A few days later, the rough cut of Pulp Fiction was delivered to Miramax.
The screening room lights were dim, the air thick with the combined smell of cigar smoke and coffee. The projector rattled, displaying the three-and-a-half-hour-long film on the silver screen.
Harvey Weinstein sat in the front row, his face thunderous. Behind him, several assistants whispered nervously, a few secretly checking their watches and struggling to stifle yawns.
The film's pace dragged, the dialogue was long-winded, and it was full of irrelevant small talk that had nothing to do with the main plot.
"This is the masterpiece that kid was raving about?" Harvey ground out, his voice low. "This is a disaster!"
He abruptly spun around, glaring at his assistant. "Tell Quentin if he doesn't cut this down to under 120 minutes, and if he doesn't chop out those damn, meaningless conversations, I'm dumping this thing straight onto the video market!"
The assistant immediately nodded, sweat beading on his forehead.
Harvey stood up, ready to walk out.
But suddenly, Jules's deep voice boomed from the screen.
"Ezekiel 25:17."
Samuel L. Jackson's eyes were cold as an abyss. He slowly articulated every word, sounding like Death itself reading scripture.
The air instantly solidified. Even the nodding assistants snapped to attention.
Harvey's steps froze.
He desperately tried to cling to his earlier judgment: "It's just a cheap trick, nothing to see here." But the very next second, the scene shifted—
Uma Thurman's character, Mia, was struggling on the brink of death. The moment the needle plunged in, she shot up from the couch with a scream that sliced through the air like a razor.
That primal, raw burst of life savagely hit everyone in the room.
Harvey froze, then slowly sank back into his seat.
His fingers gripped the armrest, his eyes shifting between fury and contemplation.
"Goddammit..." he muttered under his breath. "This movie... is a monster."
The film continued.
The long conversations, the abrupt violence, the bizarre narrative structure—they should have been flaws, but on screen, they coalesced into an undeniable, magnetic pull.
The assistants exchanged shocked glances.
When the end credits finished and the lights came up, the entire room was dead silent.
"Harvey... how should we respond to Pangu Pictures now?" the assistant asked hesitantly.
Harvey didn't answer immediately.
His breathing was heavy, like he was holding a bomb that might explode at any moment.
A moment later, he abruptly picked up the phone, his voice low and decisive:
"It's me. Get the head of the Cannes Film Festival selection committee on the line."
He took a deep breath, a dangerous glint in his eye.
"Tell him I have a bomb in my hands that's going to blow up the entire festival."
The screening room sank back into darkness, with only the afterglow of the projector flickering on the wall.
Harvey leaned back in his chair. The cigar in his hand had long since burned out, the ashes scattered on the carpet.
He stared at the scrolling line: "Directed by – Quentin Tarantino."
A slow, dangerous smile crept across his mouth.
"A monster... maybe I can turn it into my monster."
The projector light finally died.
---
The next day, Los Angeles was buzzing like a stirred hornet's nest.
Bender practically burst into Link's office, his eyes red, looking like a man who had just escaped certain death.
"Link ! Did you hear? Harvey... Harvey submitted our movie to Cannes! We're... we're saved!"
Quentin poked his head out of the editing suite, cigarette dangling, his eyes full of suspicion. "What kind of game is that fat pig playing now? What does he want?"
"He's not saving us, he's saving himself," Link said calmly, closing his file. "A film that could win at Cannes is more important to him than any personal grudge. He wants to leverage Cannes' prestige to earn maximum profit and glory for Miramax and himself."
He looked at both of them, hitting the nail on the head:
"From now on, our enemy isn't Harvey trying to shut us down anymore."
Link stood up and grabbed his jacket. "Let's go, Lawrence. Before we head to France, we have two other 'Kings' we need to visit."