A ‘Pulp Fiction’ Story: One dad doing the right thing

All the while, giving his son a taste of the cinema’s upper class of goods.

Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 classic came out 30 years ago today, reshaping the groundwork for what cinema could do and the package it could be delivered in without losing the audience. From the riveting split story lines and hyper-profanity to the quotable dialogue and shocking action, his movie reverberated then and still does to this day-setting new boundaries.

Pulp Fiction is also where the 40-year-old hard-working Richard Buffa set his own boundaries with his son, Dan. Up until that point, 12-year-old me had seen a lot of adult-friendly films, as in blood and guts and minimal sex. Before you go raging towards my dad for not taking me to go see the more appropriate Beauty and the Beast, understand that’s just not how we do it. Tombstone and a solid Arnold/Sly/Bruno actioner was our preferred entertainment, but Pulp Fiction had one of those guys and a bunch of other known names.

To this day, I don’t firmly know whether my dad had heard from someone about the film’s hard-R content, aka a rape scene before the film’s third act, or if he could just feel it coming. Tarantino wasn’t an easy filmmaker to predict back then, so I’m placing a loose bet on a pre-existing knowledge. However, the internet wasn’t stocked to the gills with entertainment websites back then, and my dad wasn’t a regular reader of magazines.

All I know is, somehow or some way, he knew where the line was when it came to what his son was going to endure and take in. We sat down for most of the movie, and suddenly he got us up during the middle. The promise of candy or something else was involved, but we moved to the door right when Bruce Willis was being chased by Ving Rhames through Los Angeles. The wait outside theater 4 wasn’t incredibly long, but I could tell something had changed when I came in to see Willis put a samurai sword through a very bad man.

It was like the true delight of my dad’s intentions (seeing Bruno kick ass) had finally arrived, and all was right in the world. When the time was right, Rich made the proper call. Something that was confirmed later on when I saw the scene in question, where Peter Greene’s dirty bigot of a cop rapes Rhames’ crime lord, a deed he gets brutally punished for soon afterwards.

If the removal did one thing, it confirmed Greene as the biggest scumbag a movie could find. He was so good at playing that role that you didn’t mind a pair of tools being used as torture weapons on him. He could portray that in a small role.

My dad is probably reading this and wondering what the big deal is. Maybe the touchdown here isn’t as profound as it was in my head when the idea of writing about it surfaced, but that doesn’t bother me. He made a good call while understanding that most material seen in a movie couldn’t hurt someone if they had good parents. He knew the difference between hard R and a softer rating that was inflated due to cinema violence.

Tarantino would be reading this, and it would paint a wide smile on his face. Younger kids got a whiff of his talents, and kept coming back without being overwhelmed too early. Either way, a proper salute to 40-year-old Rich Buffa.

30 years later, Pulp Fiction hasn’t lost any edge or bold recall.