Dale On Killer Clowns

The Travolta-Jackson pairing is at the heart of Pulp Fiction. They make a beautiful team: Vincent, who takes things as they are, is at times slow almost to the point of slurring, whereas Jules is excitable, florid.

Jules is the straight man but gets fantastically showy punchlines, while Vincent gets his laughs from his stoner’s lack of compression. When you add that Vincent is prone to accidents and exasperates Jules, they start to seem like Laurel and Hardy, who never got dialogue as funny as Tarantino’s.

And Tarantino directs their exchanges in a loose enough style that the characters (and actors) can even laugh at themselves during a discussion of whether pigs are filthy animals. The dialogue casts around them a bubble in which killer clowns can exist.