acount for the miraculous qualities of the briefcase, and ties in very well with the layered, overlapping themes of sin, grace, and redemption. (Notice that each of the stories features a killer who saves a life.)

In a tangentially related bit of trivia, there is a double reference in the motorcylcle named "Grace". In addition to alluding to and metaphorically representing the concept of grace, it's a nod to a graduate student named Grace who was dating Tarantino at the time. She came to a couple of our parties at Irvine before she dumped my friend Ian to go back to Tarantino...who subsequently dumped her for a string of starlets. La vie.

Posted June 20, 2003 6:42 PM by Ulrika O'Brien

And here I've been thinking for *years* now that it was the 5th Harry Potter book...

Posted June 20, 2003 6:43 PM by Tim Kyger

Somehow I -knew- that the KISS ME DEADLY reference would show up. (As indeed it has since PF came out.)

While I know that Tarantino is a movie junkie (we will not discuss my own jones here), the "Great Whatsit" in Aldrich's movie is lethal in a very direct and immediate sense (as well as causing the deaths of most of the people who simply associate with it). It may be a -reference,- but it's not the same idea. Note that in Spillane's novel (which is very different from the movie; for one thing, in the novel, Mike Hammer is a hero) the box is just a multi-megabuck stash of drugs, and all the death is associational.

But then, now I'm imagining Darth Vader (Orson Welles in a tin hat and a cape) looking down at Tarantino and saying, "I see you have made your own lightsaber. Your training is almost complete."

Posted June 20, 2003 7:12 PM by John M. Ford

Hmm. It's nice, but I don't see any necessary connection between what's in the case and what happens to Jules and Vincent, Teresa. A grail is too big, though. A single bar of gold, or two, on the other hand, would fit nicely.

Besides, how would the dumb white kids get hold of the Grail from Marcellus? One can see them thinking they could get away with ripping off or not returning a single bar or two ("Is Marcellus a bitch?--then why did you try to fuck him like one??!!" Jules asks Brad before killing him), but not the Grail. (Hey, besides, didn't Indiana Jones clarify that the real Grail was made of wood?)

Another reason for disqualifying the Grail is that Jules's reasoning for his conversion later in the restaurant is entirely based on Old Testatment scripture (Ezekiel, if memory serves).

For what it's worth.

Posted June 20, 2003 9:59 PM by John Farrell

(Hey, besides, didn't Indiana Jones clarify that the real Grail was made of wood?)

Don't think so. He said something along the lines of 'This is the cup of a carpenter" as he picked it up. But it looked a simple clay bowl to me.

MKK

Posted June 20, 2003 11:56 PM by Mary Kay

I've heard this theory of yours before, and to a certain extent it holds up--but Tarantino is purposefully vague about it. Like the good symbol that the suitcase is, it works on a number of levels. But if it's a Grail, it's a very odd one, in that it belongs to a very evil man (Marsellus Wallace). And yet in the upside down world of the murderers and other crooks in PF, Marsellus Wallace is almost like a god. Those who cross him, like Butch, find they have nowhere to hide (until Butch redeems himself by saving Marsellus from a very embarrassing moment, after he's tired to kill him). (And Marsellus has his property back by this time, too.)

Posted June 21, 2003 12:40 AM by Robert L

I had the very prosaic theory that it was some recognizable (and perhaps famous) lustrous gold Egyptian artifact.

(Um, TNH, not *that* one.)

IMS, Marcellus collects African art, doesn't he?

Posted June 21, 2003 1:09 AM by Carlos

--But if it's a Grail, it's a very odd one, in that it belongs to a very evil man [...]

According to a very popular conspiroccultist hypothesis, the Nazis possessed, and attempted to make use of, the Spear of Longinus, which gains its power from the same source as the Sangreal. So I think that such artifacts -can- fall into the hands of the Bad, and possibly even be used by them. Of course, it's possible that Marsellus wanted a shortcut to redemption, or (more likely) he was acting as broker for some -really- powerful individual.

As for the material of the Grail, the story I've always heard is that, after the Crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea ornamented it with gems and precious metal.

I halfway like the Indiana Jones line -- it's one of the few points where the writers actually seem to be thinking about what they're doing -- but it's still wonky; "Gosh, four dozen refugees from the Antiques Roadshow and one clay cup. That's a real poser, that is." Not that this compares to the way they botch the ending, but that's another wossname.

