They came to be classics in very different ways, but two landmark films turn 2-0 this year: The Shawshank Redemption and Pulp Fiction.
In 1994, you couldn’t visit a dorm room without the iconic Uma Thurman poster from Pulp staring down at you with her blunt black bangs, or go for beers with friends without hearing someone launch into one of the monologues. Now that it’s turning 20, many of the cinematic and narrative flourishes that Quentin Tarantino debuted with his first major hit have become expected pieces of movie making, which, whether you love or hate the violence and characters he brings to life on screen, is an amazing testament to his style of filmmaking. For those who can claim to be fans since the 1992 debut of Reservoir Dogs I salute you—for many of us, Pulp was our introduction to Tarantino and Dogs was only discovered at the video store long afterwards.
I was too young and excited by what I saw on screen to be truly jarred by the violence on display in Pulp, and though much is made of Tarantino’s “glorification” of violent acts, it can be argued that they are part and parcel of the stories. The shocking violence, though represented gratuitously, could not be removed from the films and without altering their impact. It’s still one of the few films that I can remember seeing that has left an impact on me over these past 20 years, and reaffirmed that it is OK to love the movies so much. Because Tarantino does. His films are always love letters to cinema itself, overlaid with his unique style, which when we absorbed it in 1994, was like nothing we’d seen before.
You won’t see Pulp Fiction on TV every night of the week (or if you do, you won’t be getting much of the spirit of the movie), but you can almost always count on the listings showing The Shawshank Redemption somewhere in the cable universe. Short on bad words and long on beautiful narration (and performance) by Morgan Freeman and the rest of the cast, Shawshank didn’t exactly blow up the box office when it premiered in 1994. Through steady word of mouth and possibly the most prolific TV running rights of all time, it slowly became the adored classic that it is today, because it is the simplest formula of all for a classic film—a great story. The story, which originated in a Stephen King short story collection, shows his mastery of voice and human experience. King’s work can suffer or be elevated when brought to the screen, and Shawshank is elevation.
My kids are too young for these classics, but I own both in my collection, and look forward to the day I can introduce the boys to Andy Dufresne and a “Royale with cheese.”
If you crave the unique and forceful tones of Samuel L. Jackson narrating things, he also read Go The F**k to Sleep as an audio book, which is NSFW but very fun for parents. And Stephen King is a very gracious famous author—one of our bloggers met him!
The bizarre, beloved (and also loathed) world of Twin Peaks will be returning to TV in 2016 with a limited run on the Showtime Channel in the U.S., to be directed by co-creator David Lynch. The revival will be set exactly 25 years later, which coincides neatly with the actual end of the series.
I don't know if I should dust off my copy of The Diary of Laura Palmer and make a cherry pie to celebrate, or if I should give a "harumph" and refer you to this: there are no new stories!
If you weren't a fan of the original series that aired in the early 1990s or missed out, it is a spectacularly weird trip that only looks like a basic murder mystery on top. Beneath the question, "Who killed Laura Palmer?" is a strange tour of a town that has an awful lot of secrets, strange occurrences in the woods, and more than its fair share of characters. The fact it was made and aired at all on network TV says a lot about the power of David Lynch as a filmmaker and the landscape of entertainment in the '90s compared to now. Also, that was some pretty freaky stuff for my parents to allow their teen and pre-teen daughters to watch, so thanks to my folks—accessible David Lynch in your teens is kind of a special thing. The show had some strange yet highly quotable dialogue that my sister and I have folded into our coded language for a lifetime, so that's a testament to its staying power.
It's also on a lot of "Greatest Cult TV shows" lists and it's cult for a reason—it's weird to the point of being inaccessible, especially if you were to sit down and consume its entire two seasons in a marathon (which Showtime has planned prior to the new mini series, of course). It's like a branch of the Lost or The Prisoner family tree that no one talks about, that tree having the label Things We Couldn't Resolve or perhaps We Wrote Ourselves Into a Hole and Can't Get Out. With two seasons and a theatrical movie to follow the series finale, there was a lot of unresolved stuff on Peaks. Loose ends! Weird mystical things! Visions! Crazy characters! Side plots that led nowhere! (And don't go looking for answers in Laura's diary, either.)
But what beautiful weirdness David Lynch and Mark Frost created. It's the same kind of immersive world as a good book, you just want to keep visiting and live there forever, and you are pretty forgiving when not all of the pieces make sense, because taken together, the style and the statement of it are just pure and beautiful art. Whether you can forgive a little—or a lot—of the nonsense depends on whether you appreciate their art.
I think I've just convinced myself to sign up for another stay in Twin Peaks. Will you join me and Agent Cooper? I make a damn good cup of coffee.
Exhausted from a day of looking after the kids and feeling like you're Six Feet Under? Turn on the t.v. and get Lost in one of these 10 shows to binge-watch.
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