I’m gonna
tell you the main problem us New Pulp writers have when we’re trying to explain
New Pulp to folks who have no idea what Pulp is. Much less New Pulp. See, we go
on and on with our explanations of Pulp and what it means to us as writers and
what it is as a genre…
…and then
we’ll get the Classic Pulp crowd chiming in with; “Pulp isn’t a genre! It’s the
paper the original magazines were
printed on!”
Well, you
Classic Pulp guys just hold on. I’ll get to you another time. Believe me. But
right now I’ve got more interesting fish to sauté.
Anyway, we
try to explain to The Average Reader Who Is Just Looking For Something Good To
Read what New Pulp is. And they will listen most earnestly and patiently and
attentively and they will then say; “Okay, I get what you’re saying…but why and how is New Pulp different from just plain
ol’ Action Adventure? Or Horror? Or Science Fiction? Why can’t you guys just
label what you do as that and get it over with?”
And The
Average Reader Who Is Just Looking For Something Good To Read does have a valid
point. And before you start with that tired old felgercarb about how you don’t
like labels and you don’t see why anything has to be labeled…
…tell you
what we’re gonna do. We’re going to take all the labels off the canned foods in
your local supermarket and let you guess what’s inside those cans the next time
you go shopping. Because much as you would like to think otherwise, labelling
does have its place. And one reason why it’s so hard to label New Pulp is
because over the years there have been so many TV shows, comic books and movies
that have adopted the tropes of Classic Pulp that it’s become so ingrained in
Pop Culture that most folks don’t even realize they’re watching Pulp. Still
don’t believe me? Sit back while I hit you with three examples of New Pulp you
watched and enjoyed and didn’t even know was New Pulp.
24 (2001-2010): For 8 Seasons we watched Counter
Terrorist Unit Special Agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) defend Our Country
against supervillains, terrorist attacks and shadow government conspiracies.
Each Season followed Jack Bauer on a Really Bad Day, each episode taking place
in Real Time over the course of one hour. Before each commercial break, a clock
would appear on screen to show us how much time had passed and each episode
would end with Jack Bauer or another member of the cast in dire peril. You had
to come back next week to find out how Jack or whoever got out of whatever
death trap they had gotten into.
24 is one of the primary examples of New Pulp I love to
hold up as it’s the Ultimate Saturday Morning Serial. A Serial was extended
movies broken up into chapter plays that enjoyed their major popularity in the
1930’s and 1940’s. The chapters were shown in movie theaters in 10 or 15
minutes segments before the main double feature. They ended with a Cliffhanger in which the
hero or another member of the cast found themselves in dire peril. Sound
familiar? 24 quite successfully
adapted the Saturday Morning Serial in an innovative way. Sure, the episodes
were now an hour long instead of 15 minutes but thanks to terrific writing and
acting, they kept us on the end of our seats. And as a character, Jack Bauer
has a whole lot in common with both Jimmy Christopher aka Operator #5 and The
Spider.
Hudson Hawk: Is the most blatantly Pulp of my
three examples and maybe that’s why it was the least successful. I dunno. All I
know is that the very first time I saw it in the theater, I knew what director
Michael Lehmann and screenplay writers Steven E. de Souza and Daniel Waters (based
on a story by Bruce Willis and Robert Kraft) were going for. Eddie Hawkins is a
master thief known professionally as Hudson
Hawk.
Upon being released from prison he attempts to go straight but is
blackmailed by the CIA, The Mafia, the psychotic Mayflower twins ( Richard E.
Grant, Sandra Bernhard) and even his own partner-in-crime Tommy Five-Tone
(Danny Aiello) into a complicated series of heists to steal the components of
the La Machinnia dell’Oro, the
greatest invention of Leonardo da Vinci, a machine that can convert lead into
gold. The scene where Bruce Willis and Danny Aiello pull off a heist that is
perfectly timed to their singing “Swinging On A Star” is one of my favorites in
the movie.
The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou (2004):
Wes Anderson is not
a director that anybody by any stretch of the imagination would associate with
Pulp New or Classic. But I’ve watched The
Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou three
times now and the more I see it, the more I’m convinced it’s a New Pulp Adventure.
Bill Murray plays Steve Zissou, an oceanographer/adventurer who sees his best
friend and partner eater by a Jaguar Shark, a species of shark that had been
previously considered to be mythical. Steve Zissou vows to hunt down and
destroy the shark.
Aboard his
massive research vessel/home, The
Belafonte, Zissou and his eccentric crew, which includes a Brazilian
musician who sings David Bowie songs in Portuguese, Anne-Marie Sakowitz who
insists on walking around topless and a bunch of college interns from the
University of North Alaska he sets out on what may be his last and greatest
adventure. The adventure is flavored by Steve having to deal with Ned Plimpton
(Owen Wilson) who just may be his illegitimate son and the tagalong reporter
Jane-Winslette Richardson (Cate Blanchett) who is attracted to both Steve and
Ned.
It’s a
movie that I consider New Pulp because of Steve Zissou, an aging adventurer who
is trying to hold onto his life of adventure even though everybody and
everything is telling him he has to conform to the modern world. But Steve
believes in a different world. Halfway through the movie it turns into an
almost straight out action adventure where Steve and his crew have to dig back
into the day when they were badasses in order to track down and take out a band
of pirates that have attacked The Belafonte and taken some of the
interns hostages.
Steve
Zissou’s crew are just as talented, skilled and eccentric as Doc Savage’s Iron
Crew or Buckaroo Banzai’s Hong Kong Cavaliers. And if you have any more doubts
about the intention of this movie, check out the end credit scene where Steve
Zissou and his crew march to their boat. Wes Anderson himself has said that is
a deliberate homage to the Banzai Strut done during the closing credits of
“Buckaroo Banzai”
The thing
all these movies (and TV show) have in common is that there are various
elements of Classic Pulp that the creators adapted successfully for modern
audiences. Matter of fact, they did them so well that modern audiences have no
idea that they’re watching Pulp.
And don’t
get me started on how Scandal is a
modern day version of The Avenger and Justice, Inc…we’ll leave that for next
time…