Posted June 21, 2003 1:27 AM by John M. Ford

There's at least a few other religious things thrown in. When Travolta shoots the guy by accident in the back seat of the car, I believe it's right as he's saying something about god coming down and doing something. I wish I could remember the exact line. The code on the glowing suitcase is, of course, 666.

This being Tarantino, I'm not convinced there's any deeper meaning at all. When's Kill Bill coming out?

Posted June 21, 2003 3:13 AM by Aaron

Need I point out that Jules survives the movie and is redeemed

Well, sure. Jules is in a state of grace at the time of the miracle, having just had communion in the form of the Kahuna burger.

Have I mentioned the burgers? This is an odd theory that I swear I first heard from Lisa, and she swears she first heard from me. The idea here is that Pulp Fiction is a movie about morality, and the sources of ethical systems, and religion in particular.

Remember the conversation between Jules and Vince at the beginning? "You know what they call a Quarter Pounder in Paris?" The Quarter Pounder, named after a unit of measurement, represents the materialist worldview, the belief that morality can be derived solely from reason. The French name for the burger, the Royale, brings to mind royalty, and the belief that morality derives from government, authority, and secular law.

The third burger mentioned, the one Jules actually eats (and described as "a damn good burger") is the Kahuna burger, named after a Hawaiian priest. Here's morality handed down directly by God. And right after that, a miracle.

The other such symbol in the movie is the watch in the story about Butch (Bruce Willis), which portrays the Jewish version of divine morality, which was handed down by God in the distant past and has been passed down from generation to generation, no matter how much of a pain in the ass it might seem.

Posted June 21, 2003 4:03 AM by Avram

On the sizes of holy grails: the word "graal" is Old French for "plate." So it's hard to imagine a Holy Grail that _wouldn't_ fit into a suitcase. The very first one, in Chre9tien de Troyes' _Perceval_, is a dish sanctified only because it carried a consecrated Host. Later on, the dish was assimilated to the cup used in the Last Supper, but that wasn't until the early 13th century.

And don't nobody get me started on the "holy blood" interpretation, which is a simple case of bad philology.

Posted June 21, 2003 10:34 AM by Anne

The clay cup thingie is a rehash of Shakespeare. You know, how, like, you can't go to a revival of The Merchant of Venice without hearing groudlings shouting out, "The lead box! Pick the lead box, you idiot!"

(And if the suitor chooses the gold box, and Monty Hall reveals that silver box is empty, should the suitor switch?)

Posted June 21, 2003 11:20 AM by Alan Bostick

Tim Kyger wrote: And here I've been thinking for *years* now that it was the 5th Harry Potter book...

Almost right. What's in the suitcase is the *eighth* Harry Potter book, which glows with the light of octarine and will never be published.

Posted June 21, 2003 1:00 PM by Yonmei

Gee, I always just assumed it was a kookalouris.

Posted June 21, 2003 1:20 PM by Bob Devney

The theory I always heard was that it was the diamonds from Resevoir Dogs. Marcellus Wallace is mentioned in Resevoir Dogs as a good diamond dealer who's in jail. I assumed that Pulp Fiction is in a contiguous storyline, and Marcellus picks up the swag upon leaving jail.

Posted June 21, 2003 4:21 PM by The Littlest Cynic

Bob -- in British filmmaking, that particular sacred artifact is known as an "ulcer," so there we go down the foramen cuniculis of alternate interpretation again, i.e., "the Holy -what?"-

Posted June 21, 2003 4:29 PM by John M. Ford

Here's a rec.arts.movies post identifying the maguffin as the Holy Grail, from 18 October 1994. The film was released in the US on 14 October....

Posted June 21, 2003 5:02 PM by Kevin J. Maroney

John Ford:

Just to clarify, my bringing up "Kiss Me Deadly" was a direct response to a reference to "Tarantino's love of evoking images or lines from past movies he idolized." I wasn't claiming that what's IN the PF suitcase was the same as in the Spillane film, but the fact of its existence in Tarantino's film is obviously a reference to Aldrich's, because glowing-suitcase MacGuffins are rare, even in our fast-paced modern age. That's all I meant. In Repo Man, on the other hand, the thing in the car trunk is similar to the KMD suitcase both as a reference and as an actual physical object.

Love your Westerns, by the way.

Posted June 21, 2003 6:27 PM by Christopher

I think the briefcase contains the one and only Iraqi weapon of mass destruction.

Posted June 21, 2003 6:33 PM by Jaquandor

It's the three-cell flashlight that Fluke Starbucker's father wanted him to have. "Gosh!"

