Opening the Briefcase
Pulp Fiction is the film which, more than any other I know, reveals new aspects at every viewing. On this occasion, watching it for about the dozenth time, what hit me was how poignant that scene at the end is, where the gangsters stride confidently off into the Los Angeles sunshine, the viewer aware that Vincent will soon be shot dead. And this when there has just been all that business about the mysterious briefcase which Marsellus will soon be reunited with. And it seemed that maybe one might see a connection here – that there’s the hint of a suggestion that the contents of the briefcase could somehow come into play to save Vincent. And since we have seen Vincent being shot, that would seem to have to involve the briefcase containing either a resurrection kit or a time machine.
I had never been ambitious to solve the briefcase question. It seemed the sort of issue about which one could only have theories. But over the next week or so, without any active sleuthing, the backrooms of my mind tossed up several more clues, all pointing towards a time machine. And then, struck as if by Tony Rocky Horror crashing through the greenhouse roof, it occurred to me that a time machine hidden from viewers makes a most compelling parallel with Butch’s watch, hidden so craftily from the prison guards. To me this parallel reeked of intentionality and of a joke being played on the audience. Further ideas bolstering the time machine theory came to mind over the next few weeks. Especially there were two ‘continuity errors’ – Marvin’s head being shown after it was supposed to have been blasted to pieces, and Honey Bunny’s rant to patrons differing slightly in its opening scene and closing scene renditions – which worked beautifully as examples of divergent timelines.
To advance the time machine theory I wrote the sonnet sequence Marsellus Wallace’s Dirty Laundry, which I self-published in July 2021. Feeling the argument could be made more clearly I then wrote another sonnet sequence, L.A. Alchemy, self-published in August 2024. At forty sonnets rather than sixty the focus here was squarely on the points essential to proving a time machine. And this included some shiny new inferences to demolish the tenacious but baseless theory which holds that the briefcase is a ‘MacGuffin’ – merely a plot device to move the action along and that its contents are irrelevant.
However that isn’t at all to walk away from the earlier book. In fact I would like to publish both books together, under the title City of Pilots. Since the sequences share the same first eleven and a bit sonnets this would implicate the poems themselves in the briefcase world’s divergent realities. I’m hoping that this website might eventually lead to City of Pilots finding a publisher. And in any event I hope that the website opens up the discussion about a film which, although hailed almost instantly as a masterpiece, is still greatly misunderstood in one key respect.