A Notorious Hollywood Producer Wanted Daniel Day-Lewis In Pulp Fiction

This article contains a discussion of sexual assault.

A new retrospective focused on Quentin Tarantino's masterpiece "Pulp Fiction" in Variety revealed the that notorious — and disgraced — producer Harvey Weinstein had a very clear idea regarding the film's casting, and he was ultimately overruled.

Journalist Todd Gilchrist spoke to a ton of people involved with the Oscar-winning film and learned, through executive producer Danny DeVito (yes, that Danny DeVito), executive producer Michael Shamberg, and producer Lawrence Bender, that Weinstein really wanted Daniel Day-Lewis to play Vincent Vega, the role that ultimately went to John Travolta. DeVito had an overall development deal at TriStar Pictures and got final cut on his projects there. As he recalled, he spoke to Weinstein, who insisted that Day-Lewis — who had just won his Academy Award for "My Left Foot — play Vincent.

"I said, 'The director wants John Travolta,'" DeVito told Gilchrist. "I told this kid I've got final cut, plus cast approval. I think he called me every name in the book, but of course, Quentin got what he wanted, and he was absolutely right, and the rest is history." DeVito's recollection that Weinstein was particularly cruel during their dispute certainly checks out; in 2017, it emerged that Weinstein had been sexually, verbally, and mentally abusing everyone from powerful Hollywood actors to industry underlings. (He's currently serving time for sexual assault with more trials pending.) Unfortunately, "Pulp Fiction" was made during Weinstein's heyday ... and he had the power and the money to bully and abuse people.

As Michael Shamberg and Lawrence Bender reveal in the article, they worked pretty hard to keep the budget low ... which, presumably, would mean that Harvey Weinstein's demands and oversight could be ignored more frequently. Unfortunately, when it came time to find a backer for the movie, only one producer bit: Weinstein. "Only Harvey [Weinstein] bid on it," Shamberg told the outlet. "Harvey thought he was in a bidding war, but he wasn't. To this day, if I see [Hollywood film producer] Bob Shaye, he'll tell me that he wished he'd never turned down 'Pulp Fiction.' Quentin wanted to do it with [producer, former TriStar chairman, and Orion co-founder] Mike Medavoy because Mike had done all the great Orion films, but ironically, when it came along, Mike thought it was too violent."

Bender pointed out that, in the end, he and Shamberg were able to finagle the budget to make it exactly low enough to keep the creative control in their hands. "We wanted the budget to be between $6 and $8 million, because that way we could maintain more control over the movie itself because it was a low enough budget," Bender recalled. "And when we made the movie, believe it or not, the budget of that movie literally was $8.5 million with contingency. And when it was all over, we returned $500,000 and it was exactly $8 million."

As far as John Travolta is concerned, he's really glad Harvey Weinstein was overruled when it came to Vincent Vega and Daniel Day-Lewis — because "Pulp Fiction," as everyone knows, was an enormous step for his career. (He doesn't specifically say he's glad that Weinstein's idea was shot down, but I went ahead and inferred.) "The last success [I'd experienced] before 'Pulp Fiction' was the 'Look Who's Talking' films, so getting the 'Pulp' offer was certainly a next-level, upper echelon opportunity more along the lines of the Oscar nomination-type performance of 'Saturday Night Fever' and 'Blow Out' integrity," Travolta mused to Variety.

Travolta also revealed that Quentin Tarantino told him that he loved the actor's performances — from "Welcome Back Kotter" to "Grease" — and that he'd always hoped the two would collaborate. Plus, Travolta said that they had one huge thing in common: "I think it helped his being a big Pauline Kael fan, and my being one of her favorite actors, so he raised the bar for me and gave me a second chance at a high-end career, one that he always wanted me to have." (For quite some time, rumors swirled that Tarantino was making his "final" movie about Kael, but that whole thing seems to be completely defunct at the moment.)

"Pulp Fiction" is available to stream on Paramount+ and Amazon Prime.

If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).