Pulp Friction

When Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) walked out of the diner in Pulp Fiction, we had to assume that he would indeed proceed to “walk the earth” after his so-called “divine intervention” earlier in the film. And in Mark Atkinson and Tony Olmos’ short film Pulp Friction, Jules is back, sort of. Whether his spiritual pursuit of enlightenment yielded results worth mentioning isn’t revealed, but he does need a place to crash!

The banality of apartment hunting is an odd premise, but that’s the direction the film takes as Marty (Atkinson) and Gary (Randy Davidson) meet Jules after he applies to be their roommate. Much of the dialogue in the interview process and subsequent sequence is directly lifted from Tarantino’s classic, but it’s quite funny seeing these interactions in distinctly more vanilla situations.

“…Marty and Gary meet Jules after he applies to be their roommate.”

Part of me wishes that Atkinson and Olmos weren’t so beholden to the original’s script, as it would have been fascinating to see how Jules has progressed. But on the other hand, I also understand the need to tie Pulp Friction back to the source and to cater to the nostalgia we all hold for Pulp Fiction and its endlessly quotable dialogue. The most creative sequence in this short film is a reimagining of that hit’s most controversial scene and line of dialogue (by 2022 standards, anyway), and it’s a clever departure from the original in that sense. I also have to plug Elliott Branch Jr. as one of the better Samuel L. Jackson imitators we’ll come across.

Ultimately, short films are the perfect vehicle for silly ideas like a famous movie hitman looking for an apartment, so Pulp Friction is sure to be a hit. The five people in the world that haven’t seen Tarantino’s film will be lost, but that’s a sacrifice worth making for a film centered around the world of the most influential film of the 1990s. And hey, it may or may not have forced me to break out my faded Big Kahuna Burger T-shirt.