Quentin Tarantino’s Quentin Tarantino's career as a filmmaker began in 1992 with the crime movie Reservoir Dogs, but his big break arrived two years later with Pulp Fiction, another crime movie but with the particularity of being told in a non-linear style.
Pulp Fiction is divided into segments told out of order, with each one focusing on one or two characters and all of them crossing paths at some point. These characters are hitmen Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), their boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), his wife Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman), and boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), and while they all get their moment to shine in one or more segments, the ones often considered the leads of the movie are Mia and Vincent, and through the latter, Tarantino hid some connections to himself and other works by him.
By now it’s no secret that Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs are directly linked as Vincent Vega and Reservoir Dogs’ Vic Vega a.k.a. Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) have been confirmed to be brothers, and Tarantino had even planned a movie focused on the Vega brothers, but it never came to be. However, Pulp Fiction has another link between Vincent and Tarantino’s filmography that doesn’t involve his brother, and it’s all about the book he’s seen reading throughout the movie. Said book is Modesty Blaise, and as it turns out, Tarantino is such a big fan of it that he executive produced a direct-to-video adaptation of it in 2004, titled My Name is Modesty.
Modesty Blaise is a British comic strip by Peter O’Donnell and illustrator Jim Holdaway. It follows the title character, who is an exceptional young woman with various talents and a criminal past, and her sidekick Willie Garvin. Modesty Blaise has been adapted to other media multiple times, and at one point, Tarantino was interested in directing a movie version of it, with Neil Gaiman writing a script treatment based on the novel I, Lucifer. This ended up ing the list of unmade Tarantino projects, but he went on to “sponsor” My Name is Modesty by releasing it under the label “Quentin Tarantino presents…” and getting an executive producer credit. My Name is Modesty stars Alexandra Staden as Modesty Blaise, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Mikklos, and Raymond Cruz as Raphael Garcia, and follows Modesty during a crucial event in her life prior to the start of the comic strip.
Vincent Vega is seen reading Modesty Blaise twice in Pulp Fiction, both while in the toilet, but he didn’t get to finish it (unless he was rereading it) as he was killed by Butch when he got out of the bathroom. It’s no secret that Quentin Tarantino tends to add references and hidden details from various pop culture elements to his movies, and these are, most of the time, directly linked to his personal taste, and this one detail in Pulp Fiction is even more interesting as it’s connected to one of his lesser-known projects and unmade movies.
