Approaching 30 years since Quentin Tarantino's first masterpiece lost at the 1995 Oscars, it feels like an even worse decision now than ever before. Upon being released in 1994, Pulp Fiction was only Tarantino's second film ever, coming out just two years after Reservoir Dogs, his electric directorial debut. Despite being well received, Pulp Fiction was the first true masterpiece made by Tarantino, and still remains one of the best in his entire filmography.
Helping to resurrect John Travolta's career, Pulp Fiction paired the actor with Samuel L. Jackson and the rest is history. The film is a staple of the postmodern genre, and has continued to grow in reverence 30 years after its release. Famously, Pulp Fiction is told out of chronological order and was a massive hit right away, winning the Palme d'Or at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival and making over $200 million on an $8 million budget. The stylish film shot Tarantino into superstardom, but wasn't able to win the coveted Best Picture Oscar, a decision that has remained baffling nearly 30 years later.
Forrest Gump Won Best Picture 29 Years Ago
Seriously, Though, How Did This Happen?
Forrest Gump came out the same year as Pulp Fiction, and was also an instant success, making over $670 million while taking home a massive amount of awards following its release. It is still director Robert Zemeckis' biggest financial success, coming out just four years after he concluded his Back to the Future trilogy. Such was its success that Forrest Gump was nominated in 13 categories at the 1995 Academy Awards, winning six of them.
It won for Best Visual Effects, Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Director, and Best Picture, undeniably the biggest winner of the 1995 awards season. Tom Hanks' Best Actor win was his second-consecutive, taking home the award the prior year for the film, Philadelphia, and was his third nomination at the time. It was the first (and only) Best Director and Best Picture nomination and a win for Robert Zemeckis, though he was nominated for Best Screenplay in 1986 for Back to the Future.
Pulp Fiction Was Snubbed Of Its Rightful Oscar Win In 1995
The Best Film Win Should Have Been Tarantino's
That same year, Pulp Fiction was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Director and Best Picture, Best Film Editing, Best Screenplay, with Uma Thurman nominated for Best Supporting Actress, Samuel L. Jackson for Best Supporting Actor, and John Travolta for Best Actor. Astonishingly, it only took home one Oscar that night for Best Original Screenplay, which did give Quentin Tarantino his first Oscar - a feat he later repeated in same category for Django Unchained.
Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained, and Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood have all been nominated for Best Picture.
Despite winning the Palme d'Or prior to the Academy Awards, which is one of the most prestigious awards in the industry, Pulp Fiction still lost Best Picture and Best Director, which was a massive snub at the time. It's a shame, too, considering that it was definitely the strongest film of that year among the nominees. Despite all that, the awards love it received over its initial run set the stage for Tarantino for the next three decades of his career.
Forrest Gump Has Aged Incredibly Poorly
Zemeckis' Sentimental Epic Beat Several Better Movies
No, Forrest Gump isn't a terrible movie. It isn't even a bad movie. It is still a well-received film that has endured since it was first released 30 years ago. It just didn't deserve to win the Oscar that year, especially when you compare it to the lasting legacy of two of the films it beat. Not only did Forrest Gump beat Pulp Fiction, it also beat The Shawshank Redemption. Of course, all three films are some of the most culturally significant moments in American cinema, but Forrest Gump definitely feels like an outlier.
Compared to Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption, it doesn't feel as timeless.
Both Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption have essentially remained critical darlings for their entire lives, with both of them being in the Top Ten of IMDB's Best 250 Movies, where The Shawshank Redemption currently sits at number one. Forrest Gump is still highly regarded, of course, but has been continuously reevaluated over the years, poorly by most assessments. Compared to Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption, it simply doesn't feel as timeless nor as good.
It will always be a shame that Pulp Fiction didn't win Best Picture at the 1995 Academy Awards, considering it was the best film that year and one of Tarantino's undeniable masterpieces. Still, the loss didn't (and still doesn't) affect the film's legacy anyway, which has continued to endure for three decades, and will continue to endure for decades to come. Pulp Fiction is simply one of the best, no matter what it did or didn't win.
Tom Hanks Defended Forrest Gump, And Called Pulp Fiction A Masterpiece
Hanks Was Tired Of The Discourse
Back in 2022, Tom Hanks addressed the debate over Forrest Gump beating Pulp Fiction to the Best Film Oscar, in an interview with the New York Times, after years of discourse that he admitted had not passed him by. He called the accusation that Forrest Gump was a"totem of boomer nostalgia" and Pulp Fiction "the fresh new thing" "not inaccurate," but also took the opportunity to defend Zemeckis' film.
The problem with Forrest Gumpis it made a billion dollars. If we’d just made a successful movie, Bob and I would have been geniuses. But because we made a wildly successful movie, we were diabolical geniuses. Is it a bad problem to have? No, but there’s books of the greatest movies of all time, and Forrest Gump doesn’t appear because, oh, it’s this sappy nostalgia fest.
Every year there’s an article that goes, “The Movie That Should Have Won Best Picture” and it’s always Pulp Fiction. Pulp Fiction is a masterpiece without a doubt. Look, I don’t know, but there is a moment of undeniable heartbreaking humanity in Forrest Gump when Gary Sinise — he’s playing Lieutenant Dan — and his Asian wife walk up to our house on the day that Forrest and Jenny get married.
He's not wrong: Forrest Gump is very successful in hitting its emotional marks and it's not just the "magic legs" scene he refers to. Forrest learning about his son, and the final tragic conversation with Jenny at her graveside live on as some of the most emotionally impactful scenes ever performed. A lot of that comes down to Hanks' performance, but it's also the strength of material. Nobody is really saying that Forrest Gump is a bad film, it just difficult to call it particularly profound or creatively challenging, which makes the masterpiece debate more loaded.
Interestingly, Hanks also revealed in the same interview that he learned the biggest lesson of his career working on one specific scene on Forrest Gump:
We were shooting the park-bench scenes of “Forrest Gump.” It’s summertime in Savannah, Ga. We had shot 27 straight days. It was brutal. We were sitting there, and I got this haircut, we’re trying to make sense of this dialogue, and I had to say, “Bob, man, I don’t think anybody’s going to care.” And Bob said: “It’s a minefield, Tom. You never know what’s good. Are you going to make it through safe? Or are you gonna step on a Bouncing Betty that’s going to blow your balls off?” There’s never any guarantee. I’ll be 66 in July, and I’ve been acting for a paycheck since I was 20. Forty-six years and I now know what was evident when I was 20 years old is what Spencer Tracy said: “Learn the lines. Hit the marks. Tell the truth.” That’s all you can do.
Given it gifted us more of Hanks' excellent later performances, maybe it should get an easier ride?
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Quentin Tarantino's classic tale of violence and redemption follows the intertwining tales of three protagonists: hitman Vincent Vega, prizefighter Butch Coolidge, and Vincent's business partner Jules Winnfield.
English (US) ·