Posted June 21, 2003 7:40 PM by Kip W

Wait a minnit ... Anne, you say that "graal" is archaic French for "plate". But, let's see, now... the Last Supper was a Pesach seder. Does this mean that the Holy Grail is in fact a seder plate???

Posted June 22, 2003 1:28 AM by Alan Bostick

Of course, a few years later, the Grail was stolen again, transferred to an ice skate case, and shipped to Europe where it was pursued by Irish terrorists and Russian mobsters in Ronin...

(Sounds like a job for Peter Crossman...)

Posted June 22, 2003 12:28 PM by Chad Orzel

Alan, would that it were so! But Chre9tien's original is simply a plate holding a communion wafer. (Us high-church types call it a paten.) I've always imagined it to be a very pretty one, but its only real virtue is that it carries the Host.

Joseph of Arimathea and the cup of the Last Supper, in which Joseph collected the blood from Christ's side, didn't come into it until 1230 or so. I could go on, but I don't know how many people are interested.

Posted June 22, 2003 1:27 PM by Anne

I came up with a scenario once.

In the sixteenth century, during the vast expansion of the Portuguese into pretty much every undefended nook and cranny in the world their side of the Tordesillas line, someone proposed that the Portuguese raid Mecca. It didn't come off in our history; they were too busy raiding everywhere else.

The sacred stone of the Kaaba is actually rather small, but it is ornamented with boku silver. Ka-ching.

It gets brought back to Portugal, sans most of its silver, where it eventually becomes part of the Braganza dowry for Charles II in 1662, along other sundries like Tangiers and Bombay.

The knick-knack part of Charles II's collection eventually is sold for another Van Dyck, and since it is a rock (though in a nice setting), it passes into the possession of one Elihu Yale.

From there its provenance is a little obscure, as it drifts from New Englander to New Englander, but it eventually falls into the hands of a resident of upstate New York with a certain affinity for, um, magic rocks.

Flash forward maybe one hundred fifty years.

Enter Dortmunder.

Then there's the variant where the King of Portugal sends the rock to the Vatican, where it's lost in the sack of Rome...

... except Benvenuto Cellini has it, um, stashed away during the chaos.

Later on, he crafts a falcon grasping it and presents it to the Hospitallers of St. John... well, you folks know the rest.

Posted June 22, 2003 2:18 PM by Carlos

Apologies, Carlos: my patent Wonkyvision (which, while it is not a Roald Dahl invention, occasionally produces things worthy of him) had that as "... proposed that the Portugese raid Necco."

Wafers. Boston. The Gardner heist. (But not the molasses flood, which was another company.) It all makes sense now.

Posted June 22, 2003 7:06 PM by John M. Ford

"The theory I always heard was that it was the diamonds from Resevoir Dogs. Marcellus Wallace is mentioned in Resevoir Dogs as a good diamond dealer who's in jail. I assumed that Pulp Fiction is in a contiguous storyline, and Marcellus picks up the swag upon leaving jail."

And in fact John Tavolta's character, Vince Vega, is presumably a relative of Vic Vega (Michael Madsen) in Reservoir Dogs.

Posted June 23, 2003 3:08 AM by Robert L

So where does that leave Don Diego Vega? He lived in Southern California and wore black, too.

I'm really not competing for the Phil Farmer Prize for Parahistorical Involution, really. It's just that this is how the world works. At least from my angle. And it's more fun than thinking about, say, the management of Delta Oil and Halliburton.

Posted June 23, 2003 3:55 AM by John M. Ford

So where does that leave Don Diego Vega?

Vincent (and Vic) are his decendents and thus heis an inversion of the Prodigal Son; he is offered Grace (in the form of the Grail or whatever is in the case) but he denies it, and so. like the Knights in the grail legend who do not believe, dies.

Posted June 23, 2003 9:12 AM by Jorge

Jorge, which version are you talking about? I only know the medieval versions, in which everybody is a Christian--they die because they're not perfect like Galahad.

Posted June 23, 2003 1:18 PM by Anne

Of course, it's obvious, it always is, in hindsight.

It's the Death Star plans, the little pocket holoprojector that Christopher Lee is going to have so darn much fun playing with, once it's delivered to him. (One can almost hear the Count -- wonder if he's really, really tired of being called "Count" in movies? "Couldn't he be a Baron or an Earl or an Elector Palatine or something?" -- saying, "Look, it's -shiny!-")

After all, -someone- is going to hit Mrs. Skywalker. Why not Jules, or "Mace," as he may choose to call himself? (People who go over to the Dark Side seem to typically change their names. It probably has to do with the general adoption of the Australian form, in which you declare that you're a Jedi on your identity form.)

Posted June 23, 2003 5:08 PM by John M. Ford

Marsellus Wallace is not mentioned in Resevoir Dogs. The character is named Marsellus Spivey. Tarantino used all of the character names who were mentioned in Joe Cabot's office in other movies.

We have "Marsellus" (Wallace & Spivey), "Vega" (Vince and Vic), "Scagnetti" (evil Parole Officer of Mr. Blond in Dogs, evil Detective in Natural Born Killers, "Alabama" (Patricia Arquette in True Romance, Mr. White's ex-partner in Dogs).

With the possible exception of "Alabama" (who is only mentioned and never appears in Resivoir Dogs, much like Scagnetti and Marsellus Spivey), these are all different people.

Posted June 24, 2003 10:01 AM by PC

Off-topic, but not really. I really hated Pulp Fiction. Don't remember the briefcase, but I do remember that the film had a rather exalted presentation of Travolta's syringe etc. bathed in a mysterious light.

The problem I see is that during a sketchy part of my life I would be in contact with that sort of guy, and they weren't really cool. Usually very unpleasant, commonplace greedy people with some bad habits and a bad attitude, who ultimately were willing to hurt anyone who got in their way. Some of them were pretty charming and charismatic but it was a fake, manipulative schtick. I thought the movie was in the "The only people who really live life are the Outlaws" type of idea, which I sort of believed too before I knew what it involved.

I like black humor stuff. I loved Fargo, which I still think of as the anti-Pulp Fiction. The killers were such tedious, lame guys, much more like the guys I tried to avoid running into when they were around.

Posted June 24, 2003 10:02 AM by zizka

I didn't hate Pulp Fiction, but I certainly agree with Zizka that Fargo is an order of magnitude better--and that, moreover, Fargo is about what's wrong with being too impressed by the values epitomized by Pulp Fiction.

Posted June 24, 2003 11:06 AM by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Zizka: It sounds to me like you missed the deeper point the movie was trying to make. Yeah, the syringe was presented very lovingly, but then look at the rest of that scene: it's all about the effects of heroin. The camera work, the music, it's all trying to make the viewer feel what Vincent's feeling. But after that, what happens? Mia snorts the heroin and nearly dies, while Vincent is off in the bathroom doing nothing. In fact, when important things are happening, Vincent's always off in the bathroom. And look at the end of the movie: Jules sees what happened in the college kids' apartment as a sign from God and is redeemed; Vincent pays no attention and ends up dead.

Pulp Fiction is really a very moral movie, once you get down to it.

Posted June 24, 2003 12:10 PM by Josh

Unless there was a mix-up in the police property department post-Reservoir Dogs, the case can't have those jewels. Mr. Pink runs out of the warehouse with them, whereupon he is arrested by the officers waiting to take down Joe Cabot. One has to fiddle with the sound, speed of the film (or DVD) to figure this out.

Posted June 24, 2003 3:12 PM by Jeff Allen

Josh: And why is Vincent off in the bathroom so much of the time? Because opiates cause constipation. It's practically a drug warning film. You could show it to schoolkids as a double feature with Trainspotting.

Posted June 24, 2003 3:29 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

TNH: That'd make an *excellent* double feature, especially the juxtaposition of Vincent driving to Mia's house with Renton's withdrawal scene.

PNH: What values do you think Pulp Fiction epitomizes? As I said, I think it's actually a very moral movie, in much the same way that South Park is a very moral TV show.

Posted June 24, 2003 4:08 PM by Josh

To me the problem isn't that it's immoral. It treats these guys as in some way larger-than- life, especially interesting figures, whereas I think the Fargo hoods are much more typical. (Of course the Fargo guys are fuckeups, but even successful hoods end up being very tedious, except momentarily when they're running one of their canned schticks by you in order to get something from you.)

I don't mean to sound like a heavy or an expert on organized crime -- I was very peripheral based on where I lived and a few people I knew -- but none of the ones I knew were dramatic, interesting people.

Posted June 24, 2003 8:07 PM by zizka

It's Marsellus' soul.
(Note the band-aid on the back of his kneck)

Posted July 1, 2003 11:59 PM by Ogden Freen